The Crankers — Summer, Schuyler and Joy — help frame artwork by Ukrainian children which will be on display and up for auction in the Cantwell Room of the Saranac Lake Free Library next month. (Provided photo — Valerie Trudeau)

SARANAC LAKE — A gallery of children’s art to be displayed at the Saranac Lake Free Library next month contains many of the staples of kids’ drawings — a handprint chicken, anime characters, hearts, vibrant colors and smiling animals.

But one, titled “Bombing in Kharkiv,” created by Dmitri, age 10, shows rows of apartment buildings burning. It is bleak with very little color — except for a patch of red flowers sprouting in the foreground and a Ukrainian flag flying in a window in the background.

The collection, called “Holding on to Hope,” contains 85 works of art created by children ages 4 to 15. All of them live in Kharkiv, Ukraine, where seven people were killed in a Russian missile attack on Thursday.

The show opens on June 7. When it closes on June 20, the pieces will be auctioned off, with the purchase prices going to support an organization comforting children in Ukraine. Bids start at $25, and all the pieces can be viewed and bid on ahead of time at 32auctions.com/ukrainianchildrensart.

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Art dealing

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Their art was brought here by Anna Hoyt, a native of Poland living in Saranac Lake who has been raising thousands of dollars to support the Ukrainians living through a war and the one million refugees who have fled to her home country since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

More than 11,000 Ukrainian civilians, more than 46,000 Ukrainian soldier and more than 77,000 Russian soldiers have been killed so far.

Many Ukrainians are living under Russian occupation.

When Hoyt traveled to meet family in Poland last September, she met with friends who are part of the volunteer aid efforts shuttling resources between Poland and Ukraine. These people are dedicated volunteers, Hoyt said as she raved about how “incredible” they are.

Around once a month, they travel 1,500 miles round-trip from Warsaw in central Poland to Kharkiv on the far eastern end of Ukraine with backpacks full of supplies — driving through the night, crossing the border in convoys, sleeping in their car and returning just in time to return to work on Monday morning.

While she was there in September, they brought back a trove of children’s art from Kharkiv. The art was created through an art therapy program run by the Catholic charity Caritas in Kharkiv.

Art therapy is a way of dealing with trauma, allowing the artist to speak their experiences and hopes to the outside world, putting their innermost thoughts into art and expressing feelings words can’t describe. A poster for the event says it shows “creativity and resilience in the face of adversity.”

Hoyt pointed to one drawing, an umbrella with the names of organizations written on it, blocking bombs from a peaceful town. In the town, smoke rises from a house’s chimney — a common part of children’s drawings which becomes much more important with a little context.

“There is heat in the house,” Hoyt said.

Hoyt was talking about this gallery while at a gym class when Valerie Trudeau and Lisa Crocker heard about it and wanted to get involved.

“What’s great with this is that 100% goes directly to aid people,” Trudeau said.

Crocker split the gallery into categories and created explanations for the works, with context introducing the concepts and settings up why the themes are important to Ukrainian children.

Several pieces feature “Patron,” a bomb-sniffing Jack Russell terrier who has become a national hero and has even been awarded a medal. Others focus on Easter, an important holiday in Ukraine.

Hoyt said while a handful depict war — tanks and guns and frowns — there is a focus on peace instead. She said it appears the children are thinking about peace, in the past or in the future.

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Slate of events

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Hoyt and Trudeau said it has been great working with the library. They’ve planned numerous events during the show’s run.

The art will be hung in the library’s basement Cantwell Room on June 3. There will be an opening reception on June 7 from 6 to 8 p.m.

On June 8, Jess Ackerson from ADK ArtRise will hold a Ukrainian egg decorating workshop at the library from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.

Throughout the two-and-a-half week showing, there will be an activity station where people can make heart-shaped blue-and-yellow pockets and write letters to stuff them with. Hoyt said she will deliver these to Ukraine in September.

Trudeau said they thought about how children here deal with trauma through art. So on June 12, Rivka Cilley will hold a workshop titled “Trauma: A Creative Approach to Healing” at noon.

The final gala and auction on June 20 will be held during the first Third Thursday ArtWalk. There will be Ukrainian food provided by the Euromart in Lake Placid, brews from Hex and Hop in Bloomingdale and Ukrainian music.

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‘Chain of goodwill’

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Hoyt and Trudeau emphasized that this gallery is not to be political. It’s about people helping people, they said — more about empathy and art.

The refugees Hoyt knows have settled into their jobs and normal life in Poland.

“But they all want to go home,” she said. “Even if their buildings, houses don’t exist, people want to go home.”

Trudeau and Hoyt described seeing all this suffering and struggling with what they could do as individuals. But once they started helping out, they began to see a great “chain of goodwill” with people making up the links from Saranac Lake to Poland to Ukraine.

A GoFundMe fundraiser for her efforts, set up last year by Saranac Lake resident Dan Reilly, is still active at bit.ly/3o3aa7C.

Kharkiv is right on the front lines, being the first major city from the border with Russia. Trudeau and Hoyt are concerned about the children there.

One artist, Armey, drew a vibrant scene of a child doodling in a notebook in a sunny backyard. Roosters and ducks roam around, and he looks content with his bare feet in the grass — an idyllic life for a young artist, before or after the war.