A Dallas Artist and a Car Company Team Up to Raise Dough For Preservation LINK

Justin Claus Harder

​I was looking for something entirely unrelated on Flickr yesterday when I stumbled across a cache of illustrations by the great Justin Claus Harder, who counts among his clients Disney, Cartoon Network, The Fray and, once upon a time, something called the Dallas Observer. As it turned out, the artwork's part of a larger collection for something called the Scion X-change, which is ...?

Turns out, the car maker's collecting money for 30 non-profits nationwide and gathering donations, of art and time, from artists in scattered cities. Harder, who's done some work for Scion, was contacted and asked if he wanted to participate: "And I said, 'Absolutely,'" he tells Unfair Park. So happens that in Dallas, Scion's raising money for Preservation LINK, the 11-year-old arts-in-education nonprofit that teaches kids, most in South Dallas, photojournalism and film-making and counts among its partners everyone from Central Dallas Ministries to, of late, the Dallas Contemporary.

At this very moment, Harder says, Scion's set up at J. Pepe's on Greenville, where some of his art's on display during the money-making efforts; he hopes to get back there later today, as a big part of the program is letting folks who show up watch and visit with the artist. Scion's set up there through tonight, and it looks like it's also donating some dough to Preservation Link if you test drive one of their cars. It would appear they're halfway through the fund-raising goal of $2,000.