International HeART Exchange

NEW NAME!

Due to some confusion with our old name, the International HeART Exchange, we have changed it to the Mondo Art Project (MAP). We figured this made sense especially since this is a passion project of Mondo Fine Art, who is committed to connecting people all over the world through art.

Our new website, where you will be able to stay up to date on all our adventures, is: http://www.mondofineart.com/mondo-art-project

We will also be having a very special fundraiser coming up next Wednesday, July 28th, from 7-9 pm at the Salt Lake Art Center (details below). We hope that you will be able to come, enjoy some artist designed mini golf, and support a great cause!

Thank you for your continued support!

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Back from Cambodia!

The HeART Project in Cambodia was a success! The kids created the drawings that will go to their peers in Uganda next month as well as a mural to be displayed locally in their villiage.

Here are some photos… Stories and drawings to follow soon!

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Next trip: Uganda

Our next expedition is back to Uganda. This is very exciting because we will be going back to the children at the Asayo Wish Orphange – the first to participate in our drawing “heART project”. We will be delivering drawings and photos from their international peers from Cambodia and Nepal, along with more art supplies to continue the project, as well as extra supplies so they may continue creating long after we leave.

As an update from our last trip, we have received word from our contact, Moses, that the children have continued to draw and paint all around the orphanage, and are really learning how to express themselves through art. They are starting to run low on paint, so we will restock their supply so they may continue to fill the orphanage with their creative voice.

Special thanks to the Great West Institute, Asayo’s Wish Orphanage and the Trivani Foundation for their hard work, resources, and cooperation.

It’s not too late if you want to join us on the Uganda trip. It will be from March 11- 17th. The trip is organized through Trivani Foundation, who will be working on several intiatives while there, and we will be taking a few days to work on the art with the children for the International HeART Exchange.

Please email us at info@mondofineart.com for more information. We are trying to coordinate airfare this week, so please let us know as soon as possible if you would like to be involved.

If you can’t make it on the trip, but would still like to help – we would greatly appreciate donations towards getting more art supplies. Please email us if you would like to contribute.

Also – if your child’s school would like to coordinate a heART project and create drawings for us to take to Uganda – please let us know!

Thank you for your support!

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HeART Project underway in Cambodia!

Chris Peterson, with Trivani Foundation, is on his way to Cambodia, as we speak! We have plans for the heART project with drawings as well as a mural. Stay tuned for stories and photos!

BACK TO UGANDA!

Our next trip is back to Uganda. We will be sharing photos from Cambodia and Nepal with the children that were the first to participate in this project!

If you are interested in joining me and our group in Uganda, we would love to have your help! The expedition will be March 11-17, 2010. We will be working with the Asayo’s Wish orphanage as well as some nearby schools. Also, the latter part of the trip, we will be helping the Trivani Foundation with the widow’s community with repairs to their homes and village. If you would like more information, please email me at info@mondofineart.com . Thanks! – Mikell

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Schedule changes

We are currently updating our expedition schedule for 2010. There have been some changes from what is currently posted. We will let you know as soon as it is updated. If you would like to join one of the expeditions, we would love to have you and could always use the help! Please contact us for more info. Thanks!!

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Art Show & Fundraiser this Friday!

Special thanks to Salt Lake City artist Janell James, who is generously donating 15% of the proceeds from the opening night (this Friday, Jan.15th) of her show and 5% of the proceeds while the show is up to the International HeART Exchange. If you are in the Salt Lake area, please stop by – we’d love to see you!

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Nepal Exchange a Success!

Apologies for the delay in this post – the holidays got a bit hectic for us all!

It has been so fascinating to see how the children in different countries and cultures have responded to this project. Our last expedition, through the Trivani Foundation and Choice Humanitarian with Chris Peterson of the Great West Institute, was facilitated in the villages of Lamjung District of Nepal.

