Santa Fe photographer Jackie Mathey didn't have plans for more children when she was sent out on a volunteer assignment for Heart Gallery, a project to take artistic photographs of foster children to display to potential families. But when she met little Francis Faye, then 10, she fell in love.

"My husband and I have an older son and we really weren't thinking about expanding our family at the time," Mathey said. "She's just very special and I saw that right away. We connected right away. ... I couldn't help thinking, 'I could be her mom.' "

It was the second year after Diane Granito had founded the Heart Gallery project while working in the Children, Youth and Families Department as a foster- and adoptive-parent recruiter. Granito still works with CYFD, but in a different capacity.

"She's a matchmaker, that Diane," Mathey said with a laugh. "Don't let her fool you. She had me scheduled to (photograph) another child and she called me and said, 'Jackie, this girl, I just feel like she's the one you're supposed to photograph.' "

After the session, "She called me and said, 'I'm in trouble,' " Granito said. "I was worried her car broke down, but she said, 'I really fell for that little girl.' "

Soon after Granito hatched her plan to connect professional photographers with foster children to create beautiful portraits, Gerald Peters of the Gerald Peters Gallery founded the Heart Gallery Foundation, a nonprofit organization that supports the project.

This year, the New Mexico Heart Gallery Foundation will celebrate 10 years of the Heart Gallery with a two-day celebration that includes both live and silent auctions at the gallery and musical performances at the Lensic.

Actor Quinton Aaron, who is best known as Sandra Bullock's adopted son in The Blind Side, will be the host for both evenings.

Mathey will be there. So will her daughter, Francis Faye Mathey, now 18, who will perform with her classmates from the New Mexico School for the Arts.

"She's just blossomed into a wonderful pianist and composer," Granito said. Francis Faye Mathey wants to be a composer for movie musical scores. Granito said that she's a child "whose potential was maximized."

Starting a movement

When Granito was interviewing for her first job at CYFD back in 2000, her interviewer asked her to take a look at some photographs of foster children and give her opinion.

"They were bad," Granito explained. "They were snapshots where you stood a child up against the wall and said 'Smile.' "

Without an office on her first day at work, she decided to see what it would take to secure a gallery to display professional portraits of foster children.

"I went to the Gerald Peters Gallery in the off-chance that they would say yes to having an exhibit of professional portraits of the children who need families," Granito said, adding that she didn't have any photographers or funding for the project lined up. "It was a leap of faith."

She and friend Cathy Maier Callanan, a professional photographer, got the first batch of portraits ready for their display in March 2001.

"That first night we broke gallery records," Granito said. The moving photographs inspired six families to adopt children.

"We knew we were onto something."

One family even adopted a family of five siblings who were photographed happily jumping over a puddle.

The portraits didn't focus on very young children, they featured older children and teens, Granito explained.

The portraits aim to show the child's personality and lovability.

"It's very exciting when you walk into the room and you see those portraits," Granito said.

"It has a very strong emotional impact on people. (The portraits) have been known to inspire families to adopt sibling groups of as many as five children. Recently, we had a sibling group of four children that was adopted."

When the Heart Gallery project was featured in an issue of Parade, inquiries from all over the country started pouring into Granito's email. Pretty soon, Heart Galleries started popping up around the U.S. Now, there are galleries in 47 states and in Canada. There is even a national Heart Gallery of America. The project has been featured on Oprah and ABC News, and in People magazine.

The project was also named a "Best Practice" by the U.S. Children's Bureau.

"That's something that states should strive to do in order to help children find families," Granito explained. "That was a big honor."

Making a match

Sebastien Dartevelle was not intending to start a family. Back in 2005, he was working as a court-appointed special advocate when he attended an event for the Heart Gallery.

Dartevelle said of his eldest son that he was worried when he felt a "click" with the boy because he hadn't planned to have a family, but despite that, he knew he had to become an adoptive parent. "I found out when I adopted one kid, I wanted to adopt another," Dartevelle said with excitement in his voice, adding that he adopted his younger son from Reno, Nev.

Now both boys are attending school in Los Alamos and are happily enrolled in several after-school activities at the urging of their father.

"The thing is, I'm really enjoying parenting," Dartevelle said.

"They're very challenging and it's not easy to adopt, but it's totally possible and it's very, very rewarding."

Dartevelle also takes photographs for the gallery project, all of which are donated by the photographers involved.

The pictures, he said, are "so appealing, so extraordinary that they connect a family to a child." It certainly connected the Mathey family.

Both Jackie and her husband, Courtenay, knew almost instantly they had a new family member.

"It's just one of those things — kind of like falling in love," Jackie Mathey said. "You don't expect it and then it hits you."