Father-Daughter Team Holds Benefit Photography Exhibit

Anna and David Ondaatje held a joint photography exhibition in mid-June featuring their travel and portrait photography from Africa, Europe, the U.S.A. and the Caribbean. Some 200 people attended the father-daughter exhibition, ‘Wandering Eyes: A Photography One-Night Stand,’ in Pacific Palisades, which yielded $5,700 for P.S. Arts. Founded by Palisades resident Paul Cummins, P.S. Arts, recruits, hires, underwrites and trains professional artists to develop curriculum and teach classes during the regular school day.’The organization also works to educate and empower classroom teachers through arts-related workshops that demonstrate how to integrate creative expression and the arts into core academic subjects. ‘Our family’s original gateway to the organization was through the ‘Express Yourself’ art-making event that takes place every year at the Barker Hangar in Santa Monica,’ says Liz Ondaatje, who serves on the P.S. Arts board. At this all-day event, guests are greeted by rows of arts booths and endless art supplies as professional artists and teachers guide children through a rich array of projects. ‘My children looked forward to this event every year; it was just like Halloween. ‘From the beginning, P.S. Arts has kept its commitment to provide arts education to 11,000 Title I kids once a week, every week throughout the school year,’ Ondaatje says. ‘ In the Los Angeles area, the organization serves the entire school district in Lawndale, and four schools in Santa Monica. This is part of the P.S. formula, hiring actual practicing artists to be an integral part of the curriculum.’ Anna Ondaatje, a 2005 graduate of St. Matthew’s School, just completed her freshman year at Harvard, where she studies languages, literature and philosophy. She interned at P.S. Arts in 2009 as a senior at Windward School and is working there again this summer. Her father, David, is a film director, screenwriter and chairman of the RL Winston Rod Company in Montana. He was an undergraduate at Harvard and a graduate student at University of Cambridge, England. He is rarely seen without a camera. ‘