Painting a delicate picture

Thursday, May 4, 2006 | 7:32 a.m.

Sharon Feeney is the first to acknowledge that marketing children for adoption is a delicate issue. There are the carefully worded pitches, the question of how to describe the children's behavior and, most important, portraying them as human beings, rather than a commodity.

Profiling children for adoption in clever and poignant ways is a growing strategy nationwide. It has now come to Clark County, with a photo exhibit featuring photographs of more than 40 local children up for adoption.

Displaying professional portraits of them, along with personal information that might read like a description in a catalog, can seem dangerously and callously like a sales job.

"It's a fine line," said Feeney, state director of programs at the Adoption Exchange, a nonprofit child welfare organization. It's not like you're advertising a pair of shoes, she said.

"We want to give enough information. We're not saying these are all healthy kids. We're not going to paint a rosy picture. But we don't want to paint doom and gloom either because given the right home, they will blossom."

When marketing hard-to-place children, there's no law of supply and demand. There's no place for hard sells. No bait-and-switch. No slogans. And no refunds.

These are just kids looking for homes, and their stories can be horrific.

"Some kids are Dumpster-diving for food," Feeney said. "They've never had a birthday present. They've never had a birthday party."

When writing a profile to run alongside a photo, words are chosen carefully by the county employees who work with the Adoption Exchange.

"You have to pull the heart strings and make the kids seem not so scary," said Larry Horne, a county worker who approves the children's biographies "We're trying to get people to call."

That's the goal of Nevada's first Heart Gallery, a photography exhibit of 46 children in need of homes. The exhibit, which opens Friday, was put together by professional photographers who took the children to parks and amusement venues to show them in their element.

Alongside her photo, a girl named Stephanie is described as "very quiet and is often very shy when around others. Stephanie enjoys playing games, coloring and playing with dolls. Stephanie is not of school age, but attends speech therapy."

The 46 children are featured in 25 portraits, including sibling groups.

"When I heard the concept, it made a lot of sense," said local photographer Hank de Lespinasse, who oversaw photography for the project. "You can't look at the pictures without falling in love with the kids."

Heart Gallery began in 2001 in New Mexico. Nevada is the 47th state to participate.

Horne says he knows some people are uncomfortable with the concept of marketing children for adoption this way.

Some complain that "it seems like running a personal ad" - especially when the subjects are children.

"But the hard, cold truth is that we have kids who need a home," he said.

Heart Gallery will be on display at the Art Institute of Las Vegas, 2350 Corporate Circle, in Henderson. Gallery hours are 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Monday through Friday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, through May. Afterward, the exhibit will travel to various locations, including malls and government buildings.

For information, call 436-6335.