Artribe Presents: PRESS RELEASE - Art Exhibition 2008

LOS ANGELES TEENS RAISE MONEY FOR NON PROFIT HUMANITARIAN ORGANIZATION
AT SECOND ANNUAL ARTribe EXHIBIT

Opening reception: Friday, May 9, 2008 from 6-10 pm

ARTribe, an organization of Los Angeles high school students, has dedicated itself to raising money for worthy causes through events featuring the work of talented high school artists. ARTribe will be holding their second annual fundraising exhibition on Friday May 9th, 2008 from 6-10 pm at Arena 1 at the Santa Monica Art Studios. Last year's event raised $47,036.00 benefiting the SPIRAL Foundation's Mother and Child Project. The first event boasted approximately 1,000 guests, including celebrities such as Steven Spielberg, Kate Capshaw, Giorgio Moroder, Sofia Milos (CSI Miami), Justin Chambers (Grey’s Anatomy), producer Martha De Laurentiis, and Sally Field. This year’s exhibition promises to exceed the standards set by the first event, with innovative and dynamic art contributed by talented students from across Los Angeles’ spectrum of private and public high schools.

Last year’s show featured art contributed by students from Crossroads, Wildwood, Windward, Harvard Westlake, Santa Monica High School, Malibu High School, Archer, Marlborough, and New Roads. The art encompassed a number of media, including photography, sculpture, film, drawing and painting. Similar to last year, three artists whose work exemplifies either the theme of mother and child or a humanitarian mentality will be given a SPIRAL Foundation award by a panel of judges.

The SPIRAL Foundation is a non-profit humanitarian organization founded in 1998 by Marichia Simcik Arese, PhD which works to improve living conditions and healthcare in the most impoverished areas of central Vietnam and eastern Nepal, where diffused poverty, malnutrition, environmental degradation and pollution problems have had an adverse impact on neo-natal health. The organization also provides income-generating activities for 1,000 people in Nepal and Vietnam; it has financed over 250 heart and brain tumor surgeries for poor children born with congenital heart disease and donated over $100,000 to build the Ilam Clinic in the Himalayan mountains.

Students Alexa Gray and Andrew Gold founded the ARTribe collective after returning from trips to South East Asia in 2006 and witnessing firsthand the suffering of the communities in those countries. In Hue, Vietnam, Gold helped out at a workshop run by the SPIRAL Foundation and met a number of Vietnamese children who received heart surgeries thanks to SPIRAL’s efforts. The SPIRAL Foundation’s extraordinary achievements led to its selection as the beneficiary of the funds raised by ARTribe’s events.

"You read a lot today about disenchanted and alienated youth and how technology has produced a more selfish generation of children, and while I do get that impression from a lot of people nowadays, with this project everyone is really excited and willing to do their part," said Liz Raiss, an 18-year-old senior at Crossroads who helped organize the event.