April 2016 Art Day at Whole Foods; show at John Bukaty Gallery; 3D printers!

April 2016 saw Sticking Up For Children move several more steps forward.

We had our first Art Day in New Orleans' Whole Foods Market at Arabella Station,

thanks to Patrick Jones, the store's Marketing Director. The space for turning drumsticks into art with paint-pens was filled with eager children and their parents.

All photos from the Art Day are by Maryse Déjean.

Every family participating in the Art Day received our poster celebrating Mahalia

Jackson, 'The Queen of Gospel' and decades-long activist for human rights, Patrick Jones at Whole Foods again was responsible for the outreach.

Sticking Up For Children has consulted with our youth-education partners and chosen the 3D printer that we feel will work best for the partners' students in Haiti

and New Orleans: the Flashforge Creator Pro.

The Creator Pro uses open-source software, rather than any manufacturers'

propriterial sourcing. It has dual extruders that enable multi-color designs.

It has a steel-frame body for durability. It has readily replaceable parts and a lifetime

guarantee of technical support. It has a build-area of 9 x 5.5 x 6 inches (or 225 x 145 x 150 centimeters).

The creatvity of partners' students in the Foyer Espoir Pour les Enfants orphanage

and College Canapé-Vert school of Port-au-Prince and in the Kuumba Institute art-classes of New Orleans' Ashé Cultural Arts Centers will find a new medium

in their new 3D printer. We look forward to seeing and enjoying the beauties and innovations that are sure to come ouf of these young people's minds.

Jazz Fest--the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival--involved many of Sticking Up For Children's supporters between April 22 and May 1. Cyril and Gaynielle Neville and

the Royal Southern Brotherhood, together the founders of Sticking Up For Children,

all played often during this time-span. Stanton Moore, James Singleton, Stanton Moore, Roger Lewis and Kirk Joseph of the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Kidd Jordan, and

Cole Williams-x and her band all were playing often, too.

Big thanks, too, to the The John Bukaty Gallery for welcoming Sticking Up For Children into a first for us: a show of art by our supporters and by students and parents who have been part of our Music & Arts Days. We now have on display,

in a great, clean space and with nicely proportioned settings, eight of our shadow-boxes with drumsticks-as-art, eight Giant Sticks as art, and 20 pair of

drumstick-as-art. Thank you, John Bukaty, and thank you Joe and Taylor of the

Gallery, and thanks to the guests who attended our April 30 reception on a day

of torrential rains!