Cathy: My name is Cathy Waste, I’m an artist and residence at Shriners Hospital here in
Sacramento. Shriners Hospital I think is known as a place where people really
care about kids and that’s the whole enterprise is, centered around making kids
feel better. The goal of art ship is to give kids a moment where they’re not being
told what to do or where to move or getting poked or prodded or any of those
kinds of things that happened in hospitals. Artship is all about children having a
chance to make their own choices and make their own art.
We have to be adopted in art because we have children for example don’t have
hands and want to paint. So we’ll work to create adapted devices so paint brushes
can be strapped on the arms and hands or they can learn to paint by mouth in
other words we want children no matter what the disability to have access to the
materials to be able to produce. With many of the kids I worked with after they’ve
been in a program for a while what I start to see is that they leave the pain and the
discomfort behind the door when they come in and start painting or sculpting or
doing whatever it is to do that day. And not something when, the best thing about
the art ship program is seeing the smile on a face of a kid who maybe hasn’t felt
well enough to smile in a long time and art does that.
Briana: I’m Briana and I’m a 3rd grader and I go to elementary. My mom got me
interested in painting. My favorite painting I ever did have kites in it and flowers
in it and pot and grass. I love painting because it’s beautiful. When I grew up I
want to be a singer and an artist.
Cathy: It may not look like it but this high school arts students are helping to calm bad
hunger in Sacramento One ceramic bowl at a time. They're part of a legion of
artist of all ages who are participating in a unique fund raising event called empty
bowls.
Eileen: And for $25 people who come to see a bowl to remind them the issue of hunger,
they get to enjoy a gourmet of soup lunch with their friends.
Cathy: The money raised from the event benefits river city community services, an
emergency food and shelter for them. But these are students benefit as well.
Sarah: This is really interesting because I had never heard of empty bowls and the fact
that students want to make these bowls and help the community. I think that’s
really cool.
Cathy: Sarah Montoya is a student in Freddy Santana Ceramics Class at Laguna Creek
high school. This is the third year Santana’s art students have been involved in
empty bowls.
Freddy: Artist are very community based subject ad of my kids have that opportunity to go
outside themselves and share that.
Cathy: The first year Santana participated 60 bowls were donated, this year that number
has more than doubled. At Sacramento specialized health professions high school
there’s no arts program but students are creating bowls anyway, thanks to English
teacher Mary Irwin.
Mary: We had one day that we brought in 2 speakers form the community to speak about
hunger in the community and there are approximately a hundred and seventy
thousand people in Sacramento County who do not have the food resources that
they need.
Cathy: Hearing that staggering figure was enough to get these kids to put their fingers in
some clay.
Female: You’ll feel like and artist.
Rian: Well the fun thing is I actually get to dip my hand using clay again, so I guess that
people actually use this as a symbol.
Cathy: And a thousand of those symbols were produced fro the annual empty bowls fund
raising launching in down town Sacramento. Health profession students had a rare
opportunity to attend the event and see their creations along side all of the others.
Andrea: I feel like it will be very interesting to me and nice and turn out to be what I
thought it would be and it’s really do really nice to see that my bowl has been
picked.
David: There are so many nice ones to choose from and especially because you know
they’re coming from students and the like you know they’re all special in their
own way. I like this one simply because they had the inscription on the bottom
and I like the color and the size it was good for a food bowl.
Cathy: The empty bowls launched and raised more than 30 thousand dollars for river city
community services, that’s 25 percent of the non profits operating budget and
much needed for a problem that’s far greater than Sacramento realize.
Eileen: Hunger in our community is somewhat hidden, we can’t tell from looking at
people that they are suffering from malnutrition and hunger.
Cathy: In 2006 RCCS provided food relief to more than 24 thousand people, 8 thousand
of them children. Araceli CollaZo, a wife and mother was laid off from her job
during the holidays. She just needed a little help getting through a rough time.
Araceli: You know you don’t want to be yourself to be empty and there’s no shame in that,
we were in transition and there are mission statement says its compassionate
assistance and that’s what I received.
Cathy: And these arts students are part of making that help possible for Collazo and
thousands of others like her.
Transcription by:
Scribe4you Transcription Services