Growing Through Loss: The Importance of Creative Expression in a Crisis
Heather M. Sloane PhD, LISW; Arvindhan Natarajan, PhD; Megan Kraner, MSW, LSW & Dan Huesman, MSW, LISW | September 22-24
Topic: Art | Knowledge Level: All levels
Overall, these art exhibits will focus on loss and the healing that comes from creative expression. Exhibits will be paying special attention to losses due to COVID-19 and racism.
Youth Exhibit
This exhibit will highlight the written work of high school students and University student mentors who are part of the Fearless Writers program. This year, the students have focused their writing exploration on the history of Black neighborhoods, artists, activists, and writers that have influenced Black power movements in Toledo. Fearless Writers uses Amherst Writers and Artists writing group method and participatory action research/ autoethnographic/cultural history method to take on social justice.
Arts-Based Research Exhibit
Dr. Arvindhan Natarajan is an accomplished researcher who uses the act of creating art as a way to better understand people and places. Dr. Natarajan will be sharing artwork created when investigating human connection, empathy, and grief.
Thriver Artist Exhibit
This exhibit will highlight the artwork of a survivor of human trafficking. This will be the 7th year of highlighting the artwork of survivors of a variety of social injustices. Creating art was a way of healing through multiple types of loss and through multiple personal crises.
Mental Health Exhibit
This exhibit will highlight the work of artists who are also mental health consumers. These artists explore the power of creative expression to healing. Individuals with mental illness are marginalized in communities based on stigma and stereotypes firmly held in U.S. culture. Visual art is a way for the marginalized to take back their narrative and create a new story as artist.
Exhibit Objectives:
· Raise awareness of the power of art to connect an audience to the lived experience of injustice
· Combine research, program, and narrative methods as an important way to better understand social injustice
· Provide inspiration for creativity as a possibility for healing during and after a loss or crisis