Brian McCarty, Toy Photographer and Executive Director of the War Toy nonprofit organization, will present a special, free preview of new art-therapy-based collaborations with children in Ukraine at the West Hollywood Library on January 10th, 2023 from 7-8:30pm. A brief Q&A will follow.
Brian recently spent five-weeks in Ukraine collaborating with children to narratively recreate their firsthand accounts of the war, using locally found toys that are placed and posed at the actual locations. He worked with the Ukrainian Art Therapy Association and Integrative Art Therapy Institute to ensure the safety of the participating children and to promote resilience through the program.
The resulting artwork – narrative photographs of toys and the children’s drawings on which they’re based – will be featured in an exhibition opening at the Musée de la Photographie in Charleroi, Belgium on January 28th, 2023 and then in a US touring exhibition being developed by the Mid-America Art Alliance for launch in Fall 2023.
War Toys is a California-based 501(c)(3) organization founded by Brian McCarty in 2019 after nearly a decade of fieldwork with war-affected children from Iraq, Syria, Israel, the West Bank, Gaza Strip, and Lebanon. With a board that includes veterans of Mattel, Sesame Workshop, Disney, Warner Bros. Games, and Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, they are continuing the advocacy work of the photo series while developing educational and toy industry programs that will have a global reach.
This project is supported in part by an arts grant from the City of West Hollywood.
This is a waste of resources and time for elected officials. They continue window dressing and taking advantage of the war torn ukranians that need to sign a truce to start repairing their country.
Wouldn’t it be better for the West Hollywood Library to virtue signal about local issues instead?
It’s safer in the Ukraine today for children …..than being anywhere near West Hollywood. How sad. Too many creeps.
This is a very nice, poignant program but why does it appear to have rainbow suggestions in these drawings when it is not found in any work of other locations?