Sharney Jo Darden founded Keep A Breast, or KAB, with friend Mona Mukherjea-Gehrig, inspired by skate culture’s DIY creative mentality. What started out as a series of homegrown fashion and art shows metamorphosed into something else when a friend was diagnosed with breast cancer. Noticing that organisations were geared towards the older generation -with nothing resonating with the younger generation associated with the active sport culture- and wanting to support their friend, they hit upon a novel idea: enlisting female volunteers, casts were made of their breasts, and these blank canvasses were customised by various street artists, fine artists and graphic designers from the ModArt scene.
Fast forward several years and KAB has amassed an impressive gallery of casts with numerous celebrity castees- from extreme sports stars to Katy Perry, Pink and Dita Von Teese, and well-known artists like Charlie Adlard (the artist for Image Comics The Walking Dead since 2004) working on them. Casts are auctioned off or available for purchase from the KAB website, generating publicity for artists, raising awareness for a younger generation and generating funds for breast cancer charities.
The latest of these artists is Marc Silvestri of Top Cow/Image Comics.
For more information on what KAB does visit Keep-a-breast.org.