Here is the story, told by Chris Peterson:

Chris Peterson drawing from his imagination

“In November 2009, I was able to join CHOICE Humanitarian on an expedition to villages in the Lamjung District of Nepal. The journey was exceptionally long and difficult, but completely rewarding. The CHOICE Nepal staff has worked in this region for nearly a decade and has established a very strong relationship with local villages and their leaders. We had the opportunity to stay in the homes of villagers and be fed by the villagers themselves. There was much celebration, dancing and feasting as we visited the villages of Khatri Tanti, Turlong, Duscheni, and Parunokot. We worked side by side with villagers building a school in Turlong and broke ground for a health clinic in Parunokot.

While staying in Parunokot, I had the opportunity to conduct a short art lesson for the nearly 100 students there. Kiran Neupane – one of the CHOICE field staff- explained to headmasters that we wanted to share some art supplies, do some drawings and participate in an art exchange. We had expected to come back the next day to conduct the workshop, but they immediately organized and brought desks out into the courtyard (/volley ball court) and had the children sit down together. They were packed onto the school benches very tightly, with very little elbow room.

Kiran introduced me, and then translated to the children in their native dialect what I was saying.I attempted to explain the concept of imagination in hopes of spurring creativity. I showed them a stack of ten drawings that I had brought from the states that included drawings from children in Kaberamaido Uganda and Salt Lake City Utah. Many of the drawings were of animals and I asked the children to identify the drawings they saw. They were very shy, but some of them gave good guesses. (Some animals – like a giraffe – were complete mystery’s to them). After showing them the drawings, we handed out the paper, crayons, and colored pencils (donated by International heART Exchange, Great West Institute, and other individuals) and turned them loose. There was some discussion in Nepali between the adults and children in the group, and based upon the amount of time it took many of them to get going, I sensed that the idea of drawing from imagination was foreign to them. I took a few minutes while they were drawing to quickly sketch a fantastical animal that was half kangaroo, giraffe and bird primarily for the sake of modeling the free-form drawing I was hoping they would draw.

However, as they drew, we noticed that there wasn’t a lot of original thinking going on. Perhaps it was that the teachers were roaming about and they weren’t able to loosen up enough in that environment, but the majority of the drawings were very similar: the official flag of nepal, the official flower (rhododendron), the shape of Nepal (with provinces), their school, and some mountains. A lot of repetition. We also noticed that they weren’t very interested in the crayons; they wanted the colored pencils. I think this is because of the precision the pencils allow. Many of them used rulers to make exact straight lines.

Most of the curriculum and lessons for these students are based around the sciences and mathematics. I gathered that there is very little creativity that is encouraged in the school setting. We ended up leaving a pile of supplies for future creative art sessions, but I’m not sure how it will really be implemented; many of the teachers seemed a bit uncomfortable with the artmaking as well.

I expect to return to these villages in the coming year and try to conduct another art workshop for the children. I am excited to see if any of them are better able to access their imaginations and individual creativity.” – Chris Peterson

After speaking with Chris about his experience, I was very interested in understanding why children draw what they draw – from a cultural perspective. In this case, the children mainly drew pictures of the Nepali flag, the school, the different provinces of the country. I was speaking with a professor of anthropology at the University of Utah, who specializes in Tibetan/ Nepali culture, and he said it was most likely because the country is very nationalized and there is so strong sense of national pride – and that this is highly promoted in schools.

I also think that the concept of drawing something from your imagination (our theme of the heART projects) can sometimes be a hard concept to grasp onto in different cultures. I think some cultures promote individualism and individual thought and creativity more than others. From a western perspective, we put a lot of emphasis on our individualism and what we feel, think, want, dream. We are sensitive that not all cultures promote this like we do. So some cultures may grasp on to this project more that other, but we give them an option – an outlet to find their voice – to express themselves… and have fun – through art.

