The Wickenburg Art Club (WAC) is hosting the families who lost their homes in the Yarnell Hill Fire in a “Make Your House into a Home” artwork give-away on Saturday, April 5, from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Each of the more than 120 families who lost their homes completely or had their homes substantially damaged in the fire will be able to choose at least one free piece of artwork to help them make their new and repaired houses into a real homes.
WAC has almost 200 members, many of whom had friends and relatives affected by the Yarnell Hill Fire, and individually and collectively they had searched for ways to help, neighbor to neighbor.
The idea of the “Make Your House into a Home” give-away started last October, when Event chair JoAnn Simpson spoke to a man who told her he was glad he hadn’t bought the painting he had admired by a Wickenburg Art Club artist because he had lost his home and the painting would have been destroyed.
Simpson contacted the artist, Janice Johnson, who immediately gave two similar paintings free of charge to Kevin O’Donnell, the man who lost his home.
Over the past few months, the idea has snowballed. The project seems most fitting as WAC is now celebrating its Jubilee Year, marking 50 years as an Art Club.
Simpson has been working with the Yarnell Hill Recovery Group in planning this event, while WAC artists have been accumulating paintings, drawings and other artworks so that each family will be able to choose a piece that speaks to them, that they will be proud to hang on their new walls, that will let them feel “at home” once again.
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