Friends of Art Manchester and the Nashua Ruby Tuesday August 2, 3 & 4

Please join us anytime next weekend (August 2, 3 & 4) as we have our very first fundraiser for Friends of Art Manchester. 

The Nashua Ruby Tuesday restaurant has a community program for non-profit organizations and accepted our organization for next weekend.

Please print out a copy of the flyer and bring it with you.  Make sure your server is aware that you are there for our fundraiser.  We will receive 20% of your purchase which will be very helpful to us to continue our projects for downtown Manchester. (The meters our artists painted are up on Elm Street now.)  Just click on the image at the left to enlarge it to read easily. Depending on your browser and operating system, you should be able to bring up a print menu easily.  With Windows 7, hold down the Ctrl key and the letter P to bring up a print menu.

The restaurant is an easy drive from Manchester and easy to find. Directions, hours and menus are online at Ruby Tuesday. Bring the whole family, they have a kids menu too!

From Manchester: Take Everett Turnpike South (toll road) to exit 7W for NH 101A/W toward Amherst/Milford.  Turn right onto NH 101A/W Amherst Street. Restaurant will be on the right. The phone number there is 882-0099 if you need more information.

Meter Project

President of Friends of Art Manchester, Colleen O’Connor and her interesting design on the meter. She said it was based on indigenous designs.

This project was initiated by Alderman Pat Long. People can drop their spare change in the meters and the money will go to New Horizons for New Hampshire. That way they don’t have to hand change to any downtown panhandlers.  This project has been used in other cities successfully.

Mark Hayward of the Union Leader wrote an article about this meter project. His article was posted online July 18, 2013. “Brother, can you spare a dime? Hand-painted meters will collect money for the homeless.” This is the link to that article: Union Leader

The whole crew, left to right: Charlie Sherman, CEO of New Horizons. For Friends of Art:  Colleen O’Connor, President, Anthony Williams, Vice President, Carolina Chauvette, member, friends Paul Davidson and Deb Curtin, Alderman Pat Long.

Please note that you don’t have to be a member of Friends of Art Manchester to participate in our projects. We also work with other groups. Of course, we would be happy to have you as a member since we are struggling to raise funds (for more projects) and the membership fee is only $5.00.

We are hoping that the meters are now up on the posts downtown.  As soon as we find out that they are, we will take some photos and post them here.

Our next project will be in August with Families in Transition. They will be donating canvases and our artists will paint them (donating their time) to hang in their new residences.

Photos taken by Linda Feinberg, Treasurer of Friends of Art Manchester.

Paintings by Carolina Chauvette

Carolina Chauvette is a member of Friends of Art Manchester and a community volunteer. She loves to spend time in her art studio. Whether she is painting on guitar cases, canvas, or walls, either way, she is passionate, creative, and willing to add art in homes or the community. She loves to inspire people to be creative and has opened up her studio in the past as a teen art summer program. 

Her dream is to operate and direct an art center available for all ages and collaborate with other programs to use as a open art space. Art is a form of therapy and tool for self expression. She looks forward to recruiting local artists for the "The O.B.E. Show". An eclectic music and art production she organizes with her partner. 

Always staying active with her art or inspiring others, is her life passion. Born and raised in the Queen City, she is determined to bring potential to the city by adding public art.

If you would like to contact Carolina, please email her at : wallartforyou@yahoo.com or visit her Facebook page:

SweetCarolina Art.

Project Updates

The spare change meters are with the artists now and they are in the process of painting them. Alderman Pat Long and artist Anthony Williams bought the paint.  They were both interviewed by Charlie Sherman, Executive Director of New Horizons, on his local cable TV show.  He will be getting us lots of publicity!  On Tuesday or Wednesday of this week the city will be mounting the posts for the meters and they will take about one week to cure.  Then the artists can finish their designs.  No photos yet, but maybe next week we’ll have some photos of the work in progress.  The scheduled date for meeting at New Horizons is July 15^th.

Eagle Eyes Community Organization has been working with Dave Huet in Bedford. He has donated paint and panels to be mounted on his fence. Some of our artists are involved with painting the panels.  Anthony Williams also met with another group that works with handicapped children, many who love art.  They may do some of the panels too.  Friends of Art Manchester has a good relationship with other groups and enjoys working with them.  We are hoping that this can be an annual project and we will get involved with it then.

Thank you to Anthony for the update.