Meet Pamela

Behind the Artwork8 Comments

Voices project 2022

Pamela started painting as a ten-year-old, when her mom enrolled her in an adult art class. Her dad taught her how to draw on paper napkins after dinner. Decades later, her artwork expanded from individual paintings to include participatory art with a focus on healing and resilience. Drawing on Pamela’s own journey towards restoration, following the breakdown of her parent’s marriage during her childhood, these responsive projects help foster community through art, creativity, and storytelling.

After raising four children, Pamela reached one of her life goals and completed her master of fine arts degree from Azusa Pacific University, forty years after her undergraduate work. Overflowing with creativity, innovation, and passion, Pamela hopes to complete another twenty years of work before retiring.

Pamela Alderman Art

Hometown Hero painting in progress

In 2006, Pamela launched her art business out of her garage studio. After several years of hard lessons and failure, Pamela closed her online store with art prints and art cards. She pivoted to accepting a limited amount of commission work each year and creating interactive community-based work. With this change, Pamela Alderman Art took off. Year after year, while exhibiting her work at ArtPrize, a large art event held in Grand Rapids, Michigan, her audience kept growing. People felt drawn to her hands-on projects.

Her first interactive public installation, called Braving the Wind, focused on cancer survivors. For the project, she prepared 1,500 interactive note cards for audience members to write notes. Those supplies lasted for three days. Over the next two weeks, her husband and mom scrambled to buy more note cards. By the end of the event, 20,000 individuals had written note cards to remember their loved ones battling cancer.

A couple years later, more than 20,000 people wrote wishes and prayers for children in need at Wing and a Prayer. Each year her interactive installations, based on sex-trafficking, bullying, or letting go, continued to expand with 50,000, then 65,000, then 70,000 participants. But Pamela openly shares the secret behind her work at her public speaking events: “My prayer team and I circle the location for my next art project every month for a year leading up to the following exhibit. My business model isn’t complicated. Every year I follow the same steps of prayer, hard work, and integrity. God continues to grant success and the audience continues to grow.”

“It’s been a huge honor showing my work in Phoenix during the 2015 Super Bowl and at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C.,” says Pamela. “But I’m just as content creating a unique fine art piece with a few incarcerated teens from Girls Court or the profoundly handicapped children at Pine Grove Learning Center. Whether my audience is 70,000 people or seven individuals, I put the same intense effort into each art piece. I love to be around other people, and I love to create art. With a combination of the two, I love my work!” For her next goal, Pamela hopes to write a book about her healing art journey.

Healing in Arts

Youth for Christ Stories project

In 2016, ten years after starting her art business, Pamela’s mentor urged her to start a nonprofit. For the first several years, a local business man, Marvin Veltkamp, generously hosted what Pamela calls, “Healing in Arts,” under Libertas Foundation. Last fall, seven years later, Healing in Arts became an official 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Pamela describes it, “Along with my creative team, I create interactive collaborative art projects.” This work fosters creative care and resilience with community groups, including cancer patients, Congolese refugees, children on the autism spectrum, sex trafficking survivors, and veterans struggling with PTSD.

These various interactive projects cultivate a sense of community by demonstrating the value of each and every person. Participants respond to the transformative power within these hands-on projects while exploring relevant topics and how to be part of the solution. Pamela says, “Because of our donor support, many experience release and gain a sense of new beginnings in our collective journey towards growth. Amazingly, my childhood trauma ended up fueling this volunteer creative work years later.” Art serves as the catalyst for personal and corporate healing.

It is Pamela’s dream to put another fifteen years of sweat equity into Healing in Arts before handing it off to younger women of color. Currently, Healing in Arts board members form a diverse creative group that crosses boundary lines of skin color and generations and locations with a single mission of empowering people and inspiring hope through collaborative art.

Butterfly Kaleidoscope project

If you would like to be part of something bigger than yourself, click here and help spread healing through art.

