Little Art Bank of AoR

02/20/2025

The most common wish is for peace. Peace is an internal choice; it has naught to do with our external environment.

09/02/2023

A lot of teachers, when they first hear about our Teacher Resource Center with free teacher supplies, think that it’s too good to be true. It’s true, it is very true. It takes a lot of hard work and good people to make it happen, but it’s worth the work and what our work does to help the people in our communities.

Listen to what this Harrisburg teacher has to say about it.

09/02/2023

Fantastic new teaching supplies arrived today. New items going into the Teacher Resource Center today. All supplies are free to non-profits and teachers with a yearly membership.

08/25/2023

The school year has started, and we are spreading the word that Art of Recycle has a membership based teacher resource center located in Ephrata, PA. It’s not just for teachers, it’s for any educators, activity director, theaters, non-profit employees that are paying out of their own pocket to educate other people’s children, seniors and individuals with special needs. If you don’t know if you fit in that category then message us and ask. The school, organization, or homeschool co-op must be properly registered with the state that they reside in.

$35 per year, from the day you receive your membership, all resources in our teacher area are free. Scholarships are available for teachers without any budget or have the most needs. Any public or private school teacher or non-profit activity or program director may apply for a membership. The application form is electronic and requires a state ID and proof of employment as a teacher or activity leader. You can be a teacher in any state or country.

The registration process has many questions that help our organization to see where we need to focus, what sort of items we need to ask the public for and it helps us to record the impact organizations like ours have on the community, local and distant. The information also helps to define areas in our community that are in severe need of services and resources to help create better change.

We took a few photos to give you a glimpse of what we carry in our resource center. Our resources are not without limit, but teachers and other educators are spreading awareness of how this program is improving the quality of education and services in the state of Pennsylvania and we continue to grow. We do not mail resources yet, but teachers that are visiting the region are not turned away. The need for educational resources is everywhere.

Spread the word to your teacher friends and non-profit leaders. We are here to help and the community has donated an abundance of resources to help educators. Our job is to get it into the right hands so that it can make the greatest impact in our communities.

08/03/2023

As always, we are getting resources to people who need them!

07/25/2023

Help Curvin to collect bags for foster children. He is also collecting school supplies for children in need. His mission is wonderful and a great gift to the community!

Meet Curvin, he is twelve and is on a mission to help collect book bags, duffle bags and small suitcases for kids in foster care. He started his mission in January 2020 after seeing a social media post about kids having to leave home and carrying all their belongings in garbage bags, he wanted to do something to help. He wants to try to bring hope to these special kids. A special “love gift” will also be included with each bag.

Curvin had an initial goal to collect 100 bags. He met that goal amid the pandemic and donated them to a local foster care. He says “You don’t have to be a grownup to make a difference!” Follow Curvin here as he continues to make a difference in his community and help some really special kids!

If you would like to help, please contact Curvin and his Mom or you can shop Curvin’s Amazon wish list! Just click the “shop now” button at the top! Thank you for your support of Curvin and more importantly of some very deserving kids.

07/24/2023

Help Columbia’s Creative Community to grow. Support Pennsylvania 😊

Create Columbia presents a Third Postcard Art Invitational!
This year, as last time, we are having an open call to the general public, and artists in all 2-D media to come up with a creative image on a postcard. Drawing, painting, collage, etc. as long as it can be mailed. Again, we are asking participants to understand that their work of art will be used as a fundraiser for Create Columbia. The postcard art will be sold for $10. each at the closing reception. We are keeping the option open that a silent bid situation may happen in the event of extraordinary art postcards that we may receive. All proceeds from sales will be donated to Create Columbia.
Create Columbia is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting and expanding Columbia’s creative community.
Artists from around the world are invited to mail their original art postcards for inclusion in this exhibit. We urge everyone interested to carefully read the basic guidelines offered below.
Submission Guidelines:
1. Submissions must be original work created by the person mailing the postcard art.
2. Postcards must be sent via postal service (as a postcard) and should not be contained within an envelope.
3. Submitted postcards can not exceed 9.25 inches (235 mm) at their widest dimension.
4. This year, there is an optional theme of ’Time’ if you would like to use it for inspiration.
5. Two submissions are allowed per artist.
6. There is no entry fee.
7. There are no monetary awards. Postcard art will be offered for sale to the general public at a closing reception on Sat., Sept. 2nd from 2-4 PM. The museum will be open during regular hours 10 am - 5 pm.
8. Submissions will not be returned and will be for sale during our fundraiser at this event or in the future.
9. We will display the 100 most popular submissions on our Create Columbia page, listing the artist’s name and country of origin.
10. All submissions will be on public display at the National Watch and Clock Museum in Columbia, PA beginning Sat., Aug. 26, 2023. The National Watch and Clock Museum’s business hours are Tues. - Saturday 10-5, Friday 10-4. Closed on Sunday and Monday. A closing reception and postcard art sale will be held on Sat., Sept. 2nd beginning at 2pm. The sale and silent auction end at 4 pm. One week only!
12. Postcards should contain the name of the artist, their country of origin, and (only if they wish) their email address, website, and/or page.
13. No submission will be accepted after the due date of Thurs., Aug. 24th.
Postcard art submissions should be mailed to:
Create Columbia Postcard Art 2023
Post Office Box 328
Columbia, Pennsylvania 17512
USA
Continue to visit our page (Create Columbia) for updates about this exhibit.

