By Keysha Drexel
Journal Editor
Jennifer Harwell has spent the last six summers teaching art to children at Camp Smile-A-Mile, but the Homewood artist said the young cancer patients at the camp have become her teachers in the last year.
Last spring, Jennifer was diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer and started chemotherapy treatments on Mother’s Day.
“This will be my seventh year teaching art at Camp Smile-A-Mile, but last year was different. For the first time, I felt like maybe I could really understand what the children were going through,” she said. “They inspired me even more.”
Jennifer starting working with the children at Camp SAM after meeting Stephanie Wilkins, who working with the camp at the time.
“We had an instant friendship. She invited me down to the camp to observe the art classes and the following summer, I was a guest art teacher for a day. It stuck, and I’ve done that every summer,” Jennifer said.
Jennifer said teaching art at Camp SAM has been one of the most rewarding experiences of her life.
“My heart and soul is with these children struggling with cancer,” she said.
Jennifer said she has seen the power of art firsthand during the art classes at Camp SAM.
“I know that personally, I have always responded to color, to the movement of color on the canvas. It always makes my heart beat faster,” she said. “And to be able to watch the kids discover this, to see them just being ordinary, creative, curious children for a little while makes me feel lucky.”
After her cancer diagnosis, Jennifer said she has a new appreciation for the spirit of her art students at Camp SAM.
“Before, I always kind of felt like an onlooker. This time, we were all singing off the same page,” she said.
Her time at Camp SAM last summer is something Jennifer said kept her going through the early stages of her fight with colon cancer.
“Camp SAM means so much to these children’s lives, and the children gave so much back to me during my struggle with cancer. I can’t express how important it is,” she said.
Each summer, Jennifer and the young artists work on a collaborative piece that is put up for auction at the Red Nose Ball. This year’s ball will be Feb. 23 at the Cahaba Grand Conference Center from 6 p.m.-midnight.
Proceeds from the Mardi Gras-themed event help support programs for children who are battling cancer or who have overcome the disease.
“We take a door or some other large surface, and I coach the kids as part of their art lessons. The kids add their parts–the first one we did was made up of all of their handprints–and then I bring it back to the studio and ponder what we can turn it into,” she said. “These paintings have a lot of soul.”
The children’s work this year features the bold colors of the Mardi Gras season, Jennifer said, in keeping with the theme of the event.
Along with the collaborative piece, Jennifer has also painted another large piece that will be part of the Red Nose Ball’s auction. The piece is called “Ball Gown” and features the silhouette of an angel.
“I’m kind of known for my angels,” Jennifer said. “I paint angels of every kind.”
But before she was painting angels, Jennifer was an angel of sorts. She worked as a registered nurse until she was about 50 years old.
“I was approaching 50 and was thinking about my bucket list. I had always wanted to be a ballerina, but I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I had always known I wanted to paint, but fear held me back,” she said.
That fear, Jennifer said, stemmed from growing up in an artistic family in Portland, Ore., in the shadow of an older brother who was an accomplished artist early on.
“My brother was deemed the artist and went to art camp. I’m not sure what I was deemed,” she said. “I always had the desire to paint, but I was intimidated. I took piano lessons and didn’t touch the art classes because my brother was getting so much attention for his art.”
Jennifer’s brother went on to become a professional artist in Oregon. Jennifer went to nursing school, got married and went about raising a family.
“But as I’m looking at my life at 50, I finally broke down and went to a simple painting class in someone’s home here in Homewood,” she said.
And something that had been secreted away in Jennifer her entire life was revealed during that first art class, Jennifer said.
“The minute the paint brush touched the canvas, it really broke me free,” she said. “Then, I was unstoppable. I filled every inch of my house with paintings.”
Jennifer said her first painting on canvas is dated 2005.
From there, Jennifer turned her attention to painting full time, painted more than 100 pieces for her first show and opened her first gallery in Homewood.
Jennifer now has a gallery in Regions Harbert Plaza in downtown Birmingham and also teaches art classes.
