It's Here!

From the fall of 2007 until 2021, when Covid-19 restrictions kicked in, I volunteered at Brookside Youth Centre. Every week, I spent time with young men there making art, enjoying each others' company and eating cookies and cake. All that time, I kept a journal. In recent years, I posted stories from "Behind the Fence" for my FaceBook friends to read. Some of those friends encouraged me to "write a book". Well, this is it. It arrived today and is in magazine format. Below are some glimpses.

Because I don't have permission to share the many amazing individual paintings and sketches from my artists at Brookside, and I am not allowed by law to divulge their personal information, the images in the "book" are either my own sketches or they are projects which appeared in public over the years. e.g. below is my rough sketch of what our art space looked like in the Centre for Hope and Sharing.

I am happy with how the images appear in the magazine.

I've included examples of some of the methods I used to teach our artists to draw as well.

Sadly, Brookside was closed by the Ontario Government earlier this year.

I am in the process of making these available either through the printer Blurb, and/or through Amazon.

Here ends your preview.

I'll end with the quote that inspired me to volunteer at Brookside in the first place, from Frederick Buechner

"The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world's deep hunger meet."

It indeed was a deeply glad time.