Matthew T Rader
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A little while back, Blis Freeman, a parent who's a part of the Lakewood Elementary School PTA in Dallas contacted me about a photo I took of the Dallas Skyline at night. She explained to me that she started a program four years ago where they create works of art with the students and auction them off at the Lakewood Home Festival. She said that in the last four years, they have raised about $50,000 that went directly back to the school with just those projects! She was looking to do a project this year with her 5th graders where they will each paint a portion of a large picture and then put it together in one large piece. This year, she wanted them to do the Dallas skyline. After a search on Google, she found the photo below on my Flickr Photostream and loved it and asked me if she could use my photo for their art auction. I was probably more excited than she was about the idea of a bunch of kids painting their interpretation of one of my photos to raise money for their school. Of course, I totally supported them in this project by giving them the photo to work with. They made a large print of the photo, cut it up into a bunch of square, and had each kid paint what they saw in each square. After the kids were done they glued all the squares back together and created the beautiful piece of art you see above. The auction was a huge success and the piece the children painted ended up being sold for $2,000! It was such an honor to have my art used to encourage and support the education of children.

Lakewood Elementary Art Auction

Matthew T Rader | Dallas Photographer

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