Day 277: Bought A Commissioned Piece Of Artwork

I have tried to get a memento from each random act of kindness so that one day I can give them to Isla.  I have tshirts, newspaper articles, DVDs, and letters but I wanted to get her something special that would encapsulate all of the random acts.  I wanted her to have something tangible that always reminded her that she was the inspiration behind each and every random act of kindness.

In April, for one of my random acts of kindness, I visited the After School Matters program here in Chicago, and was blown away by the talent of the children in the program.  There was culinary art, fashion art, photography art, and something called skateboard art.  I was really drawn to the skateboard art, not because I am a skateboarder (truth be told I have never been able to stand up on one), but because I thought it was such a cool canvas for the students to create art on.  When I saw that it was possible to commission the After School Matters students to create a piece of artwork for you, I knew I wanted to get something for Isla while supporting the program.  A little while after the event, I reached out to my friend Emily who works for ASM, and she introduced me to one of the students, Steph Rivera.  I was told that Steph was one of the most talented artist that had come through the program, and that she would help turn my "vision" into a piece of art.  Vision is in quotation marks because it consisted of me telling her the following, "uhhh, i want it to be for Isla and uhhhh include random acts and uhhhh I have a chalkboard background on the Twitter so...uhhhhh yeah all that."  Well Steph somehow deciphered what I was trying to say and created something that I instantly fell in love with.  So today, for my random act of kindness I bought a commissioned piece of artwork for Isla.  If you are interested in getting artwork but don't want to pay insane amounts of money, I suggest reaching out to programs such as After School Matters.  Not only are you helping yourself, but you are helping a program that makes a difference in so many lives.  As for the skateboard Steph created, here it is...