Flowers and Money!

Hey everyone!

I just finished this mural less than 2 hours ago and I'm already posting it! I'm never that on top of blogging and yet here we are :)

This one was in a laundry room for an apartment building with "gardens" as kind of their whole building theme. I was happy to get such a bright, cheery assignment. Just simple, colorful, beautifying of an otherwise un-exciting space. Can't wait for residents to be surprised when they do their laundry! Scroll to pictures or read on for a completely separate story... ha!

In totally other news, I know a lot of you that read this thing are my friends or parent's friends in real life, and some of you may have recently supported a dream of mine. This post describes the art show benefit event I held back in March, where I displayed all the paintings in my Madagascar series, and sold prints to benefit an organization that works there, and all over the world. So print sales have been trickling in since then, and I'm happy to tell you guys that I was able to donate $875 to Population Services International today! So grateful to those of you who bought a print, came to my show, or told me to break a leg. It's been an idea that's been in my head since Peace Corps in Madagascar, and I'm so happy it happened. Thank you guys so much for your support!!! It means more to me than you know. I also wanna just say something else real quick, cuz I'm feeling blog-y:

This past weekend, I had a friend visit who was in the Peace Corps with me, and we were talking (obviously) a lot about Peace Corps. She said that when she helped interview candidates for Peace Corps back where she lives, she hears a lot of people express concern over their college majors, or area of study - "but I'm just a theater major.... can I really be of service?" First of all, you will learn a bunch of stuff during Peace Corps training that will be helpful and relevant, but also, everyone can use their skills to be helpful in the world. You could (and people in Madagascar did) help organize a play in your village to explain why it's important to protect the forest and not eat lemurs!

Anyway, point is, you can use your skills to do good things. When I was younger, I thought painting was kinda silly in comparison with more "noble" careers, and wouldn't actually help that much. Now that I'm smarter (haha), I've been able to find ways to use my art to be helpful. So don't listen to people - or yourself - who say you can't be helpful by doing your "thing", whatever that is. Ok now pictures :)