When parents asked longtime art teacher Sara Hiett for recommendations on which art programs they should send their kids, she found herself unable to give them a good answer. Art classes and camps were too expensive, their waitlists too long, and their offerings too limited.
Hiett saw a need for a place where people of a range of ages and skillsets could create and enjoy art at a reasonable price.
Since the summer of 2019, Hiett has been working on Panther City Artists, the nonprofit she founded to provide the art programs she didn’t see anywhere else in Fort Worth. The goal is to facilitate an environment where people can find an art form they like and pursue it.
To Hiett, both creating and viewing art are therapeutic experiences and learning opportunities.
“It’s opening your horizons and making you look at things in a different way,” she says. “Just because you look at it doesn’t mean you have to like it, but you still have to accept it because it exists. So, I mean, that transfers to so many things in our world right now.”
Hiett, who has been teaching art for more than two decades, is still looking for a place to house her nonprofit. Until she can find one, she plans on hosting art classes in the city’s community centers.
Wherever she lands, she and the other instructors will teach art classes — each one focusing on a different medium and catered to a specific age group.
In the meantime, Hiett has been collaborating with other artists, community members, volunteers, and staff and faculty at S.S. Dillow Elementary School to beautify the campus. Hiett hasn’t been able to work on site, but she’s using her home as a distribution site where volunteers can pick up materials to create a one-person game on a concrete board. When they’re done, the boards will be installed in the hallway of the school as a mosaic.
In the future, Hiett says she will use the class fees to fund projects like the one at S.S. Dillow to give back to the community.
Hiett doesn’t have an official launch date for Panther City Artists, but she says it could launch when schools reopen or the beginning of 2021.
