At the Art’s House Gallery in River Falls, you’ll find sunflowers everywhere in the works of art on display.

A way to help Ukrainian children, traumatized by the war, raging on for more than five months now.

“As people in the Midwest, we don’t really know what to do, and you feel helpless, because we want to help,” gallery owner Kay Fritz says. “We think a painting or a card. We have cups with sunflowers, because that was the flower of hope. And that’s how it started.”

This month — the gallery has focused on an exhibition Fritz and her daughter Jill call ‘Stand With Ukraine.’

Sixteen artists are displaying thirty paintings featuring sunflowers, a symbol of that war-torn country.  

One of them is Cheryl Maplethorpe, who says she’s been deeply affected by the war, and Ukraine’s will to keep fighting. “I was happy to be asked,” she says, pointing to one of her pieces on display. “This is a sunflower that is getting a little feisty and is burning. So that’s a symbol to me of Ukraine.”