The Memory Project
Art students at Mercy High School, Burlingame, have joined the Memory Project, a nationwide initiative in which advanced high school art students create original portraits for children living in orphanages around the world.
Given that children who have been abandoned, orphaned, abused, or neglected often have few personal keepsakes, the purpose of the portrait is to provide them with a special memory of their youth, to honor their heritage and identity and to help them build a positive self-image.
The project also provides an opportunity for young Americans to open their hearts to children who have endured many hardships, and to promote the value of sharing kindness with others.
The Memory Project has been featured on national television several times, most notably when Katie Couric concluded her very first broadcast of the CBS Evening News with a story about the project’s success at an orphanage in Nicaragua.
Students at Mercy High are participating as part of a course titled Honors Art 3. To do this, the students receive pictures of children who are waiting for portraits, and then work in their art classrooms to create the portraits. Once the photo-realistic, acrylic portraits are finished, the Memory Project organization delivers them to the children.
In total, the students have made portraits for six children living at an orphanage in Phuket, Thailand. In February, a Memory Project representative will deliver the portraits to each child.
“In the beginning the issue was, ‘How do I paint them?”, said Honors Art 3 teacher Nazira Kury-Arnold. “It became a technical exploration of the painting process. As they came to look at each photograph, and seeing the image of the child staring back at them every day, they became more invested. That encouraged them to do their very best.”
Kury Arnold said a lot of students wanted to deliver the portraits in person.
“It’s one of those projects that’s going to stay with them the rest of their lives,” she said. “There’ll forever be connected to just this one person.”
The Memory Project is a program of the nonprofit organization My Class Cares based in Madison, Wis. Since the project began in 2004, more than 20,000 portraits have been produced by high school art students around the country. The project’s website is www.thememoryproject.org
From January 29, 2010 issue of Catholic San Francisco.
