Editor’s Note: Abby’s father is a Teaching Elder in the PCA, currently serving at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Jackson, MS

With her winning smile, 12-year-old Abby Pierce has pulled an artistic switch on the teachers at Madison Avenue Upper Elementary.

Usually, it’s the instructor asking students for work, but this week fifth-grader Abby got about half the educators in the building – and most of them have never had her in class – to create artwork for her.

The result is on display outside the school library – the first-ever teachers’ art show, as produced by Abby Pierce.
“This just shows Abby’s creativity. A child this age gets teachers to do this, that shows a lot of leadership,” said Lynda Flynn, who was one of the first to sign up for what she thought was going to be part of Abby’s personal art collection.

Abby’s original idea was an art gallery for her and her friends, and the concept grew from there. Ambitiously, Abby carried around a sheet of notebook paper, with more than 60 spots marked off, for teachers to sign up…
The first pictures went up on the school wall on Monday. That evening her mom, Missy Pierce, learned about Abby’s contest that will be adorning the school hallway through next week…
A few years ago, Pierce said Abby would not have been able to pull this off. Abby started having epileptic seizures right before she started kindergarten, and they got worse and worse despite medications.
“Basically, she was living in a state of seizures about 80 percent of the time,” her mom said. “There were times she couldn’t find her own room in our house.”
Abby could function – walk and talk – in spite of the seizures, but the epilepsy kept her from living a normal life. At the time, the family lived in Virginia. Then the family moved to Mississippi so dad, Ken, could assume the ministry at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Jackson. (Ed: Ken Pierce is a minister in the Presbyterian Church in America.)
“We ended up in Madison because of the schools,” Pierce said.
Her doctor here put Abby on a modified Atkins diet, high in proteins and low in carbohydrates. “It healed her,” her mom said. “Her last EEG showed her brain activity was normal.”
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[Editor’s note: the original URL (link) referenced in this article is no longer valid, so the link has been removed.]