Children's Hospitals can be places of noticeable tension, where the struggles, fears and hopes of patients, families and staff make for a stressful experience. At a time like this, people realize that healing goes beyond curing the body. At various children's hospital locations, The Art For Life Foundation offers various arts programs to pick up where medicine stops to help guide patients through recovery. Now in in our 10th year with locations in eight states, our Art for Life programs have become an integral part of several children's hospital services and are recognized throughout these organizations as an important adjunct to educational, developmental, recreational and psychosocial support services. Our programs provide inclusive, interactive, therapeutic art activities that help normalize the hospital experience for kids. All patients are encouraged to participate, regardless of physical limitations. Our programs work either in a group environment or in one-on-one sessions with the objective to provide a nurturing and inspirational creative experience to every child. Not all of our programs are in children's hospitals. We work with a juvenile courthouse and with a childrens hospice/respite location, however all of our programs work with children using art as an effective tool - empowering them and often times their siblings and family members - to actively participate in their own healing process.
We exist and rely on donations to do our work. Please send donations to us at Art for Life Foundation, PO Box 162, Clayton, CA 94517 
Bertha Wright Award 2004
In 2004 Art for Life was inducted into the Bertha Wright Society at Children's Hospital, Oakland. The award. See our 85 foot tile wall at Children's Hospital, Oakland here.
Art While You Wait: - Children's Hospital, Oakland, CA - Hasbro Children's Hospital, Providence, RI. - Kapi'olani Women and Children's Medical Center, Honolulu, HI - North Shore Children's Hospital, Salem, MA - University of Wisconsin Children's Hospital, Madison, WI - Rady's Children's Hospital, San Diego, CA Newest locations - June 2008 - Memorial Hermann Southest Hospital in Houston, Texas.; July, 2008 - Women and Children's Hospital of Buffalo, NY - Our Art While You Wait programs are now located in 7 states!
In any hospital emergency room, waiting areas tend to be places where the fears and hopes or simple boredom of patients and their families can make for a stressful experience.
This award-winning Art for Life program, designed, created and overseen nationwide by founder Anthony Knutson provides a variety of art and crafts materials and guided projects for patients and their siblings waiting for treatment in the Emergency Department. Beyond being fun, the creative process offers kids an outlet to explore and understand emotions such as nervousness and fear. This also has a positive effect on the medical staff making for a more positive and less stressful environment to work in. Art While You Wait has also been recognized by the medical staff at it's locations as a valid intervention program.This program is also offered in some of our locations in other waiting areas where there is a need for art prior to a procedure or treatment. Honolulu, Hawaii; Madison, Wisconsin and Oakland, California offer this program in two locations. If you are interested in this program at your Children's Hospital, please click here. See an artmobile project from our project guide: Click here! Take a look at one of our Artmobiles! Click here.!
Interesting fact: In our Rhode Island Art While You Wait program in the ER - 92 percent of patients surveyed who participated experienced reduced pain and anxiety. One 7 year old exclaimed - " I was too busy to feel pain!"
• - Mobile - Can be at a variety of hospital locations.
• -Lamoreaux Juvenile Justice Center, Orange, CA.
Now in our 8th year!
Located in the Children's Chambers, this program began in 2000 from the simple question asked to the children: What do you want to have to take with you when you leave court today? Their response: Coloring books and crayons. The program provides coloring books and crayons to over 200 children each month, many who will go directly into foster care and some who have never enjoyed the luxury of owning their own crayons and coloring book. Art is a part of a child's life. It was their wish and we never underestimate the power of a child's wish. Art for Life also provides a VHS and DVD library, CD player and art supplies. Art for Life's partnership with the Community Service Program (CSP) that opened this location in May of 1992 is a very rewarding one. After 8 years of sharing our vision, together we have helped over 10,000 children leave the facility with coloring books & crayons along with the understanding that they are important. The staff: Luz Herrera, Robin Harris & Maggie Corbin make this place a safe and loving haven for all the kids that visit. Here is a photo montage of an Art for Life visit to celebrate our fourth year of commitment in the Children's Chambers. Note that all the artwork on the walls was done by Luz and Robin using art supplies provided by Art for Life. They both feel that children feel more safe and secure in a room that is filled with color and love! AFL site director: Anthony Knutson
• Vickie & Friends: 7th Year! -Nebraska Medical Center, Omaha, NE
Twenty-One years of experience with ceramics in the same class with the same women is quite an accomplishment. Now add to that the desire to take that experience and bring it each month to children in a children's hospital and what you have is truly a gift of love. Vickie Geistkemper, program director of Vickie & Friends began bringing ceramics to Children's Hospital, Omaha, Nebraska in 2001. Since then she and her friends have helped over 1,200 children to paint ceramics and with each piece helped them to move through whatever illness they may have while sharing the joy of life through color. Each month Vickie selects a fun theme for the kids. They have painted June Bugs in June, Hearts in February and Pumpkins in October. However, no matter what the theme they always keep plenty of cats and dogs on hand as they seem to be the kids favorites! Vickie & Friends reaches out to children in group setting and also offers personal attention bedside so no child is left out who wants to participate. Siblings, parents and even grandparents are encouraged to participate and often do! The success of this program in Nebraska inspired us to begin a similar one: Ceramics & Kids! -Oakland, CA in 2003. That program then inspired Ceramics & Kids! - Concord in 2004 and in 2006 Ceramics & Kids - Sacramento in Sacramento, CA. Now Vickie & Friends have a new location at the Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, NE where Vickie along with program co-directors Lori McDermott and Cindy Nelson continue to bring the love and joy of ceramic arts to kids each month. AFL site director and visiting guest artist: Anthony Knutson. See us: Click here! . Our program featured in the news: WOWT Channel 6 in Omaha featured this program in March of 2007. Thanks to Tracy Madden co-anchor of the news for such a wonderful story on us! To see a photo of this newscast click here!
