It's mid-morning on a Wednesday and teens interning at The Ruby Tucker Family Center are applying finishing touches on "art windows" that will be exhibited at Alexandria's Art on The Avenue festival this fall.

Leisa Collins of Creative Art Nexus, an organization which helps organize the creation of public art works, and Collins' assistant Lizlliam Cruz, 21, are with a group of interns from the center.

Tia Shelton, 11, Rachael Merife, 15, and Jasmine Davis 16, are preparing the windows for the Art on The Avenue exhibit "Growing Panes-Windows to a Better Tomorrow." The exhibit will feature window panes with four themes: 

• Anti-drugs
• Bringing history to life through art
• Anti-bullying
• Human rights

The theme they are working on at the Ruby Tucker Center is anti-drugs, and it will include three art windows. In the first window, Matthew Parker, a native Washington, D.C., photographer mentored the children to create a photo collage of their garden to illustrate how gardening and growth represent life. 

In the second window, preteens and teens explained why it was important that they pledge to be drug free. Among some of the responses found on the art window were: “Drugs make you lose your focus and drive”; “On drugs you pick up bad habits that cause ill health” and “Without drugs you can live a longer life.”

The third and final anti-drug art window has photographs of former drug addicts explaining how drugs affected their lives and how they turned their lives around.

The 20-window collection will be on display beginning Oct. 1 for Art on The Avenue, after which the collection will be exhibited again at a new, undecided location. The four sets of art window themes eventually will be permanently displayed at various locations throughout Alexandria.

The art windows that were completed at the Ruby Tucker Family Center will be returned to the center for permanent display.