Alithia’s Art Angels 2nd Annual Summer Kids’ Art Contest is underway! All art created by kids K-12 is eligible for fun prizes, including art supplies. Check out last summer’s entries in the YOUR ART section of alithiasartangels.com!
The contest ends Aug 31, 2023.
Send one image, along with the name of the artist and grade just completed, to:
hello@alithiasartangels.com
Or, send via smail mail to:
PO Box 2017, Dilley TX 78017
The Backstory
Alithia’s Art Angels celebrates the life and art of Uvalde victim Alithia Haven Ramirez and the art of all children.
Alithia’s mom, Jess Hernandez, founded Alithia’s Art Angels with one goal in mind: to support, nurture, and encourage young artists, just as she did for her daughter Alithia Ramirez. The summer art contest is designed to showcase children’s artistic creations and shower them with love and appreciation.
For Little Activists
This summer we originally put out a call for End Gun Violence poster designs. The response was underwhelming, so we opened up the contest to ALL art, which includes End Gun Violence posters. If your kids started making posters, or still want to, that is terrific!
Follow Along :o)
All submissions will be posted on the Alithia’s Art Angels website and social media. Follow along on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
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The “End Gun Violence” poster above was created by Alithia Ramirez’s mother, Jess Hernandez.
I feel helpless when mass shootings happen. I wish I could do something—anything—to make them stop. You feel that way too, I’m sure of it.
The only skill I’ve got is making books for children. After New Zealand’s mosque shootings, I wrote and illustrated Let’s Be Friends. Perhaps the Uvalde shooting will inspire a book as well, but books take time, and I wanted to do something now. So when 19 kids and 2 teachers were killed at Robb Elementary School, I drew them, each beautiful child and teacher, and posted the images on Instagram and Facebook.
The story of Alithia Ramirez, one of the murdered students, caught my attention. I read that her house was still decorated with birthday balloons. Alithia had just turned ten when the shooting happened.
Alithia’s father, Ryan, responded to the post on Instagram. A day or two later, I heard Ryan tell Anderson Cooper that Alithia was a talented artist, always surrounded by crayons. After illustrating all of the other victims, I circled back and drew Alithia again, as her father described her.
In my family, we are all artists. My husband is a designer and an abstract painter, and our son was practically born with a Micron marker in his hand. As for me, well… art is all I can do. Alithia’s story resonated with me.
I reached out to her parents through Ryans comments on my Instagram posts. Since then, we’ve been working together to build a website that celebrates Alithia, her life and art, and the art of all children: Alithia’s Art Angels.
Alithia’s Art Angels
Alithia’s Art Angels is a free online art gallery for children’s art—because Alithia dreamed of seeing her artwork online some day.
“I just wish people could share their drawings so somehow I can make their dreams come true since I always told Alithia that I would make her dreams come true and she was so happy that I believed that she could do anything.”
~Jess Hernandez
Alithia’s mom, Jess Hernandez, was Alithia’s biggest encourager. Jess wants to encourage other young artists to follow their dreams. Toward that end, we created the Alithia’s Art Angels fundraiser, with a goal of giving away art supplies to artists who are 18 and younger. All of this can be accessed through alithiasartangels.com.
Sign up for the Alithia’s Art Angels newsletter, so you’ll never miss an opportunity to celebrate kids and their art with us.
Share, share, share! Please share this article, share our social media posts, share alithiasartangels.com—share with family, friends, your favorite art teachers and artists.
Please accept our thanks for your support. From me, Jess, Ryan, and Alithia: thank you! :o)
illustories 