By Delia Gibbs, Contributing Writer
Photos: JD Montgomery 

At Kids Place Lex, a nonprofit that offers free art classes to kids in foster care and other challenging situations, children sit around a table, bent over their own projects. One girl is drawing a house. 

A neighboring kid glances at it and says, “Hey, have you moved into your new house yet?” 

“No,” she says, without looking up. “We’re still at the motel.”

This may sound like a heavy conversation to an onlooker, but this is a casual chat between children living in their circumstances. “They ask about each other’s moves and placements the same way I might ask if you want the soup or the salad,” says Kids Place Lex’s founder, Constance Grayson, who goes by Connie. 

Connie is a fiber artist and painter. She spent much of her career as an attorney representing the Cabinet of Health and Family Services in cases where it was determined that biological parents couldn’t safely care for their children. She never worked directly with the children, but she learned their stories of trauma, instability and loss. 

She knows firsthand what a positive force art can be. For her, making art helps create a sense of order in her life, and helps her process the heavy stories she once collected in the courtroom and now, the classroom. Study after study, she says, shows that art is beneficial for kids who have lived through trauma. “It just seemed a natural fit,” she said. Sharing art with children dealing with heavy things became something she felt called to do.

For the past ten years, Connie has been doing this work in various forms, often alongside Hope Soch, an art teacher at Fayette County Public Schools who’s also a pianist, and a part-time caterer. The two women say they leave their meetings absolutely buzzing with excitement. With the help of other local artists and volunteers, they worked to make art accessible to kids who might not otherwise have the opportunity. Kids Place Lex is the newest and most formal version of that effort, and it’s heading into its second year.

Their target demographic is children who are in foster care, transitional housing, on free or reduced lunch, or are otherwise marginalized. However, they don’t turn kids away — for example, if a child is adopted or if a biological child in a foster family wants to take a class. Most current class offerings are geared toward ages 6–12.

As school budgets for art education continue to shrink, Connie believes the more kids making art, the better. “Art is so healing,” she says. “Anybody can do it. There’s an entry point for everyone.”

Previously housed in Connie’s personal studio, Studio 645 on East Main Street, both her studio and Kids Place Lex have recently moved to Jefferson Street, into the former home of Hockensmith Fine Art Editions. The move was made possible entirely by volunteers.

In fact, volunteers do everything at Kids Place Lex and they’re always looking for people willing to do anything from a little admin work to fixing a leaky faucet. The front rooms of the new space function as a gallery that currently features Connie’s work and will later showcase work by other Kids Place Lex teachers, all of whom are well-known artists in the Lexington area — Enrique Gonzalez, Michelle Newby Armstrong and Marty Henton, just to name a few. A portion of gallery sales helps fund the classes, with the rest supported by private donations. Early on, Kids Place Lex received crucial support from LexArts, which awarded the organization its first grant.

Classes are themed and run in multi-week sessions, ranging from Passport to Art, where the young artists “visit” a different country each week, to The Great Art Adventure, where they create using the techniques and style of lesser known artists like Jacob Lawrence and Anni Albers. In practice, though, the children don’t always stay on theme and instructors are fine with that. For some kids, a clear set of instructions provides a sense of comfort, while others feel most at ease when they’re trusted to make their own decisions. 

The art itself is important. When external circumstances feel out of control, cutting a piece of paper just so, or feeling the smooth swish of a paintbrush on thick paper can create a sense of agency, relief from stress, or welcome distraction. But just as important is the consistency: the familiar faces kids see each week at Kids Place Lex, the vibrancy and safety of the classroom and the class motto (borrowed from Fayette County Public Schools): Be respectful, be responsible, be safe. 

Connie tells me of one girl who barely uttered a word during the first few times she came to the studio. Then one day, something shifted, and she couldn’t stop talking. Another story comes from a foster-turned-adoptive mother who texted Connie after class one afternoon. She had spent months gently encouraging her child to talk about what had happened before she entered the foster care system, with little success. But after picking her up from art class that day, the floodgates opened and her daughter told pieces of her story all the way home, gasping for breath between words. 

“Probably none of these kids are going to end up making a living as an artist,” Connie says. “Well, maybe,” Hope interjects, and they agree that some of their students are quite talented, but that uncovering talent isn’t really the point. 

Hope and Connie agree that if even one child goes to bed with something to look forward to the next day — knowing they’ll get to make art — then what they’re doing is worth it. “Worst-case scenario,” they say about kids doing art, “it can’t hurt.”