Who We Are
The Open Heart Foundation is a non-profit organization based outside Cleveland, OH.
We are a group of people who care about art, kids, and improving our healthcare system.
Open Heart is one small way we can contribute to each of those enormous causes.
.Mission
The Open Heart Foundation donates works of art to pediatric medical offices to help make places of care a little brighter for children and their families. We believe art has the power to inspire and encourage. Art works are featured prominently in most of the country’s leading children’s hospitals and we are dedicated to the mission that pediatric clinics of all shapes and sizes should have access to an art collection.
How it Works
- We collect generously donated works of art.
- We partner with pediatric medical offices interested in receiving art work through our programs.
- We donate the art to our partner pediatric offices.
- The results: fewer blank walls, more smiles, and positive places for kids and caregivers.
Our Board
Ellen Matthews
Ellen knows what it's like to be a kid staring at blank hospital walls. She was born with a cleft palette and two holes in her heart and had 10 surgeries before the age of 11, including an open heart procedure when she was 4. She (and her mom, and her dad, and her little sister) spent a lot of time in doctor's waiting rooms, exam rooms, offices and hospitals. It's true, they can be pretty depressing places. Any distraction makes a big difference, whether it's a painting on the wall, or a colorful sculpture in the hallway. Images that brighten the space and help kids imagine the world outside a hospital are like a lifeline. She holds the official titles of Paperwork Queen and Keeper of All the Highlighters at Open Heart.
Matthew Ourednik
Matthew is a pediatric respiratory therapist in the intensive care units, which means he helps really tiny patients breathe. Matthew took a lot of art history classes and spent hours in the ceramics studio on his way to a degree in health sciences. When he's not running the show at Open Heart, he spends his spare time on Lake Erie and making Ohio wine from California grapes.
Carolyn Hastings
Carolyn is the author of the art blog Riffs, and the curator of an amazingly diverse Pinterest art collection. She is also the mom of an open heart kid (Ellen) and the veteran of her own chronic health issues--all of which have been made better by the presence of amazing art in her life. She realized just how important art had become to her when visitors to her house began asking for a "tour of the gallery." Carolyn is our liaison to the artists and writer-in-chief.