Amarillo artists raise money for HeART of CASA

Amarillo Area Court Appointed Special Advocates (CASA) held its annual HeART of CASA fundraiser Friday night in downtown Amarillo, featuring local artists' work with funds to help children of the Panhandle in foster care.

Local artists submitted large-scale art interpretations of drawings done by of some of the children who shared their stories with the staff of CASA. Each drawing from a child depicts their aspirations and experiences.

Last year’s fundraising event had to be held online due to COVID-19 precautions. More than $8,000 was raised from last year’s event and, just in sponsorships alone, $12,000 has been raised from this year’s event. According to organizers, one of the art pieces that previously raised the most money was an artwork from Amarillo Mayor Ginger Nelson that went for $500. This year's event was held at WT's Harrington Academic Hall in downtown Amarillo.

Azaley Pulley, fund development director for Amarillo Area CASA, spoke about the event's origins and what it does to help local children in foster care. Her organization advocates for children of abuse in seven counties across the Texas Panhandle.

“We work with kids in foster care, giving them a coloring page and asking them to draw something,” Pulley said. “We wanted these artists to use these drawings as inspirations for their art submissions, and it’s really meaningful that we are able to use this to, in turn, help these kids and others that are in foster care.”

Pulley said that the children use this as a way to tell a story about what is going on while they are in foster care, things they see at the foster home or things that they used to love back at home with their families. She said that, sadly, sometimes children will draw pictures of what happened previously in their abuser’s home.

With these stories, her organization reached out to local artists to recreate their drawings. At the event, these new artworks were put on a silent auction, with all funds going back to the mission of Amarillo Area CASA. This year’s show featured 30 art pieces in various mediums based on child drawings featuring the children’s memories and aspirations. Many of the art pieces on auction were created by the Amarillo Art Institute and Rise Up Art Co.

Crystal Rodriguez, co-owner of Rise Up Art Co., an Amarillo store that specializes in art supplies for local artists in a multitude of mediums, spoke about her decision to become involved with the Amarillo Area CASA art show. Rodriguez started the store with her co-owner RaeLa Ornelas to help expand the local art scene.

She said that initially, when the organization reached out, she thought it was another spam email. But, after reading over the story of what Pulley and her organization did in the Panhandle, she was on board with doing her part, as well as recruiting other artists to participate.

"I just asked some friends, and with our large reach in the local art community with our store were able to get a lot of other people involved,” Rodriguez said. “ Everyone I spoke with was excited to be involved in this project; we want to be involved in the future to show kids the power and reach of art. We also want to show the future generation that you can make a living creating art.”

Rodriguez said that the picture that she based her artwork on was titled "Mad Goat."  In her artwork, which was done with the airbrush technique, she incorporated the character Milhouse from the popular animated comedy “The Simpsons.” She said she is an avid fan of the show and uses it in much of her art.

"I wanted to make something fun in my own neon style,” Rodriguez said. "He is not one of the show's more popular characters, and I just wanted to spotlight him, and the goat just fit in with his character to me.”

"Now that I know what CASA is and what the organization does, we definitely want to be more involved,” Rodriguez said. "This cause was something I could get behind, and the story behind these paintings just shows the healing powers of art.”

Juan ”Dash” Jimenez, a local artist who moved from Los Angeles to Amarillo to pursue his dream, talked about his involvement with the art show.

“When my friends at Rise Up Art reached out to me, I was excited to be involved in this project to help these children,” Jimenez said.

He said that his painting was inspired by a young girl’s drawing of a house that describes a friend being a person that stays in with you while the rest of the world walks out. From his understanding, the young girl had trouble making and keeping friends with her issues of being relocated a lot.

“My painting is kind of like a beach with a bottle depicting friends inside of the bottle; it is kind of like saying having a nice close circle of friends,” Jimenez said. “I hope people see in my painting to appreciate your friends regardless of how many you have.  I want people to realize that they are not alone.”

Jimenez hopes to be able to bring more of his art to the community with local shows, and he encourages others to get their art out there into the world however they have to. He said the key is artists helping other artists to uplift the art community.

Liz Cuevas, another artist who submitted artwork for the auction, made an artistic interpretation of a 2-year-old boy’s sunflower drawing, which involves training his own hand. The boy’s foster mom saves all of his drawings so his mom can see all that he is learning and have memories of him even if he is not there.

Cuevas said she has been doing art most of her life and has had aspirations of being an art teacher and was so pleased to be able to give to such a worthy cause with her time and art.

"I have kids myself, and seeing the little hands as petals really touched me with that personal touch,” Cuevas said. “I tried to make it my own style, but I wanted to keep the sunflower the focus and also added a small handprint in the corner that is painted over to recall his use of his handprints.”

Amarillo Area CASA said that more than 1,000 kids in the Texas Panhandle need advocates, and due to a shortage of volunteers, they can only service about 250 of those children in need. For more information about the organization or to volunteer, go to https://www.pleasebeacasa.org/.

This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Local artists raise funds for HeART of Casa through kids' drawings