The Art Room’s
2025 Community Art Project:
From These Roots
Community Art Project: from these roots
As part of our mission and in concert with our North Texas Giving Day fundraising campaign, The Art Room historically has given back to the community by donating large scale artworks to other Denton area nonprofits, collaborating with community members to design and create the artwork while highlighting what it means to be a community.
Our Community Art Project in 2025 was titled From These Roots. This year we worked with the American Legion Hall Senior Center (ALH) to beautify their space and to elevate the underrepresented voices of seniors, Veterans, and the Black community by celebrating the history of the American Legion Hall and its importance to Southeast Denton. The project title From These Roots expresses our desire to simultaneously honor our elders, the history of the ALH Senior Center, the gift of wisdom that the past brings us—now and in the future—and how meaningful social connections fuel our well-being.
Design for the painting of the original Penn-Reynolds-Jones American Legion Hall Post No.840
Installation 1 of 3: Painting of the Original ALH
A large hallway installation of a 5' x 10' painting of the original Penn-Reynolds-Jones American Legion Hall Post No.840 building. This painting honors the work of the Veteran founders who built and paid for the original building in 1957, which was torn down and remodeled in 2021.
The painting consists of 72 10" x 10" wood panels painted by individuals in the community, as well as Members of and volunteers for The Art Room.
Mock-up and on-site photos of the From These Roots mosaic bench that will be installed on the ALH patio
Installation 2 of 3: Outdoor Mosaic Bench and Planters
The second installation is an outdoor patio concrete bench with a mosaic of the Sankofa Bird and the American flag, placed between two mosaic planters. The planters have a mosaic featuring portraits of the original founders of the ALH Senior Center, with a mosaic egg in each planter that honors the gift that those Veterans who’ve come before us bring to the present and future.
Over 600 tiles were created by artists of all ages and all skill levels.
Planning for the From These Roots quilt
Installation 3 of 3: Sankofa Bird Quilt
A 56” x 80” quilt with a central appliqued image of a Sankofa Bird created by regional fiber artist Barbara McCraw, is surrounded by twenty 12” blocks sewn by members of The Denton Quilt Guild and The Art Room. The Sankofa Bird represents the wisdom of looking to our past to inform our present and future. Each 12” block represents our community coming together to support this idea. The quilt hangs in the American Legion Hall’s Carl Lee Jones game room.
Additional Quilt Blocks
As a supplemental part of this quilting project, we offered quilt making workshops to create additional quilt blocks that are framed alongside the quilt in the Carl Lee Jones game room. The workshops welcomed novice and experienced sewists to sew a nine patch block, and were held at The Art Room and the American Legion Hall Senior Center in July and August.