So, for today, tonight, and tomorrow I find myself back in Buffalo. I'm on Jessica McDonnell's laptop (she and I, along with 2 other girls, lived and worked with each other this summer), listening to bluegrass, waiting for cookies to get out of the oven, and anticipating a good game of 2 of Rummikub with good friends. Tomorrow Jess and I will help move all of our student's artwork from this summer to the children's section of Buffalo's Albright & Knox Museum. They'll be displaying it, along with telling the stories of the refugee children and their families, until mid-October (come and see!!!). On Sept. 21st from 5-7pm, they're even holding a reception, welcoming the public. The media will be there, and it will be a quite an event. I'm excited for the public in general, and especially Buffalo, to learn more about the newcomers living in their (our) midst and the richness of their lives.
Update: pictures of our art exhibit coming together.
As you can see, there's more to the exhibit than just these murals, but these are the focus of every thing else. The theme of our afternoon program, Arts Bridging Cultures, was centered around unity and diversity and the areas of the world all of our children (both from the School 3 and Our Lady of Loretto programs) came from. What we came up with was a collaged map of the world (each age group taking part in its assembly), and a collaged map of each of the countries represented during our summer English program. It's so amazing to finally see them up and displayed - something we had been working for since the very beginning of the program (getting permission from Albright & Knox to display our artwork so that we could better communicate our activities and goals with the larger public).
