Here’s an awesome idea to give kids the chance to make art in the most unlikely of places while you are traveling the world or navigating the home turf.  Mother and Daughter Susan Lazar Hart and Kelsey Hart founded Portraits Beyond Boundaries (www.portraitsbeyondboundaries.com) in Montreal in 2008. Though they have other jobs, this is a big passion, and they volunteer to make it happen.

In 2008 they went to Kathmandu with an idea to connect with a locally based not-for-profit and facilitate art workshops on portrait making and conduct exchanges of art. While there, with about $100. they went to the local markets and bought powder paints, brushes, drawing supplies and paper. (Their art supplies stretched for 3 weeks! – more affordable and easier to buy locally, than cart art supplies across the world!)  

While at their accommodations at a hostel, by word of mouth, they found a place they could do an ad hoc art workshop—at a local ashram!  Invited, took all of their supplies into the ashram, and about 75 local kids including kids on the street came in “out of nowhere” and made portraits for 3 hours. The kids worked on the concrete floors, under dim lights. Kelsey remembers giving a blue colored pencil to a young girl. She had never seen a colored pencil and was amazed!

So energized from the workshop, that same day they were told about an all boys orphanage that would love to have a workshop. So, on the way back from the ashram, they stopped in and set up! About 25 kids participated, making great portraits! Though their goal is to make art exchanges between schools or community centers in some cases they let go of the goal and let all the young artists keep their work, especially in Kathmandu, where most of the children had never painted before, nor had the chance to take their artwork home!

Susan and Kelsey developed the idea for Portraits without Boundaries after Susan returned from a trip to Costa Rica. Her friend was going to donate school supplies to a local school. Susan went along and noticed there were no art supplies, she thought, why not donate art supplies? Kelsey grabbed hold of that idea and they put their minds and hearts to work.

Kelsey and Susan have taken their portrait making art workshops to Australia, New Zealand, Nepal, England and Canada. They link with local schools or community centers. If you’d like to do something like this (or you teach in a school, or you have a child in a school that could do a portrait workshop and exchange) write to Kelsey at: portraitsbeyondboundaries@gmail.com

*Kelsey is looking for an experienced website designer to make their website more interactive. This would be an employment opportunity, write Kelsey!

Interview/questionnaire with Kelsey Hart, Co-founder/Co-Director on February 18/10.