Hurricane Relief For Artists
We know that a lot of animation exec types read this site so here’s a message for you folks. Following the destruction of Hurricane Katrina, the School of Art at Louisiana State University is desperately seeking art supplies for children, college students and displaced adult artists. Dori Littell-Herrick, the chair of animation at Woodbury University, believes the animation industry can help. She writes:
I was very moved to hear, among all the calls for water, for food, for emergency supplies, a call for sketchbooks and markers, crayons and paint, for the artists, the art students, and the young people of the Louisiana area, who need a way to put their grief and fear and loss down in the form of art.
I’m asking how the animation community can come together and help, and asking you to pass this up the line at the studios to ask if they can help.We all know that loads of paper, pencils, markers and other art supplies sit around in studios, unused, only to get thrown away. How many of us have pulled supplies out of the trash can and taken them home. Now there is a place in need of all the supplies we can muster.
Below is the original call for help from Stuart Baron, director of the School of Art at Lousiana State University. Contact details are included:
This is the only expedient way to contact you that I can think of and am making the following appeal.
I am asking for your help in the ongoing efforts to aid the people of New Orleans and Louisiana. Here in Baton Rouge we have a great need for art supplies for the evacuees who are being housed and educated in the city and at LSU. We have four cohorts in desperate need of supplies: children and adults now living in shelters throughout the Baton Rouge area, children who are entering the public schools whose budgets are currently overtaxed and overwhelmed by the doubling of enrolled students, college art students from New Orleans now enrolled at the School of Art at LSU, and professional artists who have lost not only their supplies but their life’s work.
The East Baton Rouge Parish School System is a separate entity and one that I cannot speak for, but the others are those that I can directly reach in this effort. Any art supplies, especially drawing pads, sketchbooks, pencils, markers,watercolor sets, crayons, charcoal, printmaking supplies, sculpture tools, papers, rulers, t-squares, and anything else that is not toxic or dangerous (e.g. oil paint chemicals) is sought to give these souls ways to express their feelings and impressions of this unmatched national tragedy as well as diversion and solace in their uprooted circumstances. Of course, any gift in kind to the University has tax benefits, but your heartfelt willingness to help us in this time of abject need will not go unappreciated or publicly unnoticed. I cannot possibly explain to you the depth of hardship that now exists and the necessity for life-sustaining support. Art is such a powerful means of achieving those true expressions of loss, fear, confusion, grief, and, most importantly, hope, which words alone cannot convey. No donation would be too small.
Please, please help us by providing what you can. This is only one form of positive intervention, coming quickly from the entire country, that will enable the people and artists of the greater New Orleans area and Mississippi to sustain any possibility of a future whatsoever. All donations can be sent directly to the School of Art office at the address below.
Respectfully,
Stuart Baron
Director, School of Art
Louisiana State University
123 Art Building
Baton Rouge, Louisiana 70803
225.578.5414 (office)
225.578.5424 (fax)
baron (at) lsu.edu
If your studio is capable of helping, let us know, and we’ll keep Brew readers posted on what the animation community is doing to help Katrina victims.
(via ASIFA-Hollywood blog)