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Memory Project: Art makes connection across miles

By Rachel Tuinstra

Seattle Times Eastside bureau

Dustin Sohn stared at the photograph for hours, looking into the smiling brown face and then carefully painting the smile and brown eyes of a boy who lives thousands of miles away.

It was a picture of an orphaned teen from Haiti, someone Sohn may never meet. But the orphan's face is now ingrained in the mind of the 16-year-old from Bellevue, who found himself reflecting on the comforts of his own life.

Sohn and other art students from Bellevue High School painted the portraits of the Haitian orphans as part of a program called the Memory Project. Recently, Bellevue High art teacher Jenny Davidson, whose students painted the portraits, spoke about the project during the Washington Art Education Association conference at Sammamish High School.

Davidson encouraged other art teachers to get their students involved in the project as a way to connect students with people who are worlds apart from their own communities.

"This builds self-worth, for the orphaned kids in Haiti and for the kids here who paint their portraits," Davidson said. "The students here work on those portraits; the children there get something that someone labored over."

Many orphans in impoverished countries will leave their orphanages with few personal items and with no family, said Ben Schumaker, founder of the Memory Project. The project gives them something tangible by which they can remember their childhoods.

"It's about bringing students here face to face with kids around the world," said Schumaker, who lives in Wisconsin. "It's about increasing the compassion for others around the world. Making the world a little smaller."

The project is in its third year. Nationwide, about 1,000 students participated in its first year, 3,000 students last year, and this year Schumaker estimates that more than 6,000 students will take part. Schumaker works with orphanages around the world, including many in Latin America and the Caribbean.

Last year, about 25 students from Davidson's advanced art and Advanced Placement art classes took part in the Memory Project, turning in some of the finest portraits Schumaker said he has ever seen. The students each painted one orphan's portrait.

Davidson says she hopes to have her students participate again this school year.

"The portraits I received from her class were so remarkable, one of the best contributions I got from any school," Schumaker said.

Schumaker sent Davidson a stack of photos from the Maison Fortuné Orphanage in Haiti, and each Bellevue student got to choose which child he or she wanted to paint. Once the portraits were complete, Davidson mailed them to Schumaker. The portraits have not yet been taken back to Haiti.

The students used acrylics, water colors or conte sketching crayons, which are similar to charcoal, on 15-by-12 canvas paper.

Some students used vivid and bold colors, while others used more subdued hues or sketches in black and white to depict a child with a pensive or contemplative look.

Natalie Melin, 17, painted a girl about 4 years old with little braids in her black hair and a slight smile on her lips showing a small gap in the girl's teeth.

"She looks happy and young and innocent." Melin said. "She looks like a little girl who could be walking around in this country."

Melin spent about 20 hours on the portrait and wonders what the girl will think when she sees herself on canvas.

"It was hard to capture her look, getting her nose and eyes just right," Melin said. "I got attached to her, looking at her so long."

The students knew little about the children they painted. But Sohn said that after laboring over the children's photos, it made him wonder about what their lives were like.

"I had to guess how life was for him," Sohn said of the boy he painted. "I wondered how it felt to grow up without parents, to have little possessions or all the things that I have in Bellevue."

It made Sohn grateful for the things he has. The boy from the picture was close to his own age but had not lived in a comfortable, suburban house with parents, with the assurance he will go on to attend college.

"I can't fathom how much he suffered, so when I see that he is smiling, I think it's incredible," Sohn said. "I wouldn't know how to go through life without the things I have."

Memory Project

To contact the Memory Project :

Call 608-268-5721 or visit thememoryproject.org