Patrick Pizzuto, Artist
Becky Mann, Burlington Day Director

Patrick has been attending Communitas since 2009 but says he has been creating art as long as he can remember. He has used many different mediums in the past, including colored pencils, watercolors, and modeling clay, but most recently Patrick has been painting on celluloid film. Patrick has an interest in cartooning, so he did some research into how some animation is made. He found that many historic animated movies and cartoons were painted on celluloid film.

“I am a cartoon artist and I love selling my artwork. Recently I had an art table at the Mass Advocates Standing Strong 21st Annual Self-Advocacy Conference. I sold 7 art pieces! I also met another artist there, he was selling his art too! Selling my artwork made me feel happy! I’m proud of my artwork and I am glad to share it with others.”

Drawing the characters out is normally step one. Then, he paints the subjects in these pieces on the backside of the celluloid film, so he is actually painting in reverse.

Therefore, he has to change his thinking on the order in which he paints the piece. The first thing he paints is what would normally be the finishing touches.  After completing the subject, he then paints the background on canvas and attaches the film to the canvas.

Anyone interested in purchasing one of Patrick’s pieces can contact Becky Mann, the Director in our Burlington Day Program.

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Alyssa Fisher, Assistant Director, Beverly Day Services
September 2019

It all began in 2017, when the Beverly Day Services program started their annual Color Wars in each week in August. During Color Wars Week, Director Cara Duggan assigns the 9 Life Choices groups into 4 teams and plans four days of activities. The teams are Blue, Red, Orange and Green and the activities have included basketball, inflatable bowling, sponge relay, door decorating, team spirit, penny wars and bean bag toss. Each day of Color Wars the groups have an opportunity to gain points by wearing their team’s color, decorating their door with their color as a theme, adding pennies to their teams’ bins, and participating in the chosen recreational activity for the afternoon.

Color Wars has been a huge hit with the individuals and staff the past three summers. The door decorating and team spirit gets everyone working as a team and the recreational activities are just fun and a great way to get everyone excited and moving! On the last day of Color Wars, we have a big party and announce the overall winner and the winners of each event, and everyone gets a medal in an Olympic-style Ceremony. One of our favorite parts of Color Wars is that the team that wins gets to choose a charity to donate all of the money raised by the penny wars activity (which has been as much as $250 in years past).

This year the red and green teams won (in a historic tie for 1st!) and donated the money to the Jimmy Fund!

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