My aunt is the Saddleback College Foundation fundraiser for the EOPS program – the Extended Opportunity Program in Services – for the disadvantaged. “The next fundraiser we’re going to do is in conjunction with Saddleback College. The best part was in hearing from some of these women who benefited, saying how it had saved their lives and that of their children. We did and were able to raise the $50,000, partly because we got one private donation of $25,000 and sold tickets for the rest. I suggested we do a painting and sell raffle tickets. This was in Northern California and they needed $50,000 to fund the program. They go into this program with their children and are able to get off drugs. Last year I came up with the idea for a fundraiser for a children’s program to help drug-addicted mothers. I don’t really remember her, but I do remember her sketchbooks and her drawings, and memories of these women that she’d draw stayed with me. I also went to Palomar College, Saddleback College, Academy of Arts San Francisco, and the Art Institute of Southern California and Laguna Beach.” I was introduced to ballet and opera, and was always around adults and going to great events. I would take film classes like the college kids. I was enrolled in film classes at the college of Marin, where my aunt was the Director of Student Services programs for disabled students. Every year we’d put on a play and I did film animation when I was like 11 years old. “I went to North Bay School, in Marin City, a unique elementary school with only 50 students, and three teachers to a classroom, from kindergarten to ninth grade. She was the one who raised me and during that time I actually started painting.” My mom died when I was 5 and I went to live with my aunt, Lise Telson in Sausalito. I ended up in Canada with my mother, then went to Peru with my dad, and actually spoke Spanish as my first language. It was just a summer of love! We lived there for about a year, and then we spent about a year traveling around the country. There was a whole group of families living there in the ’70s. “My parents were hippies at that time – in a commune in the jungles of Kauai. “I was born in Kauai, in a storm – in a tree house!” Maya Spielman began her story.
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