The feedback from these expeditions is so important. We observe, listen, and learn from the children of different cultures and allow them to express what they want to their international peers. We feel that if children have access to art on a sustainable level, that they may be able to cultivate how to express themselves through this medium. Our goal is not only supply kids with art materials for the one art project, but to leave art supplies with the classes that will last them until our next visit, so they have the opportunity to further explore their creative voice. I am excited to continue learning from these children and seeing how they respond to art and drawings from other children in other cultures. – MS

These were some example of the drawings we gave the children of Nepal from their international peers in Uganda (last 3 images) and Utah (first 2 images):

Some of the drawings from Nepal expedition will go to Cambodia in February and others to Uganda in March. Here are a few of the drawing from these wonderful Nepali children (notice common themes of home, animals, and running water from a tap – as is with the drawings from the US and Uganda)

Special thanks to Chris Peterson with Great West Institute, Trivani Foundation and CHOICE Humanitarian for making this trip possible. And thank you to all those that donated at the Mondo Fine Art fundraiser – the money raised from the silent auction paid for the art supplies for this trip as well as our next trip to Cambodia!

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Fundraiser a Success!

Thanks to all that attended Mondo Fine Art‘s holiday party. By auctioning some framed photographs from the first expedition to Uganda, we were able to raise money for art supplies and extra money to go towards our next village mural!

Quick update – the team that has been in Nepal will be returning today and tomorrow. We will keep you posted on how the trip went!

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HeART Project in Uganda

Special thanks to Megan McMillan and Chris Peterson for their work in Uganda last month through Trivani Foundation and the Great West Institute. Not only did they do the drawing project with the kids – they took it one step further and let the kids transfer their drawings to a mural in their village (Kaberamaido)! We would love to continue this tradition in other countries as well.

Chris Peterson, Expedition Leader:

“I’ve just returned from three weeks in Uganda and Kenya for work with the Trivani Foundation. In Uganda, we spent drawing with the children from Asayo’s Wish the majority of our time in a village called Kaberamaido, at an orphanage called Asayo’s Wish. For most of the last three decades, political unrest and civil war has ravaged this part of northern rural Uganda. As a result, there are many widows and many orphans and a lot of suffering as people start to put their lives together. Trivani Foundation has begun working with these alienated groups within the local community to empower them and ensure that their future is better.

As one of many things that we did while staying at Asayo’s Wish, and with funding from Great West, we facilitated a collaborative community arts project with the 160 children who live at the orphanage. We started with about 50 children in the first group. I had brought from the states seven boxes of crayons (with 96 colors each) and we turned the children loose on imagination-based drawings. There was a lot of excitement with using crayons (likely the first crayons ever for many of them), but there were also some children who were unsure of how to proceed. I think that the creative outlet and open-endedness was foreign to them, given that most of their schooling is dictated by specific outcomes and artmaking is basically never on the agenda.

After a few minutes and some coaching/modeling, they loosened up and loved it. Once we had the drawings, we moved the children outside to the side of an old shop, on a highly visible wall in the compound and from the nearby road. I had brought dozens of brushes from Utah and in Kampala before we drove to Kaberamaido, we had purchased ten gallons of various oil-based colors (latex acrylic is basically unavailable there). With the kids looking on, we unpacked the paint and proceeded to mix some additional colors and distribute them to the children After a short translated lesson on how to use the paint and brushes responsibly, they started transferring their drawings to the wall. It was definitely the first time for most of these kids to dip a brush in paint and they took to it quickly.

Initially intending only to paint the one side of the shop, the children made the executive decision to expand around the entire building and then onto the neighboring latrines. A few hours later, we had to cut them off and help them get cleaned up. The next day, I facilitated the same activity for the remaining children (approx. 100!) and the walls started to fill in with their paintings. Over the course of the remaining week, one of the leaders (my main man Moses), worked with the children to fill in the negative space and tie the murals together. The results are stunning and the experience beyond explanation.

When we left Asayo’s Wish, most of the paint in the cans remained and I entrusted Moses with the task of providing more creative opportunities for the children with that paint. As far as the mission of eradicating poverty in this region, it is difficult to cite a concrete and verifiable outcome of this mural project. However, under the goal of empowerment, I believe this project will have significant, far-reaching and long-term impacts on these people; for the members of the community at-large and especially for the children who participated in this simple collaborative and creative process. I am excited to visit Uganda next year to see what will unfolds.” -cp

Thanks Chris and Megan! The drawings from these children are on their way to children in Nepal right now thanks to the good people of Trivani and Choice Humanitarian. The team will return in 3 weeks to report on how the exchange went.

Check back for updates!