Hundreds Gather For 24-Hour Paint-A-Thon As Part Of LA's Largest-Ever Civic Art Exhibit

PLAYA VISTA (CBSLA.com) — Grab your paint brushes because you're invited to the largest civic art exhibit the city has ever seen!

Thousands of beach balls will soon invade MacArthur Park in downtown Los Angeles, and it's part of a good cause.

Lead volunteer Armella Stepan, of Portraits of Hope, says 1,000 people have donated their time to paint 500 massive spheres for the project during a 24-hour Paint-A-Thon in a Playa Vista studio.

The spheres will be transported to MacArthur Park, where they will be on display in August and September.

The community art project is the brainchild of Ed and Bernie Massey. And the painting is far from over.

"We will have somewhere around 7,000 spheres in a rotating art project for a month," Stepan said.

Many of the volunteers have been children in hospitals, part of Portraits of Hope's ultimate mission to support arts education.

"We're about the kids. We have schools come out and they paint and they also get an education on how to change the world," Stepan said. "We go into hospitals. We paint with disabled children. We have special brushes. It's just amazing to watch their faces because hospitals are such a dreary place to be and they see these bright colors and all the volunteers and they just have fun."

For more information, visit Portraits of Hope online.