Thursday - Spring Arts Showcase

Love this image from Kansas City Young Audiences

Today's art feature for the Spring Arts Showcase is community service! Artists help their communities by sharing messages and solving problems in interesting and creative ways.

We like to tie in a service project to our Fine Arts Night celebration - in recent years it has been #petpARTners and #FreeArtFriday. Today, you can think of a way to brighten the day of someone in your community through art. If you have a favorite community service activity, how can you add your artistry to that? I will give you a few suggestions below, but make sure you choose something that is meaningful to you - it does not have to be from my list. Make sure you share your creation with me and on social media with your parents' help. Ideas:

#petpARTners - a community service art program we created at Dolvin to raise awareness of the homeless pet population

Make some art about a shelter pet and share it online, along with the shelter information. At Dolvin, we use the FurKids Atlanta website - there are several other local shelters if you have a favorite. Search my blog for tons of ideas about #petpARTners.

#FreeArtFriday - a feel good art movement where artists share their art in the community for free, often in a scavenger hunt format using social media

Make a small work of art with a positive message, and leave it to be found - maybe on a neighbor's doorstep.  Search my blog for Free Art Friday ideas.

ATC's - Artist Trading Cards are small 2.5 x 3.5” works of art that are traded and collected

ATC's are perfect for spreading a positive message or idea, and for Free Art Friday as well. Draw a positive message and share with someone - mail is a great way to share an ATC. Search my blog for ATC ideas.

Next topic - Fan Letter! I hope you guys are logging on to our school's Artsonia gallery and leaving comments (Fan Mail) for students - see this post for more info on how to do that. Today's fan letter from our Artsonia gallery ...

Dear Leah from 2nd grade, 

Your clay pet portrait of a dog from FurKids is an excellent example of creating a 3-D form from clay. You modeled the ears just so and joined pieces of clay to make the face and snout, and you painted it to look realistic. Thank you for sharing this so that people in our community will get to know the pets in our local shelter and hopefully adopt these pets and make donations for their care. It makes me smile! 

Your fan, Mrs. Knight

Finally, here are some pics from the community service events we have done in the past at our Fine Arts Night - I hope they inspire you!