Broken Wings: ArtPrize Blunder

Behind the Artwork

Throughout the ArtPrize years with over 270,000 individuals personally interacting with my healing work by writing notes, signing names, hanging paper prayers, or tying ribbons, I have gained a decade of experience as the maker of participatory artwork. But I also have had to learn—how to flow—with the interactive nature of each work from some very painful mistakes. Here’s an example of one of those difficult lessons:

In 2011 at Braving the Wind, an exhibit about remembering cancer survivors, visitors were invited to write a note and hang it on the metal Healing Tree. Most people understood the purpose for the interactive work. But a French family misunderstood.

Their son had written a birthday wish to a friend and hung it on the Healing Tree. When they mentioned the birthday note in their broken English, I explained that the work was for cancer survivors. They were so embarrassed that they removed their son’s note and left. In that terrible moment, I realized my blunder. It really didn’t matter that they had misinterpreted the work. I had ruined the healing moment for that dear family.

Consequently, I learned a big lesson. The hard way! I would have done anything to have had a second chance to redo the conversation with that French family.

But my failure taught me a valuable lesson: Pamela, let the work uniquely speak to each individual! Whether people understand the exact meaning of the work or not, it doesn’t matter. Just let the work work!

That same year a few days later, a female visitor also had a unique response. Divorce had been her cancer. So, she hung a note about her pain-filled divorce. Throughout the years, my interactive work has prompted many special healing occasions for ArtPrize visitors and helped me gain experience in allowing it to happen.

This year at Broken Wings, my ArtPrize Ten work about bullying and school shooting, a woman started crying when she realized that the exhibit invited interaction. Her sister had died as a result of burns in an accident. Overcome by the beauty of the work: A healing moment was born. As she wrote a precious remembrance on a band for her sister, she asked me to snap a photo. The tears continued to flow as she connected the band onto Broken Wings. The work invited this tender moment.

Because my bumbling interaction with the French family is still fresh in my memory, valuable lessons have been gained on how to adapt with each situation. Interactive healing art needs to be fluid. And each healing work works differently. So, a decade later, I have had over 270,000 opportunities for personal growth moments with each special healing interaction!

What mistakes have turned into life lessons for you?

Broken Wings
Grand Rapids Public Museum
272 Pearl Street NW (west of the river)
September 19 to October 7, 2018
Vote #66688

In light of the recent tragic school shootings across America, find out how you can create positive change from national bullying specialist Jeff Veley.

Share your story #BrokenWings

Our healing art involves you—because you matter!

Braving the Wind: Kara’s Story

Behind the Artwork

Braving the Wind at ArtPrize 2011

Kara, a young woman, had been battling cancer for several years. To portray her story for ArtPrize 2011, I combined the paintings of Kara in Braving the Wind with an interactive metal Healing Tree. Visitors were invited to write notes, honoring loved ones struggling with cancer and then hanging the notes on the tree. This was the first time I created an interactive healing installation. Now visitors had the opportunity to expand the work with their own stories.

Years later, Kara and I reconnected. We had a special opportunity to sit down and discuss our ArtPrize journey: An immersive experience with the ArtPrize audience. Art had made a bridge for us to connect and develop a special friendship while the art also had created a pathway to inspire exhibit visitors. Through Kara’s perseverance and willingness to help others—in the midst of her own reoccurring cancer battle—20,000 ArtPrize visitors ended up being inspired to participate.

How can you encourage a friend or loved one battling cancer or simply help a friend in need?

Visit healinginarts.org to learn more about our inspirational work.

Our healing art involves you—because you matter!

Let Go and Peace

Behind the Artwork

Close-up of a section of Let GoThe threads of past exhibits continue to be sewn in and out of my current artwork. During ArtPrize 2011, Metro Health Hospital invited me to portray Kara’s cancer story. So I created Braving the Wind which tells Kara’s remarkable story of determination and hope after her reoccurring battles with cancer.

This letter from “Warrior of Hope” is from another friendship that resulted from ArtPrize 2011. A friendship, like Kara’s, that has been woven into my life. After meeting these brave survivors, I have a tremendous respect for their enduring spirits.

