Kids’ Art to blossom at 2019 Philadelphia Flower Show

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Fresh Artists will fabricate giant reproductions to exhibit in the Grand Hall of the Convention Center for the entire Flower Show. (Photo courtesy of openphoto.net.)

 Fresh Artists, an award-winning nonprofit empowering young lives through art, has been invited to exhibit children’s art for the 2019 Philadelphia Flower Show, illustrating its theme, “Flower Power.” In partnership with the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, SEPTA, and the Fashion District, Fresh Artists has engaged 2,254 K-12 children in 42 schools to make a portrait of a powerful flower, inspired by photos by accomplished photographers.

These digital images, lent to Fresh Artists to form a huge teaching gallery, were made available to all art teachers in Philadelphia, Norristown, Chester-Upland and Camden public schools, so their students can interpret these flowers for the Philadelphia Flower Show. The children used acrylic, gouache, opaque watercolors, oil crayon or chalk pastels. Alli Koch, Dallas artist, educator and author, allowed Fresh Artists to use several lessons from her book, How to Draw Modern Florals, for a teaching pamphlet distributed to art teachers.

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All children’s entries will be exhibited in the Jefferson Station Concourse at 12th & Filbert, at the entrance to the Convention Center for the entire week of the Flower Show, March 1 through March 10.

“We curated a collection of the strongest work to become super-graphics,” said Barbara Chandler Allen, president and founder of Fresh Artists, “to vinyl-wrap a SEPTA bus with kids’ flower art. The bus, named the “Fresh Artists Mobile Museum of Mini-Masterpieces” will appear at the PHS Flower Show and on regional roads for a year. SEPTA is also vinyl-wrapping two subway cars and a brand-new Silverliner Regional Rail train car!”

Fresh Artists will fabricate giant reproductions to exhibit in the Grand Hall of the Convention Center for the entire Flower Show. Children whose art is chosen for bus wrap and large-format display in the Great Hall will be given a VIP tour of the Flower Show with their art teachers before it opens to the public.

Family Day Chip Art Project at the Show

Fresh Artists will also offer a free, green art-making activity in the Great Hall on the Flower Show’s Family Day, March 10th. Children can make mosaic flower portrait bookmarks on recycled cardboard using Fresh Artists’ signature “Chip Art” technique – paper mosaics using obsolete paint color chips donated by BEHR Paint.

“We are very grateful to the Garden Club of Philadelphia (GCP),” said Allen. “They and members of other Garden Clubs of America (GCA) member clubs have jumped in to support this innovative project giving public school children access to the Philadelphia Flower Show. Professional and acclaimed amateur photographers in GCA member clubs donated stunning flower photos to form a teaching gallery for the children. Reference photographs were also donated by creative staff at the Morris Arboretum, Longwood Gardens, Scott Arboretum and PHS’s Meadowbrook Farm. A GCP club member is documenting the entire project for a national magazine and many club members will assist Fresh Artists at their big Family Day Chip Art activity.”

Many pieces of the children’s art will also be invited to become part of Fresh Artists’ signature Corporate Art Collection. Businesses and organizations make donations to nonprofit Fresh Artists and receive large-scale reproductions of children’s’ art for their offices. Funds donated purchase art materials and innovative art programs, like Flower Power, that are delivered free to schools struggling with massive cuts in arts funding.

About Fresh Artists

Founded in 2008, Fresh Artists is a national, award-winning nonprofit that empowers young lives through art by engaging vulnerable children as full partners in philanthropy, by advocating for a quality education for all children by widely exhibiting children’s artwork in highly visible and unexpected places, and by providing art supplies and innovative art programs to severely under-resourced public schools. Fresh Artists invites K-12 artists in low-income schools to donate high-resolution images of selected artwork, and then provides corporate or individual donors with thank-you gifts of high-quality digital reproductions of that art in exchange for financial contributions. In our first 10 years, the talent and generosity of more than 2000 K-12 public school children throughout the country has delivered the value of more than $1.75M in art supplies and innovative free art programs to public schools in 48 states. Fresh Artists’ Print Studio provides large-format printing for under-resourced nonprofits and introduces disadvantaged teens to marketable job skills.  Cool Jobs, our annual pop-up creative careers expo, introduces young teens to real jobs they might aspire to having in the creative economy. Huge reproductions of children’s artwork have been installed in corporate facilities throughout the country from Washington to Oregon including Vanguard, SAP, Subaru of America, Yahoo, Comcast, Harvard, Yale and the world-famous Philadelphia Flower Show. Hundreds of pieces of hopeful, healing children’s art have been installed in 43 homeless and emergency shelters, soup kitchens and child abuse clinics at no charge. Six themed Fresh Artists Memory Games, educational, intergenerational matching games showcasing children’s art, all received the Oppenheim Gold Award for Best Toy of the Year, and were featured in “O” Magazine, appear in museum shops throughout the country and on Fresh Artists webstore. For more information, visit www.freshartists.org.

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