CityView Magazine

City Angel Every summer, a group of volunteers brings art to Ashton Woods By Allison Williams Good works cinderblock houses. Most folks come here as a last resort. Sometimes, they’ve been living on the street or in cars, or simply stretching their welcome with family and friends. Many of them – 80 percent – are children. “I haven’t met a child yet that has T Top | At the end of the summer art camp, children display their work at Cape Fear Studios downtown. Above | The camp is made possible thanks to a grant from the Cumberland Community Foundation. This year’s camp is set for July 13-17. 64|April/May • 2009 contributed to their homelessness,” said Director Denise Giles. Some of them have seen more than most adults, forced to rely on themselves or siblings for basic security. And yet, creativity thrives here. Every summer, like clockwork, the artists arrive, artists who spend their days creating shapes out of clay, glass and metal. They unroll toolkits with brushes and paints, spongy pastels and powdery chalks. For five days, all day, the members and friends of Cape Fear here’s hope this in hardscrabble neighborhood. In Bonnie Doone, just off Bragg Boulevard, Ashton Woods is a haven of small Studios lead a summer art camp for the children of Ashton Woods. And at the end of the week, the kids and their parents travel downtown in limos, sipping sparkling grape juice in plastic champagne flutes for a red-carpet showing. Every other year, the show includes an auction where the children’s artwork is sold, with proceeds going to Cumberland Interfaith Hospitality Network, the parent to Ashton Woods. The program is made possible thanks to a grant from the Cumberland Community Foundation. Cumberland County Schools provides lunch. But it’s the volunteers from Cape Fear Studios who lead, teach and mold children, kindergartners to teenagers. “This is a unique program,” Giles said, “it’s not something that happens all over the state. It’s an unusual collision of people. There’s no value you can put on the esteem being raised in a child through this process. They literally walk taller. I can’t explain it, you’d almost have to see it.”

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