Ohio artist donates portrait to Vegas shooting victim’s family
In the midst of their grief, Stacy and Greg Meadows have been searching for anything good that might come of the loss of their daughter.
Columbus artist Tom Seward gave them a little something.
Seward is part of the grassroots Las Vegas Portraits Project, one of 58 artists who each donated a portrait of a person killed in the mass shooting last year during a music festival in Las Vegas.
Seward’s subject was the Meadowses’ 28-year-old daughter, Kelsey, a substitute teacher from Taft, California.
Mrs. Meadows raves about Seward’s work.
“We were just in awe,” she said. “He really very much captured the likeness of her, and just knowing the time and special attention that went into the creation of the portrait means so much.”
Beginning Monday, all 58 portraits will be displayed at the Clark County Government Center in Las Vegas. The public display will remain there until Oct. 19, a few weeks beyond the one-year anniversary of the shootings during the Route 91 Harvest Festival on the Las Vegas Strip.
On Oct. 1, authorities say, Stephen Paddock, 64, opened fire from his 32nd-floor suite at the nearby Mandalay Bay hotel, killing 58 people and leaving 851 injured from gunfire and the resulting panic. Paddock, of Mesquite, Nevada, then killed himself.
Two days after the tragedy, artist Ellen Abramo of Nazareth, Pennsylvania, created a Facebook page forming the Las Vegas Portraits Project and began soliciting artists. (A year earlier, she contributed a painting for the 49 Portraits Project, honoring the victims of the June 2016 shootings inside the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida.)
By January, Abramo had selected 57 artists (she, too, painted a portrait) from among 80-plus applicants — including a few from as far as away as Australia and South Africa. She made it clear that the artists would not be paid.
“What struck me was not only that artists were willing to help complete strangers,” she said, “but that people all over the world really cared about what happened.”
Seward, 55, viewed the project as a worthy cause.
“It’s a small thing (to do) for something so devastating,” he said.
The South Side resident grew up in Parma, Ohio, south of Cleveland. In 1981, he earned the top scholarship to attend the Columbus College of Art & Design, from which he graduated in 1984. Since then, he has made a living by painting and hanging billboards and helping to install art exhibits. He also creates portraits on commission.
Before the Portraits Project, the divorced father of two had had experience with memorial paintings. About six years ago, an artist friend — Patricia Harding of Sterling, Ohio — asked him to help with Faces of Angels, a nonprofit that donates portraits to people who have lost a loved one.
She pays Seward a small stipend to cover his costs.
“I mean it to be healing for the family,” Harding said. “When you’re dealing with loss, you tend to remember the last things first — so death and burial and sickness. You tend to forget all the happy things and good things.”
Seward based his oil painting of Kelsey Meadows on a photograph from her 2011 graduation from Fresno State University, exchanging several email messages with the Meadows family while working on it.
“I asked him if he would add the necklace that she always wore,” Mrs. Meadows recalled. “Kelsey was a Reba (McEntire) fan, and she wore a necklace that said ‘Forever Love’ (the title of a 1998 McEntire song) on it. That was a special touch for us.”
When working on portraits of lost loved ones, Seward said, he feels a lot of responsibility.
“You don’t want to drop the ball and have (relatives) say, ‘That doesn’t look like them at all,’” he said.
The time and effort are well worth it, Seward said.
“I’d like to think that a handcrafted portrait is something they can hold close and remember them by. That’s why I do portraits. I like doing something that someone will treasure.”
On Oct. 4, Clark County and the Vegas Strong Resiliency Center — a group formed after the shootings to offer resources and support — are hosting a public reception with the project artists and family members of victims.
Seward and Kelsey Meadows’ parents plan to attend.
“We have just tried to search for the good in all this,” Mrs. Meadows said. “And to see how these strangers throughout the world have come together is going to be amazing.”