Art with Pride (In The Name of Love)

School may’ve been out, but there was still an actual reason to get up this morning. And a good one at that: I got to participate in a pretty substantial MLK Day service project at West Ave. Elementary. Under a slightly breezy, slightly cloudy January sky, I and several volunteers worked to set up a garden by the cafeteria so kids in a 5th grade science class could tend plants and learn about the radness of nature.

Now, there was definitely a lot of work to be done. The lion’s share was handled by some volunteers from Habitat in Fort Worth, who are ballers when it comes to placing mulch. My contribution involved some of that; it also accidentally involved making friends with the kids who attended. I guess that’s natural; camp mode totally came back into play. I wound up having blacktop races and playing tag just as much as I pitched mulch off a trailer. (Me and the kids joked that the mulch pile was basically just a giant heap of “boo-boo” anyway.)

(Theirs, not mine.)

(Though I was certainly accused.)

Part of the job, too, was to paint concrete paving stones with cool pictures.  That way, the garden would look even more awesome and kid friendly, and we’d having something less seasonal than plants to commemorate the day with. To wit (and I’m a sucker for art), here are some cool pieces:

This was done by some of the Fort Worth volunteers. A nice use of splatter paint, if you please.

A very Banksy-ian entry, done by a girl who SKETCHED THIS FROM HER iPHONE. In, like, 7 minutes.

But, of course (of course), the coup de gras was administered by yours truly, with a little help from my friend D.T.

D.T. is in second grade. Our art styles totally clicked once he suggested we maaaaaaaaaake:

(Behold: greatness!)

For you Philistines out there, that’s an angel flying out of the sun, which is his home, over a monochrome rainbow, while a triceratops down below eats a snake.

(We didn’t have time to paint the also-planned-for cowboy. He was supposed to be the angel’s friend.)