This application requires the Flash6 plugin. Postcards Now available in the CFI Store |
Family Room: EventsCFI San Francisco May (2002) Fundraiser - "The Art of Life"On May 8th, 2002, CFI hosted an evening of live music, food, drink, and beautiful art (belly casts of pregnant women, decorated by Bay Area artists). Read Mothering Magazine article, Jan/Feb 2003 |
|
Database | Family Room | Who We Are | Get Involved
© 1999-2002 Child-Friendly Initiative
The date: May 8th, 2002. The place: HANG, a small neighborhood gallery in San Francisco’s sunset district. Evening falls, and the crowd expands throughout the L-shaped art space. Inside is an exhibit like no other: The Art of Life, a collection of decorated plaster casts of pregnant bellies. My jaw drops as I move with the crowd from one belly to another. One is covered with fur, adorned with antlers, and mounted like a hunting trophy. Another is transformed into a sailing ship, an impish face peering in through a porthole. An enormous fish hangs suspended from the ceiling — a “booby-eyed grouper” —named for the bulging-eyed face formed from a woman ripe with child. Belly after belly, every expression is as unique as the children they represent, about to enter this world.
Artists include children’s book illustrators such as Ashley Wolff (Mrs. Bindergarten Gets Ready for Kindergarten) and J. Otto Siebold (Olive, the Other Reindeer) and their families, fine artists such as Jay Mercado and John DiPaolo, comic artist Reuben Rude, musician Kenny Loggins and his family, and a number of Pixar animators. Some of these artists attend, delighted to meet the babies who were in the bellies they painted!
This is the night CFI gives birth to itself. Using the last drop of their financial resources, memberships and donations, this grassroots organization.has created a make-it-or-break-it event. The good news is: they make it. Many bellies are auctioned off to art collectors, stores, and families who participated. Child-Friendly Initiative breaks even, and earns enough to take the next steps toward their goals. The Art of Life is covered on the evening news, written about in local journals. But like Cinderella’s fairytale, the exhibit ends that night.
But there is no returning to pumpkin-hood for this show! Before the doors close, art photographer Ira Schrank from Sixth Street Studio in San Francisco has captured each of the 47 bellies on film, and donates the images to CFI. Now art- and kid-lovers alike can experience the show online. Soon, postcards of the bellies will be on sale as a fundraiser, and rumors of a coffee-table book are in the air. Furthermore, every proud owner has agreed to lend their art piece to CFI for a future show.
All proceeds from the exhibit, postcards and book will go towards publishing more materials and expanding CFI’s services. According to Michele Mason, founder of CFI, the new Support Our Children program will go into underserved neighborhoods (starting with San Francisco’s Tenderloin district), and help these communities transform into places where children are welcomed.
Please visit www.childfriendly.org to view the Art of Life gallery and find out more about Child-Friendly Initiative. CFI members are committed to changing the world, one neighborhood at a time!