Dear ArtSeed Friend,

Our eleventh season was our most ambitious and stellar so far, but with new projects underway for 2013, we are shooting for even higher stars! Contributions from members of our large body of individual donors make everything we do possible, including winning foundation support. Please join us as we launch out into the new year. All gifts, large and small, underwrite our efforts to serve more children!

The response to ArtSeed’s classes, apprenticeships, and exhibitions, has been hugely gratifying. A selection of works from last year’s creative undertakings can be seen at the Fort Mason Center through December. Our programs aim to include every student at Leola M. Havard Early Education School in Bayview just as our classes at Sherman Elementary in Cow Hollow already do. Our Board of Directors, Youth Council and group of dedicated volunteers are expanding. We made lots of new friends at both Open Studios and the Presidio Teachers Night, and — Very Loud Fanfare! — ArtSeed’s new website is up and running! With completely new text and lively photo documentation, it will help us to reach an even more diverse constituency. Don’t miss the peppy promotional video that can be viewed from the home page. Please check the new site out and let us know what you think.

Each year an over-arching theme helps unify all of ArtSeed’s various activities; our current theme is “Sums, Sustenance, and the Five Senses.” Through it, we aim to expose our youngsters to the pleasures of math, leading to an understanding of how these pleasures relate to their everyday physical experiences, and to discover how all of these things can contribute to imaginative thinking and creative art-making. This sounds like a big order, but we know for sure that young people are capable of things much greater and more complex than is generally imagined. We’ve learned, too, that the quality of what has been offered to our participants has paid off in significant ways for them. Healthy diets of both food and ideas count big-time; hence the idea of sustenance.

Because ArtSeed is a small organization, contributors have an intimate sense of how their help benefits the hundreds of students we serve. Your support counts in very big ways. In addition to individual donations, we recently have been awarded grants by the Walter and Elise Haas Fund, Art 4 Moore Fund of Tides Foundation, and the Calvary Foundation, as well as ongoing recognition from the California Arts Council. We take pride in this sort of large-scale generosity, but we could not have received it if we didn’t have the backing of the hundreds of people who give with heartfelt generosity. ArtSeed is grateful for your ongoing support and we thank you sincerely in advance.