Love
Luggage Project
The
Longview Museum of Fine Arts, in
cooperation with area Junior and
Senior High School Art Department
students, present for the third year a
collection of Love Luggage to Buckner
Children and Family Services of East
Texas. These hard shell suitcases
are custom painted and made especially
for East Texas children who enter the
foster care system and have nothing to
keep their belongings in.
 Begun
in 2003, a group of Pine Tree Junior High
and Senior High School students made a
difference by helping with Love Luggage,
a program designed to make foster
children's travels a little easier.
The students decorate hard-shell
suitcases and give them out to foster
children to carry wherever they go. They
got the idea from a story in
"Chicken Soup for the Preteen
Soul" which told about foster
children having to carry their belongings
in trash bags, feeling bad and standing
out. Vickie Echols, a Longview Museum of
Fine Arts Board member, began the project
in conjunction with Buckner Children
& Family Services to raise public
awareness of children currently under
foster care in the state of Texas by
bringing more opportunities of art
expression and appreciation to the
children of East Texas.
 For
the past three years suitcases have been
painted and delivered to the museum and
put on display during the spring High
School Student Invitational.
Afterward, suitcases are delivered to the
employees of Buckner for dispersal.
This year’s sponsors were Jayne Bigony Insurance, Dr. and Mrs. Robert B.
Echols of Kilgore, Bill and Sandi Taylor,
Craig K. King, MD, all repeat sponsors
who have been promoters of this project
last year and the year before.
Their donations went to cover the paint
and supplies for the suitcases, then the
proceeds went toward the development of
ArtWorks: Creative Learning Center,
LMFA’s future Creative Learning
Center.
 “This
project has been a joy for everyone
involved the last three years,”
stated Renee Hawkins, executive director
of Longview Museum of Fine Arts.
“Our plans next year are to let our
Student Board become more involved with
it and move it to the fall, when the
students have more time to develop
special projects. We will still
display them in the spring, but I think
we’ll have more participation
earlier in the school year.”
Anyone
person or business wishing to become a
sponsor of this project may contact the
museum at 903.753.8103 or contact fineart@lmfa.org.
Those wishing to donate
hard sided suitcases may do so any time by dropping them
by the museum at 215 E. Tyler Street.
 Student Board
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