Art Therapy

This week, we hosted Art Therapy for our community! This session, we painted sunflowers, to resemble that we can still grow within hardships. Sunflowers take up lots of sunlight but they are still able to survive off little water. Additionally, they produce many seeds when they are fully grown. Dana thought that this was a good symbolization that although sometimes there is no water in our cup, we still have the opportunity to grow and present seeds for out future. As the session went forward, the community talked about their experiences living in Maywood, and what they did to be a good neighbor!

Thank you to those who joined us! Thanks again to Dana for leading another session!

Art Therapy With Dana Harris

Photo Credit: Saffron

In mentorship on Saturday, the mentees relaxed with a bit of painting. Dana Harris, who has been painting for years, taught them that art can be therapeutic. She explained how art and painting can help with anxiety and calm nerves. She then guided them through painting beautiful cherry blossom trees. Dana also has a business of her own, Paint On Purpose, where she teaches art to people of all ages! Everyone had a blast creating and relaxing.

After their art session, our mentees moved on to website building with Lu’Cretia. In a previous workshop, they learned about website design and the different aspects of it. This time, they put that knowledge into action. Our mentees are at the beginning process of creating their own brands, so learning these steps of building a website are very important.

Photo Credit: Saffron

Art Meets Website Design

On Monday we welcomed Heather from Art Cures All to lead a workshop on collage art. Our mentees got to design their collage from magazines, as well as take a sneak peek of Heather’s artwork. Each table was set up with a stack of magazines, a pair of scissors, glue sticks, and finishing glue. It was exciting to see each person flip through pages and pages of magazines to find their favorite designs and photos to add to their collages.

Afterwards, Lu'Cretia, our Creative Project Manager, took over to lead a workshop on website design using Squarespace. We love that we can provide our mentees with this skill set as it will benefit them in the future. Lu'Cretia went over the basics of designing a website, what goes into designing one, and showed some amazing examples from some of our past mentees…Amanda Leon Calligraphy and Makeup By Mariah. Although designing a website is a process, we cannot wait to see what are mentees create!

Photo Credit: Mariah

Handlettering Workshop

For the second half of mentorship on Saturday, mentee alumni Amanda Leon, came to TFD to teach our mentees about handlettering. Amanda is self taught in the skill of calligraphy and has turned it into a career since her mentorship in the spring. Handlettering can be done on a variety of objects such as: name tags, mirrors, chalk boards, home decor, pumpkins, and so many other things! In this workshop, the mentees first learned the main rules of handlettering; upstrokes are thin, while downstrokes are thick. Once they did some practicing on paper, the mentees moved on to some wooden pumpkins Amanda brought and came up with their own designs! They turned out great and everyone had fun learning from a past mentee!

Photo Credit: Mya Rose

Maywood Mural Unveiling

Photo Credit: Saffron Hurt

On Sunday, October 24rd, Maywood Youth Mentoring, had it’s unveiling of the new murals for the peace garden. Teens and young adults within the community were selected to create beautiful artwork that will be displayed at the garden on the topic of” Community Love.” One of the selected youth was Dakota Lopez, who created a beautiful piece on continuing growth. TFD had a previous mentee, Saffron Hurt, photograph this event and show off the great work these individuals have created. Saffron says, “It was a warm homey experience. Everyone was so nice and to see them take pride in improving Maywood through the garden warmed my heart".

At TFD, our goal is to center Maywoodian led organizations and residents who are working constantly to improve the community.

Photo Credit: Saffron Hurt