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Day
of Service: Action Painting
July/August 2009
by Carole Bass '83, '97MSL
©Mickey Dobbs '92
"Adults
don’t have enough chances to get messy," declares Darcy Pollack '87. So in
organizing a Day of Service event for Yale alumni on May 16, she picked a
project with plenty of slopportunities: repainting a vandalized mural at a Los
Angeles elementary school. Then, committing an act of compound art, she
submitted a photo of the event (right) by Mickey Dobbs '92, which was chosen as
the winner in the Yale Alumni Magazine’s Day of Service photo contest.
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One of the more far-flung service days was in Istanbul.
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The
60-some Angelenos who turned out to channel Pollock with Pollack were among
roughly 3,500 Yale alumni, family, and friends who joined the Association of
Yale Alumni’s first international Yale Day of Service. They painted, cleared
trails, sorted food, refereed basketball, and made recordings for blind and
dyslexic people—among many other projects—at 174 sites in 40 states and 12
countries, according to the AYA’s Alisa Masterson.
One
of the more far-flung service days was in Istanbul, where organizers put
together a slew of activities, ranging from a demonstration on natural disaster
management to a museum visit with orphans to "rowing blissfully" with visually
impaired children in a dragonboat race, reports Mehmet Kahya '73. In an e-mail,
he characterizes the events as "a day to remember: joy, fun, affection,
empathy, sharing, understanding, helping, caring, taking and giving back …
unblemished happiness.”
Pollack
matches his enthusiasm, if not his gerunds. "We just splattered more and more
paint," she recounts. "We got the color on so thick, and then we added black
and white to make it pop. People enjoyed the physicality of it. It’s really fun
to get messy.”  |
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