Kids in Crisis (K.I.C) / Art Therapy
Kids Lifeboat of Promise

This mixed media collage was inspired by images drawn by K.I.C. children. This was sold for $10,000 to benefit the organization.
In 1994 our daughter Sarah, (then 12), made us aware of Kids In Crisis as she researched it & became involved through a Whitby Montessori School project. She joined me, as children from KIC made site visits to my home art studio with KIC's Art Therapist / psychologist, Sheri. Their age range was approximately 6 - 14 years. The shelter then accepted children from birth through age 17. Yes, even babies are physically and sexually abused.
The children created artworks while in flow listening to classical music.
Their insides were made very visible.
Subject matter was their choice. . . Amazingly, the outcomes were all so similar.
The girls, including the oldest, who was 14 and 4 months pregnant, all drew and colored HOMES with smoking chimneys, happy family figures, shining suns, rainbows, hearts, broken bleeding hearts.
One 8 year old boy, who had been intentionally dropped on his head by his parents, had been living out on the streets of Stamford on his own until KIC took him in.
He also drew a HOME - two stories, very grey, smudgy, forlorn, dark, dirty - except for one lit-from-within, bright yellow window. . . I recall thinking of that window as a HOPE window.
KIC IS HOPE.

Kids in Lifeboat of Promise...

Archival Print on fine art watercolor paper $3,000.

H:43'' x W:34"

All sales of this Art go to Kids in Crisis Foundation

Art-text:

"The house allows us to dream in peace. A great many of our memories are housed in childhood's house.
We are the unity of memory and the image of potential. We each dream our potential from the collection archetypes of perfection.
There exist archetypes of all the houses where humans have found shelter.
The Divine womb of constant becoming, womb, mother, father, relationships, home... Our first cosmos...
The slant of its roof should maintain each of us through the storms... Here we are bottled in nourishment.
A shelter like this amidst crisis allows incubation with the archetypal worlds memories of protection, dreaming in peace and a future reimagined."

Poetry by Sheree Friedman