A simple way to support the arts in our kids' schools

This guest post was written by Liz Langley.

When you're out and about on Friday, May 11, if you see an inordinate ... even alarming ... number of large mushrooms on lawns or in parks in your neighborhood, don't panic. It's not some weird global symptom. It could be art.

Doug Rhodehamel, a 38 year-old Orlando artist, has been making these ornamental mushrooms out of paper bags -- ordinary brown paper lunch bags -- for many years, but on Friday he'll be putting them to new use. While normally he might decorate a lawn or park with a few dozen or a hundred (he's "mushroomed" people's yards guerrilla style, done installations at the Orlando Museum of Art and even provided pure white fungi for a wedding), he'll be installing 10,000 mushrooms at Orlando's Loch Haven Park to kick off his Spore Project, an effort to raise awareness of the need for art in schools. Mushrooms will be popping up in cities from Brooklyn to Austin, from Maui to Miami as supporters of The Spore Project plant their art.

"You learn so much in art that helps you through life," Doug says of the classes that lit up his school days. "It's not just drawing trees and fruit. It shows you that there are options ... that

"It gave me a lot of confidence, gave me something to look forward to and a reason to be proud of myself."