Dear Life,

One day my life came to a screeching halt. I had a massive collision with my status quo. My sense of “comfortable” suddenly became very uncomfortable—even terrifying. My divorce and cancer diagnosis shook me up and left me in complete despair—fragmented, bruised, and scarred. Thoughts of “What’s next?” or “Where do I turn from here?” frequented my mind.

Over time, I began to realize that life is not all about me, so I asked myself: “What can I learn from my circumstances?” One thing I learned is this: “Never give up and to keep on fighting!” There is ALWAYS hope. Real life miracles really do still happen.

I have now survived two cancer diagnoses and defied the odds; I still get to celebrate life. I may be permanently disabled according to the doctors. However, I have a lot of life and hope still left. My journey has reminded me of how precious life really is. And as a result, I’m learning to have a great appreciation for everything.

So I’m letting go of my fear of the unknown. I’m letting go of my fear of cancer. And I’m letting go of my fear of being alone.

Letting go and resting peacefully,
Warrior of Hope

Note: One hundred twenty-six participants pre-submitted Let Go letters and sentences to be collaged into the painting. The names and some details have been changed to protect identities.

Seven Years at ArtPrize

Behind the Artwork

Pamela Alderman - Seven years at ArtPrizePamela Alderman, a seven-year ArtPrize artist and a three-year finalist, creates interactive works that touch thousands of visitors with the message of hope and healing. Following ArtPrize, Pamela’s installations continue to be exhibited; The Scarlet Cord, from ArtPrize 2014, was featured in Phoenix during Super Bowl 2015.

ArtPrize History: Companions 2009, Woman in Red 2010, Braving the Wind 2011, Courage Ablaze 2012 (Top 100), Wing and a Prayer 2013 (Top 50), The Scarlet Cord 2014 (Top 25), Hometown Hero 2015

ArtPrize: Building Healing Environments

Behind the Artwork

Dad and son filling out Hope Card

ArtPrize* ushered my artwork onto a large stage—with 70,000 people visiting the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel where I showcased my work in 2011. But for me, ArtPrize also became a catalyst to discover a hidden gift: an unexplored talent. I learned that I don’t just paint watercolors; I also build healing environments. Florence Nightingale, a nurse who helped soldiers on the battlefield over a century ago, explains the connection between healing and art. She said, “Variety of form and brilliancy of color in the object presented to patients are an actual means of recovery.”

In creating a mini healing environment with my 2010 Woman in Red collection—three watercolor paintings depicting a young woman’s struggle with a heart problem combined with a red dress on a mannequin—I learned something about the powerful healing potential of art. Within a five-minute interaction, visitors emotionally connected with my work; three years later people are still asking me, “Are you the red dress artist?”

Then in 2011, nearly 20,000 ArtPrize visitors actively participated in the healing process. Braving the Wind—a collection of three watercolor paintings portraying a young woman’s fight against cancer and an interactive Healing Tree—facilitated a healing environment that had a life of its own. By hanging Hope Cards on the tree, visitors remembered loved ones who had battled with cancer. As the artist, I only needed to get out of the way and allow others to become part of the artistic process. Many shed tears, and I witnessed precious interactions.

A window honoring Congo’s Silent Heroes—rape survivors from half a world away—and seven-foot pillars portraying the stories of courageous refugee women prompted several ArtPrize 2012 visitors to confide their own rape stories. In those tender moments, Courage Ablaze helped facilitate small steps towards healing.

ArtPrize provided the opportunity to create the healing environments, and visitors validated art’s healing potential. “Art offers the power to pause,” said New York artist Makoto Fujimura, “and the potential to find healing.” Combining meaningful stories with paintings that convey hope have helped many people process their pain and experience healing.

*ArtPrize is the world’s largest open art competition since 2009. For over two weeks, the entire Grand Rapids downtown changes into an art venue while public-based voting decides the winner. This unique event involves local and international artists and the active participation of the community.