I started Art for Art with a stack of pet portraits I painted on my kitchen table.

Each one took me a weekend, and every $150 commission covered three full art kits, so I just kept painting. Somewhere in there, painting portraits for cash stopped being a side project and turned into something bigger than me.

Art for Art gets real art supplies and creative programming into the hands of kids who wouldn't otherwise have any. Kids managing serious medical conditions. Kids resettling in a new country with almost nothing familiar around them.

We partner with Camp Not-a-Wheeze, a camp for kids with severe asthma and food allergies, and we supply and teach the entire art curriculum every summer. We partner with the Welcome to America Project to design and hand-deliver art kits to refugee children resettling here in Phoenix.

Since we started, we've raised more than $12,500 and put over 100 complete art kits into kids' hands. None of that happened because I did it alone. A 17-person student board runs this with me now, and every fundraiser, every kit, every delivery day happens because they showed up for it too.

If you want to help, commission a portrait. I still paint every one myself, and it still funds a kit for a kid who needs it.