• Oakland - Children's Hospital & Research Center, Oakland, CA.
A love of ceramics and a strong desire to help a hospital that once helped their children, Holly and Paul Kersis joined our Art for Life family as program directors in 2003 and in doing so helped bring a much loved program that began in Omaha (See Vickie & Friends)to the wonderful children at Children's Hospital, Oakland. Cats and Dogs, Hippos and Alligators, Mermaids and dinosaurs... with each month there is a new theme and with it new inspiration from the children in how to paint the various pieces that go with it. The excitement children have when painting is amazing. This program is offered once a month in the School program. Working in the classroom, this program provides an important link to offering art as part of a child's school curriculum. Working under the Child Life umbrella as well it also addresses the importance of allowing children to express themselves creatively and achieve what we at Art for Life believe is a way to help heal children on both an emotional and physical level through therapeutic play. Children who participate in the program each month are there for many health reasons from life-threatening to any serious condition that requires hospitalization and yet when it is 'Art for Life ' time in the schoolroom as many as 50 children from every level of the hospital including ICU, IPU and even bedside participants choose to join in and create art making it one of the most successful ongoing arts programs at Children's Hospital in Oakland. Since it began in April of 2003 this program has reached over 2,600 children and its success helped us to launch further program locations . Recently in this program, one child painted an alligator and in handing it to his father announced with a big grin that two things were finished that day: Art and Chemo! Amazing! AFL site director and artist: Anthony Knutson
• The Clayton Community Library, Clayton, CA.
What better place for children to display their own art than in a library where art lives in almost every book. Located in the children's section of the library, Art For Life began displaying a permanent gallery of art in August 2003. This isn't just any children's art but art that has been created by the many children in our programs. These are art projects that show us a visual journey of their healing. This is the art that has helped them to heal through self-expression. It is a pleasure to be able to offer this special showing to the city of Clayton. When you are in the area please stop by and share in this wonderful journey of healing through art. We know that it will touch your heart and inspire your soul to reach out and help bring more programs like this to the children in your library community. Anthony Knutson creates the display, provides the artwork and rotates the exhibit. www.claytonlibrary.org
• Ceramics & Kids! - Concord - John Muir Behavioral Health Center, Concord, CA.
With the opening of Ceramics & Kids - Concord on April 28, 2004, Art for Life ventured into a new field for us in the medical arena: Behavioral Health Psychiatric Services.
Offered once a month, this program works with children ages 4-12 and adolescents ages 13-18. The focus is on helping to bring the healing and therapeutic abilities offered through the art experience into the milieu therapy already offered at the John Muir Behavioral Health Center.
Ceramics & Kids - Concord, is a part of the Health Center's Creative Art Therapy Program. Working closely with the staff and the creative therapist it directly addresses two identifiable key experiences that are an important part of psychiatric healing for children: Group Art Therapy and Individual Expression. Being in a group setting creating art encourages interaction among the children as well as the staff. This promotes an important sense of belonging and allows the children to feel they have a place in the unit. Individual expression is achieved through the piece of unique art that is created by each child. As we always say in Art for Life..Art gives children a voice, let's listen to what they have to say! AFL Program Director: Anthony Knutson and the onsite Recreation Therapy Staff all work together to bring with them each month a genuine love, passion and heartfelt desire to give all the children onsite the opportunity to explore self- expression and healing through art.
