Love My Neighbor®: Love My Neighbor Curriculum Event on December 29, 2017

Saturday, January 13, 2018

Love My Neighbor Curriculum Event on December 29, 2017

Thank you to my great friends at Savoir Fair for their generous support of our non-profit Artward! Gallery in Carson's most difficult "Scottsdale" neighborhood with their gorgeous art supplies!

We had the most awesome event for the Love My Neighbor Curriculum program with the kids of Carson's Mission Ebenezer church of Pastor Isaac Canales as well as a group of "Scottsdale's" own kids.

Pastor Isaac and his son, Pastor Josh do an amazing work and a uniquely effective outreach in Carson community, including "Scottsdale," and are friends of 10 years. Was very special to share what we do and to collaborate with this true local pillars.

We had a tour of a gallery, learning to recognize and acknowledge the great neighbors around us and then the kids painted their own beloved neighbors in the adjacent Artward! Kids Studio that we set up.

They got so into it and did beautiful and meaningful works becoming Love My Neighbor Ambassadors to their own neighborhoods.

It was remarkable to see the kids asking for and being excited to take pictures with Cirilo, my great model for "El Rey Trabajador" and "Scottsdale" gardener of 30 years.

The celebrated heroes are the ones we choose to celebrate!

Its truly amazing to see the real impact art can have on a given community.

In all my long life in ART I've never been happier or feeling more accomplished than seeing that what I do is helping the effort of real people to turn their community around.

Happy New 2018, everyone! Lets make it a year of ART that truly matter!!

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"MY NEIGHBORS: Capturing the Soul of America's Diverse City" a series by Alexey Steele

There is a lot of adversity to overcome in today’s world. For me the answer to many difficult questions that we presented with daily is in the simple principle "Love My Neighbor".

Loving one’s neighbor is the foundational building block in the moral fiber of our society. I make my case with ongoing "My Neighbors Series" a collection of portrayals of the people around me in our City of Carson.

Carson is a great city, statistically one of the most diverse in the nation, a community most closely reflecting our World. Carson is great because of its people and the diversity is its most important asset.

I was honored to be awarded The City of Carson Cultural Arts Commission grant for 2015/16 and then again for 2016/17 to continue working on "My Neighbors Series" in collaboration with the City of Carson.

I was also honored to be awarded 2016 and, recently, 2017 additional grants by Wells Fargo Bank.

I am grateful for a long-term support and sponsorship for my cultural outreach programs by Rand Resources, LLC

It is a great privilege to collaborate and coordinate my Carson projects with 501c3 non-profit Artward Initiative.

Art can lift aspirations and give us all an important common ground in today’s divisive times. I believe that as we are continuously exposed to the stream of escalating negative news we need to focus on people in communities that inspire us in positive ways. I take inspiration for this series from my community that overcomes adversity.

Every street and every neighborhood has its own widely loved neighbors. What I want to capture through My Neighbors is the unique, iconic and deeply human qualities that make ordinary people the true bedrock of our communities and who give us something meaningful, true and solid to hold onto in times of trouble, which is especially important in neighborhoods like Scottsdale.

At the kind of times that we live in I want ART to help people fill what I call The Dignity Gap.

I believe that strengthening community bonds by getting to know and love one’s neighbors is an answer to many of the difficult issues facing society today. I hope that My Neighbors will encourage visitors to see their own neighbors from a new perspective and take the message of love for one’s neighbor back to their own streets.

I want to capture people in these painting who you cannot help but love. Through the Love My Neighbor public art project, I want to encourage other people to notice and embrace human beacons in their own neighborhoods.

These are the overlooked heroes of our society.

I also believe in the public nature of ART. In this I am following in the footsteps of my late father, an important Ukrainian artist Leonid Steele and this project is my homage to him.

Just as my father went into remote villages of Ukraine to capture the expression of real people and share it with them, I am following this family tradition to capture in paint the strength, the dignity and the grace at the rock bottom of our society, which is so often the bedrock of our community.

Alexey