I’m seeking some help in raising $500 to frame some beautiful art that has been donated to the new Mansion Memory Care Center, whose walls are bare.
I saw Tuesday that the new Activity Center in the facility – dedicated to the Army Of Good – has bare walls in need of some color and light. In a sense, these are our children, that’s how I feel about it, the residents and the refugees
America tends to hide its neediest and most vulnerable, we bring them into the light, and we bring the light to them.
The day after the dedication, I went to Bishop Maginn High School to visit the Silverstein Art Brigade, and I was quite shocked to see a folder of beautiful paintings by Sue Silverstein, the BMHG art teacher. Another small miracle.
She brought them in and offered them as a donation to put on the Activity Room walls and also on the walls of the 10 residents soon to move into the Memory Care Center, which adjoins the Mansion.
Several Mansion residents I know well will be among the first residents.
(If you can or wish to help, you can do it in two ways: via Paypal, [email protected], or by check, Memory Wall Fund, c/o Jon Katz, P.O. Box 205, Cambridge, N.Y., 12816. Small donations matter, they make all the difference. Bigger ones are also sweet. Thanks.)
Please mark your contributions “Memory Walls.”
These paintings are just beautiful – Sue is an artists, and she says Red has inspired her to start painting again, so have the beautiful art supplies pouring into the school from the Amazon Wish List and individual donations.
Maria and I have been measuring and researching these gorgeous paintings – they are perfect for these walls – and we think it will cost about $500 to get them inexpensively but appropriately framed. Some of them are pretty big.
The Mansion, a Medicaid facility, doesn’t have any more money than Bishop Maginn High, a Catholic school in a poor urban neighborhood. So I’m asking for help in paying to order these frames.
Maria and I will assemble them (she used to work in a framing shop).
It looks like we need about $500 to order metal frames, matting and backing. There are about a dozen paintings, Blue and Paw Lway Shee have also offered to paint something for the memory care facility. Their portraits will be beautiful for the staff and residents to look at.
I appreciate the coming together of these two worlds, a focal point of the Army Of Good. We are all one, really.
I’ll post photos of the paintings when they are hung. I am very happy to see Sue painting again, her work is quite striking.
When you posted her first painting, it took my breath away. So full of life, color, hope. And that Red. Always inspiring, loving, being there, for everyone. Both of these two, helping us feel the feels.
As a former gardener (can’t anymore), her flowers just speak to my heart. I know that these are going to the Katz/Wulf Memory Center, but does she have any that she might engage you to sell for her, to raise money for the school supplies?
Thank you all for bringing the Army of Good into the good life.
I’ll have to think about that, Barbara, she gives more than enough to the school, but she might take a commission..you can email me at [email protected] if you want to commission something, but it ought to go to her not the school in my view. She’s an artist and she ought to get paid for her work.
J: Amazing that Red has inspired Sue Silverstein to start painting again! Paintings are gorgeous.
This is my first reply and I hesitate to do so because I truly do not want you to take my comment as anything other than just my thought based on my own feelings that have been inspired by seeing Sue’s two paintings and the new rooms that they will be hung in. You mentioned metal frames and I was just thinking that there are white frames that might compliment the paintings more so than metal. I am probably wrong as I am not an artist as you and Maria are, but for once I thought I would share my feeling. Thank you for all you and the Army of Good have done and are doing for so many very deserving people.
Thanks Barb, I appreciate your thoughts and feeling, I am never unhappy getting thoughtful responses like yours, I would never take offense at a message like that. Unfortunately, there are severe financial constraints on the framing of this picture. As a photographer, I am well versed in what framing costs, and white wooden frames are three or four times as expensive as metal ones. These paintings are large and wooden frames would cost well over a thousand dollars to do all of them. I just don’t have the funds for that. I wouldn’t ask people to donate that much money for pictures, as valuable as they are…We have a $300 to $500 budget for 12 large paintings, we’ll take it as far as we can..I do thank you for your thoughts, sincerely…j