Global/Local Community Art

Using the arts to deepen impact of Social Issues 

CREATED A NON PROFIT CORPORATION, NEW FUTURES INC. for a Virginia health care corporation…with the goal to generate projects that aligned with the personal visions of 150 individual employees. Designed first civilian involved outreach to veteran survivors affected by Agent Orange in the Vietnam War.  This was the first time the American Legion, collaborated with a civilian group.

THE FRONT RANGE PROJECT…..Life On Rangefrontus, a comic book, was a collaboration between cartoonist Rob Pudim, and the Governor’s Visioning Task Force in which alternate scenarios for development of the 13 Front Range Counties were each depicted.  This comic book was the most widely read document of all the documents created in the Front Range Project.

ART STUDIOS for a Developmentally Disabled Community of 35 Adults. Three one week studios for a developmentally disabled program, the Triministry Program at Forest Heights Nursing Home. Studios included art exhibits of work created that were then shown in the community.

2013-2014…CONSULTED WITH THE INTERNATIONAL DEVELOPMENT COMMITTEE OF HABITAT FOR HUMANITY ST VRAIN VALLEY  (HHSVV) to create an arts element for the build teams of Longmont volunteers who went to Paraguay and South Africa to build homes. All team members created art boxes that held the learning/awareness that filled them from this experience of building homes around the world. Facilitated an international Film Director coming to Longmont to show the first and award winning film filmed in Lesotho, Southern Africa.

IMG_1688IMG_16891986 ANCIENT EARTH…The POTTERS of PELOTSHETLE, Botswana, Africa This was a documentary project undertaken by two artists in collaboration with the National Museum of Botswana, to document the lives and work of old clay potters who lived in Pelotshetle, a remote ‘lands’ area beyond the reach of roads. This ancient art of making pots, was fast disappearing…and this group of women carried on the soon to be lost tradition of making clay pots by hand, then dung firing them. Once this was the only way to create the containers that early tribespeople had.

I spent time in this remote area and created many ways of archiving the lives and work of these women. This included the installation of mud huts with potters at work installed at the National Museum, Gaberone, Botswana, and a national archive of potters work was created for the National Museum of Botswana.

CREATOR AND CURATOR OF TEARS OF THE CHILDREN
TEARS….is an International Collection of Art on Child Abuse which was developed to use art to create a public policy context around the issues related to child sexual abuse. The Collection was a available to communities, courts, schools, churches, legislatures where it was used to educate.

IMG_1746The TEARS Collection includes 1000 works of art all created on handkerchiefs. To build the collection I coordinated 100,000 volunteer hours, developed clinical and legal protocols so the art exhibit could be used across the country. I supervised and trained lawyers, judges, member of Congress, the judiciary, boards of education, universities, clinicians, art therapists etc… to install, staff and use the gallery to educate their communities in the way they thought best. Held 56 exhibits in 25 states across the USA.