• Studio: Art! - John Muir Medical Center, Walnut Creek, CA. See a project: Click here!
Created and facilitated by founder of Art for Life and artist: Anthony Knutson - in 2004, this program is offered each month with co-director Rosalie Gazzola as a part of an ongoing pediatric oncology support group. An important motto of the Art for Life Foundation and all of its programs is: Children and art: working together, creating together and healing together. Having fun creates a healing atmosphere. This program embraces that concept. Each child and teenager selects from a variety of art projects something that they can create to show their own unique artistic vision. Each project is designed to be created and completed in one session. Anthony is also available for Studio: Art! appointments with kids and families at bedside. New in April of 2006, John Muir and Art for Life celebrate the art done in this program with an ongoing art gallery display located in pediatrics oncology. One of Anthony's favorite poets was Mattie J.T. Stepanek. He had a philosophy that also finds a home here in Studio: Art!. Mattie lived his almost 14 years of life struggling with illness and yet his own philosophy in his life was always... "Remember to play after every storm."
• Artfelt Moments - George Mark Children's House, San Leandro, Ca: Nebraska Medical Center via Vickie & Friends, Omaha, NE: Coming Soon - Honolulu, Hawaii.
In the experience of hospice, every moment is valuable. Therefore, what is chosen to do in every moment is important. At Art for Life, we believe art can be used to fill valuable moments with a joy that comes from personal self-expression. Art can be used to share a memory, a laugh or reflect a life. Art can be used to make a difference in any moment in time. Artfelt Moments brings the experience of hospice and art together creating the opportunity for all those who participate to express who they are, show how they feel and share important moments of time together. There are four main Artfelt Moment Experiences in this program: Patient Moments, Sibling Moments, Family Shared Moments and After a Passing Moments. Art offered in each of these moments focuses on a different journey in the hospice experience. When we place art into any of these moments we are placing a piece of who we are inside of them. We are saying – this is who I am. Those who receive the gift of that art will find that person and their love…every time they touch it. In 2006 a new addition to this program is the Artfelt Moments Art for Life Children's Remembrance Wall. Families who have had a child die work with this program called Tiles & Tales to create a tile piece in their memory. The Children's Remembrance Wall is located in a garden setting at George Mark. C0-directors: Anthony Knutson and Rosalie Gazzola bring love and the joy of sharing healing art to this wonderful program. View this very special wall here.
• Sacramento - Northern California Shriners Hospital, Sacramento, CA.
Sharing the Shriner's love of volunteerism and commitment to treating a child's body, mind and spirit, Art for Life welcomes our 3rd Ceramics & Kids program launched on March 30, 2006 in Sacramento, CA. Program Directors Jeffrey Russo, Susan Anderson and Anthony Knutson all bring their love of helping children to heal with art to this new and exciting program location. See one of the many wonderful Artists who enjoy our program - Click here!
Shriners of Northern California is the only Shriners childrens hospital that offers pediatric care in all three specialties: orthopaedics,spinal cord injury treatment and rehabilitation, and acute burn treatment and rehabilitation. This program is offered every month and works with children up to the age of 18 being treated in all three specialties. Patients, siblings and family members are all encouraged to discover the joy of art and healing that comes from the creative process. See a project! ! And another!! A special message to us from the kid's at Shriner's!
• Art-To-Go Box - Various locations where our Ceramics programs are offered - Now in it's 2nd year!
When it comes to an art program in any of our locations, timing is everything. Just ask the kids! They know the exact time we are going to be there and they know wheter or not they will be able to participate based on their schedule that day. Unfortunately, even with advance notice and a lot of help from hospital staff to arrange things around our program, over the years we have learned that we can't always be there for all the kids during the actual program time. So we decided to come up with a way that would allow the kids to create art - when it is a good time for them. So our Art-To-Go Box program was created. And as it states right on the box it is for --Art when YOU feel like it! Volunteers in our programs create Art-To-Go Boxes for any of the children who are not able to be a part of our program that day but are still in the hospital. Each kit contains everything needed to create the same art piece that the kids would have created had they been able to attend the program. Fortunately, now when we hear that a child doesn't feel like art right now or has a treatment or for some reason can not be a part of our program that day we let him or her know right away that they still can participate. With our Art-To-Go Box, kids can still create that special artistic masterpiece - when they feel like it! And at Art for Life, we think that when they feel like it...is the perfect time!
• - Hawaii - Now available! Kapi'olani Women and Children's Medical Center, Honolulu HI. Launched August 15, 2007! Welcome onboard!
