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Winter / Spring 2008 News
Chameleon Arts Concentration with the Office of Homeless Liaison, Spring 2008
Chameleon is continuing its yearlong Gift project with the Office of Homeless Liaison, providing arts programming each Thursday at M.E. Pearson Elementary School and Saturdays at Chameleon. The program is funded by Muriel McBrien Kauffman Foundation and the R.A. Long Foundation. Over 40 homeless children participate each week in the program that helps to teach artistic and academic skills. The program has become a foundation for the building of a positive youth community and has contributed to the children’s success in school and in life.
The Gift project is leading to the production of large graphic dye cut prints of homeless youth that will be installed in the Willa Gill Center in Spring of 2008. Willa Gill houses a soup kitchen and provides services and support for homeless families in Kansas City Kansas. Often, the homeless are portrayed in a highly negative light and blamed for their poverty, yet those of us who work with the Homeless know them as a wonderful community striving against desperate odds to achieve a life of value for themselves and their families. Many of the children we work with are high achievers in school and are working to go on to college and successful careers. The goal of the project is to provide this community with positive self-images while teaching the youth creative arts and academic skills.
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Scholarship winner!
George Wah, who has participated in Chameleon Arts Concentrations for the past 2 years, was awarded a national scholarship from the National Association of Educators of Homeless Children and Youth for 2008. George traveled with Chameleon to Portland Oregon to receive his scholarship and gave a moving speech telling the story of his life as an immigrant from Africa and being homeless in America. George plans on attending college and is working to apply this spring.
National Association of Educators for Homeless Children and Youth National Conference
Chameleon and the Office of Homeless Liaison of the Kansas City Public School District presented our ongoing arts and educational project for homeless children and teens at the 2007 Portland Oregon conference. The presentation outlines Chameleon’s Portrait of Self curriculum and the partnership between the two agencies. The presentation was enthusiastically received and many of the audience members strongly suggested that we present the continuation and development of the project at the 2008 conference Washington DC.
Chameleon’s Portrait of Self (POS) is an arts and educational process to help at risk, homeless and disadvantaged youth populations build self esteem, resilience, social and academic strengths. Portrait of Self is based on the belief that all young people have creative potential to develop positive modes of expression leading to increased social, academic, creative and personal skills.
Angel Program
Chameleon, the Office of Homeless Liaison and Shook, Hardy, and Bacon, Kansas City’s largest law firm, partnered on the annual Angel project to provide homeless families with holiday gifts. Each Christmas season lawyers from the law firm donate funds to purchase much-needed clothes, holiday gifts and toys for these highly deserving homeless families from Kansas City, Kansas. The Office of Homeless Liaison, which works tirelessly to protect the rights of homeless children and families, manages and facilitates this important program. The all day event is held at Chameleon, which provided arts activities and performances for the families. Each homeless family was provided appropriate gifts in a setting of respect and community caring.
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April 11
Green Exhibition, YWCA, Kansas City, Kansas
Chameleon is working with Hugh Merrill's community arts class from the Kansas City Art Institute to curate an Earth Day Arts Exhibition for the YWCA in Kansas City, Kansas. The exhibition will include works by young people in Chameleon’s youth arts programs and students from the Kansas City Art Institute.
April 19
Chameleon participates in the Underground Railroad Project for the Troost Festival
Prior to and during the American Civil War, the ground on which Chameleon facility stands was an area where escaped slaves hid and were nurtured by the students and staff of the Western Bible College. The slaves were then taken across the Missouri River on dark nights to Quindaro, Kansas and freedom as part of the underground railroad.
Chameleon is working with the Troost Festival, scheduled for April 19th 2008, to create a tribute to remember this important history by producing artworks for the route of the festival’s commemorative 5K run. The date also marks the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s death and Earth Day. Father David of the Egypt Orthodox Bookstore and spiritual leader for the 31st and Troost area is working with other committed members of the Troost community to weave these threads into a celebration of the Troost neighborhood.
Artist/Educator Hugh Merrill, working with his community arts class from the Kansas City Art Institute are making large graphic figures of slaves to place in the woods where these remarkable people hid while waiting to escape via the underground railroad to freedom. The student’s are also making posters to place along the route of the run.
The 5K run will start at the 31st and Troost circle down the Paseo to the Chameleon facility and Western Baptist Bible College at Tracy Arts Park and then back up Campbell St. to end at 31st and Troost.
Open Stage Tuesdays
Chameleon Arts Consortium, lead by Dae Ah Zae and Monica Guthridge, have established Open Stage Tuesday each week to support area musicians, poets and writers with the opportunity to perform for a peer audience of artists and performers. Each Tuesday local bands, rap artists, blues poets and others perform from 6:30 to 11:30 at Chameleon. Over 100 artists have performed on the open stage since its inception in December of 2007. For an invitation contact Dae Ah Zae at Chameleon, 816-221-7529.
Earth Day
The
Chameleon Arts Consortium and Parks and Recreation Community Centers
FREE family festivals celebrating the environment with art in honor of Rachel Carson, environmentalist and author of Silent Spring, on her 100th birthday. Puppet shows, musical performances, puppet making, enviromental science projects, mural panting, birthday cake and more!
March 22, 10pm - 3pm
Westport Roanoke Community Center
3601 Roanoke KC, MO
Additional activities include “eggstraspecial” egg games and an Easter Egg Hunt in honor of the holiday!
March 29, 10am - 3pm
Tony Aguirre Community Center
2050 W. Pennway KC, MO
Additional activities include performances by Garcia Marching Band and build a
forest activities. A collaboration with Mattie Rhodes Art Center.
Block Art Space
Christina Vantzou Belgium artists spent a month in Kansas City creating a series of silk-screens completing the first part of a two-part residency. Christine has been invited to return in the fall of 2008 to complete her screen-printing project.
Ed Hogan is planning on printing a series of etchings made by Kansas City and national regarded artist Dean Mitchell titled the Buffalo soldiers. These powerful portraits of African American Calvary soldiers were drawn from life to honor the surviving members of this renowned group of veterans.
aAlice gallery
Chameleon, due to lack of financial support, has had to close the aAlice gallery for fall 2007. The gallery will reopen for a series of exhibitions for graduating seniors from the Kansas City Art Institute 2008.