Artist Robert Shetterly’s visit to the Oregon Episcopal School in Portland earlier this month was a resounding success. The school hung an exhibit of twenty portraits in their chapel during the month of May 2025 and invited Shetterly to visit for a day. The theme of the exhibit was ecojustice. Shetterly visited classes in all […]
About 200 middle-school and high-school students gathered at Orono (ME) High School May 20, 2025 to celebrate their participation in this year’s Samantha Smith Challenge. Approximately 500 students took part in this year’s program, although not all were able to make the trip to Orono. Schools represented include: Monarch Learning Academy (FL) Hazelwood Elementary School […]
Over twenty years ago, when AWTT artist Robert Shetterly began this portrait project to help himself cope with the United States’ bombing of Iraq, he didn’t anticipate the number of portraits that would follow, nor where they would take him. In the beginning, a few local schools and churches—curious about his project—invited him to talk […]
The Land Peace Foundation, founded by Sherri Mitchell Weh’na Ha’mu Kwasset, is organizing a week-long walk, beginning on the banks of the Penobscot River and ending at the Maine capitol building. (The following information about the walk comes from the Land Peace Foundation website.) “The journey begins on April 22nd at the Penobscot Nation Boat Landing […]
In November 2024 – just days after the national election – AWTT artist Robert Shetterly was interviewed by journalist Steve Adubato in Atlantic City at the New Jersey Education Association Convention. In this riveting discussion, Shetterly shares his perspectives on the present moment through the lens of some of his most inspiring portrait subjects, including […]
The MY HERO Project has opened its invitation to enter the 2025 Robert Shetterly Portrait Contest. Submissions are due by May 1, 2025. Students of all ages are invited to submit portraits representing “someone you admire who has done something significant – for you, for your community, or for our planet.” Each work of art […]
As we remember Joan Gussow, who died last Friday, March 7, we dusted off the statement that Robert Shetterly wrote when he unveiled his portrait of Gussow ten years ago, in January 2015. “Joan Dye Gussow will be eighty-seven this year. I visited her last August at her lovely home on the Hudson River north of […]
The Association for Middle Level Education (AMLE) has announced Caitlin Hutt and the Samantha Smith Challenge project as the 2024 recipient of the Conrad Toepfer Award for the Civic Engagement of Middle School Students. “Since 2018, Caitlin has used the Samantha Smith Challenge to provide her students with a collaborative educational experience that builds bridges […]
Cecile Richards, who died today, was indeed a “model of courageous citizenship.” Richards began her political career at an early age, wearing a black armband to school, in protest of the Vietnam War. In seventh grade, she and some friends started a recycling program in their neighborhood. Richards also took a lead from her politically […]
About fifty area residents gathered at the Reversing Falls Sanctuary in North Brooksville, Maine, on Sunday afternoon, January 19, 2025, to celebrate the life and work of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It’s an annual event and often features some of AWTT artist Robert Shetterly’s paintings. Shetterly lives just down the road and knows most […]