Teaching Artist Danny Russo spent a week in the Fort Bend County Juvenile Detention Center to teach youth how to create silk screened artwork. This was a Young Audiences of Houston workshop made possible by Fort Bend Partnerships for Youth, The Young Audience Assistance Fund, and donations made to ARTreach www.artreachonline.org. ARTreach is a 501-c 3 non-profit that brings the arts to the underprivileged, including children at risk, victims of crime, special needs children and adults, and the elderly in Fort Bend County, Katy and Houston through collaboration with art organizations like Young Audiences of Houston www.yahouston.org and social service agencies, juvenile justice departments and school districts.

Danny Russo is a professional artist and talented teacher. He designed this special three day workshop for the detention center to demonstrate basic screen printing techniques. The students learned how to cut construction paper to produce stencils and negatives, and to burn the image using lamps and light-sensitive emulsion on silk screens. He divided the boys into teams to create their own set of designs that they could reproduce onto tee-shirts.

The collaborative designs and the resulting tee-shirts amazed the students. “I have never done anything like this!” exclaimed several of the boys, “I had no idea I could do something like this myself!”
Many of the boys talked about selling their tee-shirts, and there was much discussion about the wholesale/retail industry. Several inspirational ventures came out of the experience. “Teaching our students that their ideas have value, that’s an important lesson!” said Angelo Infante, Director of the Fort Bend County Probation Department’s S.E.A.L.S Program (Self Esteem And Living Skills). 

ARTreach has designed a label called @RISK Apparel and will give a tee-shirt as a gift for each $100 donation made to help sustain the program. The organization is seeking donations in order to bring vocational workshops like this to Fort Bend County youth this summer.” 

Interested donors can visit www.ARTreachonline.org to learn more about the impact the arts have on children at risk, or mail a donation to ARTreach today, c/o ARTreach, 12012 Wickchester, Suite 300, Houston, TX 77079.  Contact Terri Bieber for more information 281-392-5341