Seattle Sun Newspaper - Vol. 8, Issue 5, May 2004

Copyright 2004 Seattle Sun. Please feel free to use the article below in your research. Be sure to cite the Seattle Sun as your source.

U Village ArtWalk to benefit FosStars

By JAMES BUSH

You can currently see work by artist Larry Halvorsen on display at Ballard's 63Eleven Gallery, but his next showing will be at University Village shopping center.

Halvorsen is one of 50 artists who have donated works which will be displayed by some 25 University Village merchants this month for the FosStars ArtWalk. The artworks are priced from $50 to $3,000 and are available for purchase on a first-come, first-served basis, with all proceeds benefiting FosStars Institute, a Lake City nonprofit agency supporting adoptive, foster, and biological parents. All pieces will be hung by May 5, although some will be available for viewing as early as May 1.

Clay artist Halvorsen is familiar with FosStars. He and wife, Liza, have helped out by firing the hand-painted teacups the group sells as a fundraising tool (most of the cups are mounted on steel poles for use as candle-lit garden luminaries). "I'm glad to be able to do something for an organization like this," says Halvorsen. "It's a lot easier for me to [donate art] than write out a check."

FosStars, now in its fourth year, receives just 5 percent of its annual budget from grants, instead relying on donations (everything in the group's office is donated "down to the paper clips," says Director Shawn Hosford) and fundraising events. The teacup-on-a-stick idea is a typical example of Hosford's fundraising wiles. A donor gave her hundreds of teacups (the group's major annual fund-raiser is a September tea), but Hosford already had a too-large collection of dainty "Grandma teacups" which are used for the event. Besides, the donated cups were chunky, undecorated tea mugs.

Hosford hit on the idea of having children paint the cups (many schools and community centers have obligingly provided the time for young artists to do so) and now sales of the hand-painted mugs (with or without the steel pole) make up 7 percent of the FosStars budget. "I'm always trying to figure out ways the organization can sustain itself without begging," says Hosford.

FosStars is built around three functions:

First, the group offers parenting classes.

Second, FosStars does consultations with parents and children alike, helping them resolve family issues, often through referrals to other agencies.

Third, the group maintains a lending library of parenting books and materials.

While the group's original focus was on parenting foster and adoptive children, "It's gone from foster and adoptive to biological very quickly," says Hosford. While most classes offered by group touch on foster care and adoption issues, others (such as Dr. Charles Huffine's "Why Do We Have Adolescents?" or Tammy Small's "Negotiating the Support Systems in Public Schools") appeal to a broader audience of biological parents.

Hosford's own experience as a foster parent led her to form the group. Her foster son, Sam (not his real name), came to live with the family at age seven after having lived in 13 other homes during his life. "It turned out we were not the right match for him," she says, and Sam departed two years later.

"When he left, we just felt like we had to do something," she says. Hosford left her previous job selling aircraft parts and formed FosStars. The group was originally located in an office in the Northgate neighborhood, but moved when they found a Lake City space with an adjoining classroom.

The blue-painted office walls are decorated with dozens of gold stars: large ones containing the names of several businesses who have helped out and smaller ones listing first names of donors and volunteers. The individual stars are of equal size because "every single person that touches the organization has equal importance," says Hosford. "You do what you can and you give from your heart; you don't have to be the richest person in the world." Speaking of the richest person in the world, the Gates Foundation donated the office computers.

Halvorsen's future wife, Liza, was already a clay artist when the two met as students at the University of Washington (where Halvorsen was in the School of Fisheries). Impressed by the positive, creative energy generated by his wife's ceramics classes, "I traded tuneups on a Volkswagen for ceramics lessons," he says. Halvorsen's work encompasses many different objects, but almost always uses a traditional, black-and-white color scheme.

Both Halvorsen and his wife are part-time art instructors at Seattle Pacific University and also hold a summer "clay camp" at their home studio in Ballard for kids ages eight and up.

Passers-by can identify their house due to the many Halvorsen pieces arranged in the yard and garden. "It's a great receptacle of rejects," he jokes.

* * *

The FosStars ArtWalk will be held May 5-31 at participating University Village merchants. For more information, call 367-7827 or go to www.fosstars.org.