For the last 14 years, I have volunteered on an outreach, education and fundraising project for AIDS Walk Kansas City. And for the past 10 years, STUFF has been a corporate sponsor along with amazing small companies and businesses in Kansas City of the Mosaic Project.
This project is simple. High school students in school districts around Kansas City paint six-by-six inch ceramic tiles in the theme “A World Without AIDS” with glazes in an eleven-color palette. We ask that they watch a short video about the AIDS epidemic that ends with a step-by-step on how to paint a tile. Then, we hope their creativity will fly and that their small artwork will show us a world without AIDS.
The simplicity continues. The tiles are fired, cataloged and finally placed on display en mass during one of the busiest weekends of April, First Friday in Kansas City’s Crossroads District. Thousands of people converge upon this remarkable area of town to live, breath and consume art in its many forms.
The simplicity ends in that it takes many, many hours of volunteer time to schlep these tiles all over town, coordinate delivery and retrieval with amazingly generous art teachers, number them, clear coat them, keypunch all the data, manage the two events – public and private – and, finally, inventory and pack it all up for next year.
Which is what I did yesterday with four members of our stunning committee. The generosity of the small businesses – like STUFF – that donate discounted or free tiles, glazes, bowls, labels, artwork, printing, etc., is not wasted. From year to year, if all the supplies are not consumed from the year before, we pack it up and store it for the next go round.
I am so very proud of what we do. We hope young people will spend a few minutes thinking about their fragile health and the world around them and then show us – through art – what their world would be like without AIDS. Many take the time to tell us, in words, and we make sure this story travels with the tile to its collector through the label we adhere to its back. We do this with heavily discounted – but mostly free – supplies and volunteer labor. Then we sell these tiles and raise money for the 5,700 women, children and men living with HIV/AIDS in Kansas City.
It doesn’t get any better than that.
My dream for a world without AIDS is simple. That things like the Mosaic Project cease to be. That our energies will be placed differently because we have beaten this epidemic into the earth.
Until then, I will live in the art, creativity and community this project has enriched my life with. I am one of the lucky ones. It’s that simple.
p.s. The 2013 Mosaic tiles can be seen for the last time as a group (reduced in number due to sales at the April 5th event) at the 25th Annual AIDS Walk. April 27th in Theis Park. Right in front of The Nelson. Come and see them and take a great piece of art home to remind you what a glorious place a world without AIDS would be. Art lives!
In addition, my greatest thanks to the following companies and people for joining STUFF in supporting such an amazing outreach project: Dal-Tile, Scott Francis and The Art Lobby of The Chair Building, KC Metro Ceramic and Pottery Supply, Crane Yard Clay, Hoop Dog Studio and Fern Exposition and Events.
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I’ll see you there if not before. I’m walking with our Reece and Nichols office that day. And we’ve likewise been busy raising money for the cause. Great shot of Catherine as well as the rest of the crew. Call me for my help next year.
Thanks.
Thank you, Sloane, thank you Stuff, and thank you AIDs Walk KC. The day will come when this devastating disease is beaten, thanks to you and the countless others that refuse to accept its tyrannical grasp.