Baylor art students team with MD Anderson to encourage kids facing cancer

What do you think of when you hear “service” — missionary work abroad? serving at a soup kitchen? volunteering at a nursing home?

While those forms of service are vital to bettering our world, there are countless ways we can use our talents to bring a little light to our own corners of the world — like what an entire class of Baylor art students did this semester.

Baylor art professor Greg Lewallen, BFA ’98, gave his 2D design class a special assignment: create artwork with patients in MD Anderson Children’s Cancer Hospital in Houston. Baylor alumna Ashley Smith, BA ’15, program coordinator in the hospital’s Arts in Medicine Program, reached out to her former professor to ask if he could help with the hospital’s Postal Art Exchange project. Smith asked children in the hospital to design half of a large postcard; Lewallen had his class to do the same. They then mailed each other the postcards and filled in the second half. The results are simultaneously beautiful and adorable:

“Ashley uses the project to give her patients a sense of normalcy and to distract from the unpleasantness of chemotherapies,” says Lewallen. “My students get the satisfaction of knowing that they have helped and encouraged a child who is potentially facing the unthinkable.

“All my students — and I did give them the option to bow out — willingly and happily took the time out of their very busy schedules to participate. The pieces that stood out to me were those where my students included personal messages, whether visually within the image, or on the back of the card in written message form, of encouragement to that specific child.”

Sic ’em, Baylor — and MD Anderson — artists!

You might also like:

* Baylor student group raises thousands for local children’s hospital (Dec. 2017)

* Baylor Symphony Orchestra shows there’s more than one way to serve (Oct. 2017)

* 6 reasons Baylor Law students are recognized for service (July 2017)