About Our Grant
SME won a Mississippi Arts Commission grant to host an twelve-week art workshop for our Explorers Club children (ages three to eighteen). The workshop will study Mississippi Artists and the children will create their own artwork in the styles of the artists studied. Explorers will study artists related thematically in the following categories:
- Art as a Healing Tool
- Art as Zest of the Quotidian
- Art as Reflection on the Created Order
- Art as Encountering God
- Art as Catalyst for Change
- Art as Community Builder
The Workshop began in August 2025 and will conclude in March 2026.
Art as a Healing Tool
August 21st, August 28th, and September 11th, 2026
Main Idea: Children will learn how art can be used to comfort and heal ourselves and others, helping us to understand and to process both joy and pain. After a trauma, we can use what is broken to create something new.
Featured Mississippi Artist: Children studied the art of Meredith Gonzales-Fernandez and Ravin Hill Lovett who use their art to heal others. They studied card-making artists Jill McDonnell and Yolande Van Heerden (tomboy ART). Additionally, they studied arts-based community response to trauma by examining the chainsaw art of Dayton Scoggins and by visiting the Waveland Ground Zero Museum.
Featured Project: Children created hand-drawn and painted spiritual bouquet cards with well wishes and prayers inscribed on the reverse. These cards were delivered to the sailors and truckers of the XX Ministry.
Art as Zest of the Quotidian
September 18th and 25th, 2025
Main Idea: Children explored how art improves the quality of everyday objects and shapes our interactions with the material environment.
Featured Mississippi Artist: Children examined the work of McCarty’s Pottery and Shearwater Pottery, noting the differences in texture and form between handmade and mass-made functional pottery. We studied the decorated vessels of Yvonne Brown and the beautiful functional pieces made by Fingerprint Pottery. We also studied the illustration work of Kay Meadows, Chuck Galey, Tami Curtis, and Jamie Burwell Mixon, focusing on how illustration enhances written communication and causes a message or story to resonate with a reader.
Featured Project: Children studied gesture drawing and apply these skills to illustrating their own stories. They produced one draft without illustration and a second with illustrations that enhance the information made available in the texts. Students compared and contrast the two drafts in order to build understanding of how art enhances the everyday experience of reading for information.
Art as Reflection on the Created Order
November 6th and 13th, 2025
Main Idea: Children explored how art helps us to understand and to appreciate the revelation of God through the beauty and wonder of the created order.
Featured Mississippi Artist: Children studied the abstracted floral ecosystems of Rachel Miser, the groundbreaking works of Walter Anderson, the place-based landscapes of Robin Whitfield, and the ceramic birds of Wolfe Studio. We also studied the unique landscape works of Theora Hamblett, the expressionist and abstracted works of Buttons Marchetti, and the incredible natural-pigment paintings of Bill Hony.
Featured Project: Children used different painting techniques to capture the beauty of the created order.
Art as Encountering God
Estimated: January 22nd & 29th, 2026
Main Idea: Children will explore how the arts can express our love for God, and will learn that we don’t have to have a specific set of tools or skills to express that love. We can come as we are, with what we have.
Featured Mississippi Artist: Children will explore the work of Catholic artists from Mississippi (Mary Ott Davidson, Mary Fauceaux, and Holle Wade) as well as Mississippi folk artists who work in assemblage and “make shifting” (M.B. Mayfield, Mary Tillman Smith, McArthur Chism, and Elayne Goodman) to draw a connection between working for the glory of God and using what He’s given you at that moment to do it.
Featured Project: Children will use found/everyday objects to create a piece that relates to the significance of their faith.
Art as Catalyst for Change
Estimated: February 26th & March 5th, 2026
Main Idea: Children will learn that the arts are a vehicle for change, both in our personal lives and in our communities.
Featured Mississippi Artist: Children will explore the work of Mississippi artists who didn’t begin painting until they were older (Theora Hamblett and Alice Moseley) as well as an artist whose artmaking changed when her life did (Kate Freeman Clark) and will also look at examples of communities that have experienced revitalization through the arts (Fishbone Alley in Gulfport, areas of the Mississippi Delta, downtown Hattiesburg). We will use this study to then frame an examination of the work of Mississippi transplant and linocut printmaker Frank Estrada.
Featured Project: Children will use printmaking to design and create a print that could publicly display as an invitation to change.
Art as Community Builder
Estimated: March 12th and 26th, 2026
Main Idea: Children will explore how art brings groups of people together to form a community and reinforces ties in an existing community.
Featured Mississippi Artist: Children will study public murals around the state, including those in Stone County and those painted by Walter Anderson; the Belzoni “catfish parade”; the work of community fiber artist Knotty Hearts, and The Tutwiler Quilters.
Featured Project: Each age group of children will produce a collaborative quilt using the materials and techniques suited to their abilities.
This Workshop was made possible...
in part by funding from the Mississippi Arts Commission (MAC), a state agency, and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a federal agency.
SME would like to thank to our US Senators Cindy Hyde-Smith & Roger Wicker and US House Representative Mike Ezell for their support of the NEA without which this Workshop would not be possible.
We would also like to thank our MS legislators for their support of MAC: Senators DeLano, England, Wiggins, Seymour, Carter, Thompson, & Ladner; and Representatives Read, Zuber, Guice, Grady, Felsher, Haney, Halum, Bennett, Crawford, Eure, & Estrade. Support for the arts makes all the difference for a brighter MS future!
Thank you to all the MAC Commissioners, especially our local Gulf Coast Commissioners: Mr. Frank Bordeaux, Mr. Scott Naugle, and Mrs. Marie Sanderson!
A big thank you also goes to St. Michael Catholic Church for supporting the children of Stella Maris Explorers every week by donating the use of the Family Life Center: Msgr. Dominick Fullam, Mrs. Susan Pizzetta, and Mrs. Jessica Gollott. Your support is invaluable to our mission. Additional thanks go to the Diocese of Biloxi and Bishop Kihneman for allowing catholic homeschooling to flourish in Biloxi.
And lastly, thank you to the 100% volunteer SME team. Notably the granting writing team: Mrs. Mallory Carey, Ms. Mary Easterling, Mrs. Ashley Rodriguez, and Mrs. Lorelei Worland; and the lead art instructor: Mrs. Nicole Webb. Without their hard work this grant would never materialized.
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