07/19/2023

These are crayons for preschools and elementary schools with large groups of students that are in need of crayons. There are full boxes of 48 crayons of each color. Reds, yellows, orange, blues and greens. Our staff has put them together in sets. However, there are only 40 sets. We are giving away one set per organization/school. They are in the resource center.

07/19/2023

We understand that many people are disappointed at the closure of the Hanover location. What you need to understand is that Art of Recycle and Little Art Bank are part of a unique program that the US government has no category for. AoR and LAB received zero dollars in relief from the pandemic because there was no category on the pandemic relief list for our organization.

If you would like to see more programs like this in the future, then you should be writing your congressmen and state senators and tell them that this is and can be a successful project that should have been eligible for pandemic relief funds just like other businesses and non-profits. We were only able to sustain these programs throughout the pandemic because of loans.

We are very grateful and content that we were able to do the work we did in Hanover for the years that we did. Many small art centers closed during and after the pandemic, but Ephrata’s Art of Recycle is thriving. If we did not close the LAB in Hanover, we would have had to close both locations by 2024. Ephrata can no longer sustain Hanover as we have for the past four years.

I know that a lot of people love Sam Little, we do too, and we miss her dearly. But Sam was an artist and not a business woman. We shared the same ideals and dreams as Sam and we made a big decision to start the Little Art Bank to help her, to make her dream come true. We know that Sam did not share a lot of her personal and business life with people, and we have respected that. However, we do not appreciate verbal attacks against our organization and the work that we do. We work hard and have made a lot of sacrifices to start these programs and try to find the best people to run them.

The Little Art Bank has been registered by Art of Recycle as a DBA since it’s inception in 2019. It really is none of your business. The loss of Sam has been one of the greatest tragedies that I have endured in my life. She was my friend and a fantastic business partner. In a period of ten years, she had been the only person that we had ever met that was qualified and ethical to our standards to actually run one of our locations.

We are sorry that the Hanover location is gone, but we have other ideas and programs that we hope that we will be able to make sustainable and available to teachers and non-profits across the U.S. Thank you for supporting the LAB and Art of Recycle.

07/18/2023

The Little Art Bank is a Teacher Resource Center in Ephrata PA. It is a $35 annual membership fee to receive free resources from the resource center. You must show proof that you are a teacher of a public or private school or an activity director of a non-profit to become a member.

Little Art Bank is a program of Art of Recycle since it’s inception in 2019, when it started in Hanover. We closed the Hanover location in June, 2023.

Here are a few photos of the Little Art Bank, a membership based free resource center for teachers.

These resources are donated by members of the public, but the center is not free for Art of Recycle. We have to pay rent, utilities, insurance, staffing to pick up and transport the resources to the center, and to sort, clean, inventory and shelf the items. It is also our duty to make certain that it is actually going to teachers and not for sale on marketplace. It is a lot of hard work for everyone involved in making this program happen.

If you want to help teachers, you can donate teaching and art materials and/or donate to the center to pay for teacher memberships so that we can provide scholarships to teachers who can’t afford to pay the membership fee.

https://artofrecycle.org/donate

07/02/2023

I hope you’re out there creating art this weekend!