"Common Ground" project takes flight
Artist partners meet to kick off new mental health art collaboration
Participants in FACEing Mental Illness’s new collaborative art project gathered for the first time recently to meet their artist partners and begin exploring the commonalities in their mental health journeys that will become the basis for the artwork they will produce for an exhibition next April.
“Common Ground: Finding Connections Within Our Human Struggle” is an outgrowth of the original FMI “Art of Acceptance” art/journalism project that took place in 2016-27 and culminated in an exhibition of self-portraits created by people with lived mental health experience. For the current project — which is a collaboration between FMI, the nonprofit SPAACES Art Gallery and SRQ Strong, a nonprofit committed to increasing awareness about the impact of trauma — individuals with lived experience are being matched with professional artist partners. Each of 14 partner teams will produce a work of art, in any medium, that visualizes and shares the mutual feelings and emotions in their mental health experiences.
The goal of the project and exhibition is to normalize mental health challenges and reduce stereotypes, misconceptions and discrimination against anyone who has struggled with trauma, emotions, feelings or any diagnosed or undiagnosed mental health condition.
At this initial meeting, participants met at the SPAACES gallery to enjoy refreshments, get to know one another and meet their partners. Everyone was asked to share why they were drawn to the project and also to relate one “fun fact” about themselves.
Many of the professional artists expressed enthusiasm for collaborating with a partner, since their work is usually done in isolation. Others said they looked forward to exploring new mediums and thinking “outside the box.” Among the “fun facts” shared: one participant revealed she was a seashell collector who’d found a rare junonia shell on Lido beach; another revealed he had just gotten married the week prior.
After introductions, participants each received an envelope that contained the name of their artist partner. The remainder of the meeting was spent with the partners getting to know one another and sharing some preliminary ideas about their potential artwork.
Artists teams are now free to meet as often as they like, from now until the exhibition next April, both to talk and to create. There will also be designated times when they can work in the gallery space itself. FMI will be visiting each team and documenting their process and progress over the next four months. There will be another group meeting of all teams in early December; after which we’ll share photos of all the teammates.
We hope this collaborative art making process will allow the teams to embody their struggles, insights and coping mechanisms in a visual medium that can be shared with viewers who will, in turn, better understand the emotional struggles in their own lives. The project will also demonstrate how the creativity and expression that can be fostered through any art form can be an important factor in caring for our mental well-being. Not only will the teams receive the satisfaction of seeing their final pieces displayed in a professional exhibition space, we hope they will feel a sense of empowerment and connection by sharing their valuable lived experience.
All participants in “Common Ground,” including the collaborating organizers, are donating their time to the project. If you’d like to help with the expenses involved in art materials, promotion and exhibition costs, we welcome tax-deductible donations to the SPAACES Art Foundation (nonprofit EIN 84-500-4237). You can donate online at the SPAACES website (https://spaaces.art) or send a check to SPAACES, at 2087 Princeton St., Sarasota, FL 34237.
We look forward to sharing photos and stories with you about our artists teams and the work they are developing in the coming months. Please stay tuned!