Ernie Pacheco and Mark Sullivan are the masterminds behind “Character Farms.” From radiation rooms to hospitals to churches, they create artwork for the comfort of young patients. Sullivan shared with CBN News’ Studio 5 how the vision came to life.
“It happened over 16 years ago. We’re from advertising backgrounds. I’ve owned an agency, and Ernie was really involved in working with several large shops across the country with some accounts,” Sullivan said. “And I was asked to help a friend theme out a dental office, a pediatric office, just as a favor, and so, I did. And I had my advertising career, I was in charge of the creative department. And so, we did, and they had an opening, a grand opening with a lot of other pediatric doctors in North Dallas, in the Frisco area.”
“An architect was there, the architect who did this, and he’s famous for pediatric offices. He asked me did I do this? And I said, yes, I did,” he continued. “I used a lot of my advertising knowledge to come up with different materials for quiet rooms and stuff where you can’t see in the room because it looks like a mural, but you can see out, that type of thing. But it really drew his interest.”
“And he asked me to consider it. He said, ‘What do you do? You do this for a living?’ I said, ‘Not really.’ So, I said, ‘No, I have an ad agency…and he said, ‘Well, you need to quit that and do this because there’s not a lot of people that do this.'”
It was that conversation that set things in motion. Sullivan and Pacheco began working with hospitals and dental offices, and eventually churches. Pacheco shared with CBN News’ Studio 5 the process they take with the clients.
“Mark and I, we like problem solving, and we kind of approach a lot of things through almost a way of looking at of everything’s a possibility. And one of the things that’s a key factor in how we go about this is how do we make our clients’ money go far with our work because there’s limited funds sometimes, and there’s ways you can go about that. The approach Mark and I have had with our clients that are hospitals or dentists or even kids’ ministries is we like to think of our clients as we’re partnering with them to help them,” Pacheco said.
The churches took notice of the work done in the hospitals and dental offices and wanted these themes in their children’s ministries. Sullivan shared some of the work done for the ministries.
“We’ve put a deck together for churches and children’s nursery and ministries…and it has a lot of content in there that’s eye-opening,” he told CBN News.
Pachero and Sullivan revealed the impact of Character Farms and how it has help children nationwide.
“Right off the top, we’ve noticed that there is less anxiety with some of this stuff. I’m going to talk medical real quick here. One of the things that you go into some of these environments, they’re very sterile and intimidating, so to speak. And if we can do something to make … One thing I thought about, I was a military brat all my life, and so I went to public school, and what was amazing to me, I couldn’t believe how my childhood, everything looked like it was rusted. There’s a thousand ways a kid could get hurt in this room, but maybe I kept thinking about that or something, but we think about what the kids… try to keep them interested in the room,” Pachero said.
“This is a ministry to us. It really is because we’re seeing how it touches families and children, especially with their parents as well. We’ve had so many people come as parents that have been in seeing some of our work,” Sullivan said.
