Art for a Good Cause: Pigs 4 Kids

Last year I had a passing thought: What if I did a huge project for charity and made art for a large audience? 

This idea came about after making some new artist friends who create large scale paintings during events. It's painting as performance art! People get to watch the entire piece develop over the course of a few hours or days, depending on the event. After they're finished, the painting is available for purchase. (Shout out to Crispy Printz! They are such an inspiration to me!) As with most of my ideas, it starts out with I WANT TO DO THAT! And so I figured out how I could.

Here's a peek into my thought process: I could paint one huge thing, but then who would buy one huge painting? So think smaller...that means multiples of one idea. Cool. How about 100 of something? Got it. How about a local charity that helps feed children? Perfect. How about setting up at a local BBQ and music festival that was created to benefit volunteer firefighters? OMG THAT'S IT!

Since it's a small town, I had a direct connection to the folks in charge of Smoke on the Water BBQ Cook-Off and Music Festival. I typed out a quick message and just like that I had myself a new project to work on! Looking back at my messages, it looks like I got the idea approved last year. So I had plenty of time to work out the details.

Buying 100 canvases would be expensive, so my dad and I spent an afternoon cutting down three sheets of birch plywood. For a little over 70 bucks, I had plenty of panels to paint. 

But what was I going to paint? What do people like? Well, since I'll be setting up at a BBQ fest, why not PIGS! People love pigs!  

This project is called "PIGS FOR KIDS" and I'll be painting 100 8"x12" pigs on wood. Each pig painting will be $40. ALL of the proceeds benefit Food for Thought, a volunteer non-profit group dedicated to making sure Thomaston, Georgia schoolchildren don't go hungry. Children in the program receive a food bag every Friday afternoon to take home for the weekend as well as bags for school break periods. The group is in their fourth year and puts together almost 7,000 bags every school year. The bags of food cost about $4 each.

Like I said before, it's a small town and I know the folks in charge of Food for Thought. I ran the idea by them and they happily agreed!

So there you go, you have the WHO, the WHAT, the WHEN, the WHERE...but what about the WHY. Why do I feel compelled to do such a huge project? And the answer is just a simple because I want to. I live a very sweet life & I'm very fortunate in so many ways. Why not use my talents and abilities for good if I am able to? Besides, I love doing passion projects like this to keep my creativity flowing. It's a win-win-win all around!

I started painting on February 27th, 2016 and today is March 31st. So far I have created FIFTY pig paintings. That means I have grossly underestimated my ability and my time to paint so many pigs. I'm right at the halfway point and the deadline is well, tomorrow.

BUT GUESS WHAT! It's my project and I can extend the deadline if I want to. I'm still setting up at Smoke on the Water this weekend. And I have plenty of pig paintings to sell. 

Here are 35 random pigs from the 50 that have been created. Hopefully they all find new homes soon!

If you're on Instagram, follow my progress at @Fawne or #Pigs4KidsProject.