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Xzavier Scott, seen above, was depicted in a portrait which depicts his love of Coney Island and football. He is one of the subjects in "Pintando Postales, Painting Postcards," an art exhibition that opened Thursday night at Brooklyn College.

Teacher Katie Yamasaki portrayed her art students to help arrange for them pen pals from Cuba.

"I've never really written a letter or post card to another person that I've never met before," says Scott.

Yamasaki asked her students at Ballet Tech to describe themselves in writing to a Cuban boy or girl their own age. Yamasaki then turned what they wrote into paintings of her public school students and took both the pictures and the postcards to Santiago, Cuba.

There, Cuban youngsters chose the city student they most closely identified with and wrote back. Yamasaki drew pictures of the Cuban kids and friendships were made.

Cuban native Edgar wrote to Brooklynite Whitney Lashley.

"He really related to me because I'm a dancer and his sister is a dancer, and it reminded him of her," says Lashley. "So I was like, 'Oh, that's so cute. I love that.'"

"When I got the letters back, I was excited and kind of scared to see what their response was but it was always positive," says Scott.

Yamasaki felt the children in the two widely different countries have a lot in common.

"When kids are adolescents, identity is huge. And the development of an identity and their growth of thinking of themselves as a global citizen, all these things are kind of happening at the same time while their imagination is still really active," said Yamasaki. "So I kind of collected different elements, their dreams, their fears their hopes, their art and put them into pictures."

Yamasaki says the idea began when her students started asking her questions about Cuba when she returned from an art conference on the Communist island.

She thought they'd learn best through words and pictures.

"It's amazing actually that someone from so far away could have so much in common with an American. It's pretty cool," says student Daniel Card. "I was so inspired by her class, based on this project, it opened my art experience."

The exhibition will be on display at the Brooklyn College Library Art Gallery through May 15.