In 2017, Inner-City Arts welcomed hundreds of students to take over the streets of Downtown Los Angeles for Art Beyond Borders in partnership with FOSART. This week, Inner-City Arts partnered with FOSART once again in Los Angeles for Art Beyond Borders 2019 and invited more than 600 students and their teachers to paint with world-renowned Panamanian artist Olga Sinclair on our rooftop.
To begin the morning, Olga led students, teachers, and community members in collective meditation and shared with students a story about an experience she endured in grade school when her classmates made fun of a piece she created. She ran to her father, also an artist, and told him of the ridicule she had received. Instead of asking her to conform, Olga’s father encouraged her to follow her creative, radical vision — even if it didn’t look like everyone else’s. Underscoring the importance of a supportive community and listening to your instincts, Olga ushered in a morning of exploration as students—each with personal paint kits, canvases, and pieces of charcoal—created their own works of art.
Thank you to our dear friends Olga Sinclair and Linda Hothem for making this experience possible and FOSART for the continued collaboration and partnership. We’d also like to thank our school partners (Arroyo Seco Museum Science Magnet School, Aspire Titan Academy, Eastman Elementary School, Extera Public Schools, Lockwood Avenue Elementary, Para Los Niños, and Sammy Lee Elementary), our wonderful volunteers, and our in-kind sponsors Dunn-Edwards Paints, Hint Water, and KIND Snacks for supporting Art Beyond Borders.
