Giving Back

This month’s blog is less about art, and more about community.

On January 30 a group I helped start, Friends of Albert Whitted Airport, awarded 34 flight training scholarships to aspiring pilots ages 16-25.

This year’s awards amounted to $208,000. In four years we have awarded over $633,000 in scholarships.

Even more than art, this is the thing that gives me the most joy and meaning every year: giving back and helping young people find their way.

Helping start this organization, and especially our flight training scholarship program, is the most meaningful thing I have done in recent years. Over our first three years our 51 recipients earned 14 Private Pilot ratings, 7 Instrument ratings, 6 Commercial Pilot ratings, 3 Certified Flight Instructor Ratings, 3 Certified Instrument Instructor ratings, and 4 Multi-engine ratings. We now have several flight instructors from our original year, helping to train the next group of students. Our influence will continue to flow forward to future generations of pilots.

I read recently that helping others is a proven longevity booster. It’s the practice I have also learned in recovery, as helping others is the foundation of sobriety in 12-Step and other group support models.

How to Start?

The program came out of a desire to provide opportunities to young people who might not otherwise have thought about aviation as a career. We knew that women and minorities were vastly underrepresented in aviation, and we especially wanted to help change that.

But when we started four years ago, none of us knew how to run a scholarship program. So we researched programs others had already started, and we used applications from others as models as we drafted our own.

We weren’t sure how to market and reach the young people we wanted to reach. But we did the best we could, and tried to get the word out directly to schools, through city council member contacts, and through social media. We had just a few applications come in before our deadline, and were not sure we would have applicants sufficient for the funds committed.

But, we had started. And applications flooded in at the last hour, literally. The program has been a success from the beginning.

Making art is kind of the same. I’ve talked with a lot of people who said they would like to become an artist. I think about what my mother once told someone who asked her how to write a book.

“You just start. Once you start, you figure things out. But you have to start.”

Captain Barrington Irving made that point in his speech to the young students during our awards ceremony. Barrington was the youngest person to fly solo around the world at 23, and was the first black pilot to fly solo around the world. He has become an entrepreneur and educator who runs several non-profit and for-profit organizations.  He encouraged the students to just start and then pay attention to opportunities that would help them reach their goal, which might lead them down unexpected pathways.

That’s been my experience these past years with art. If I had tried to figure it out ahead, I would have never gotten far.  Even today I sometimes wonder about taking on new projects. But if I keep at it every day, and start even the smallest part of a project, things open up and the project takes on a life of its own.

Special Event at Sixstar Art Studios

F*cking Cobras will be from 6-8 pm on Friday February 13, featuring Scrappy! A curatorial Project by Kate Lee Gibson featuring work by Ry McCoulough.

In addition there will be:

Sermon of Smoke, performance art by the Reverend Rex Riptide; IVF Sweepstakes, a video art piece by Jolene Lower; sculptures by Olin Fritz; and new work by Jason Hackenwerth, Matthew Boyle, Bran Palmer and myself.

New Works this Month

These are new pieces on display in my collection now at Sixstar:

Shelter

The first piece of the new year is Shelter. I’m continuing to have fun pulling the eye into the painting, toward the smallest plane of color. It’s also fun (and risky, given my faulty color vision) to put contrasting, vibrant colors next to each other as I paint the various pieces that combine to create the whole.

I’m exploring colors, spray paints and new geometric designs in this new body of work. 

Quasar

Less is more here. I continue to love spirals and feel compelled to draw them. The idea was to evoke…. a realization, perhaps?  We are all connected.

For more detailed imagery, click the links to see these on my website. To see them in person, come to our show February 13; Second Saturday Art Walk February 14; or touch base with me for a time to come by the studio to see these and many more pieces in person.

Sixstar Art Studios is located at 2430 Terminal Drive S Unit B, St. Petersburg, FL 33712.

Hope to see you soon!