The Collaboration of Story: Healing Imprint

Behind the Artwork

Healing Imprint project on display

Healing Imprint: This multi-media collage series embodies the history, suffering, and grief of our neighbors, while exploring cultural conflict in a new way. The scattered placement of random forms on the raw canvas portrays the disconnect. In life and in art, our personal narratives define us. But strangers’ stories also matter, because they are part of the collective whole. As part of this project’s interactive exploration, gallery visitors are invited to continue the artwork. By adding their story or expressing their ideas on the paintings with a pen or Sharpie, participants leave a healing imprint. The responsive work calls for empathic listening, with the intentional act to include the other.

Detail of Healing Imprint
Detail of Healing Imprint
Detail of Healing Imprint

Tie a Yellow Ribbon

General

Yellow ribbons with hand written messages on trees

The Voices collection, featured at Veterans Memorial Park for ArtPrize, also gives the audience a chance to speak. Visitors are invited to write an encouraging note on a yellow ribbon and tie it to a tree, as a way to use their voice to support those who fight for our country. Following ArtPrize, the Blue Star Mothers will include the yellow ribbons in care packages to deployed soldiers and to veterans as a reminder of this community that supports them.

Here’s how it works

Write a thank-you note on a yellow ribbon and tie it to the trees. Let a veteran know that you are thankful for their service. Consider volunteering for a veteran cause, hiring a veteran, or even listening to a vet’s stories. Our veterans have sacrificed so much for our country; choose one way you can help give back to them to encourage art’s healing power.

Write an inspiring note:

Thank you for your service…
Thank you for your sacrifice…
Thank you for the freedom we enjoy…
Your service will never be forgotten…
I appreciate you for…

Our new type of ArtPrize venue gives veterans a voice as they share their stories of struggle and healing through art.

Yellow Ribbon is showcasing at Veterans Memorial Park

A special thanks to Kent County Veterans Services, Zero Day, Office Max in Grandville, and Healing in Arts for making this collaboration of veteran stories possible.

ArtPrize 2021: Introducing Artist and Co-Curator Pamela Alderman

Behind the Artwork

Decorated broken tree sculptures for Pamela Alderman's ArtPrize 2021 Yellow Ribbon installation

As a veteran wife and military mom, I designed a responsive piece called Yellow Ribbon, in partnership with Kent County Veterans Services, to honor our veterans. But this year, my expanding ArtPrize role included coaching twenty-one veterans in creating their own ArtPrize entries at Veterans Memorial Park. Each of these ArtPrize entries tells the veteran’s story—dealing with homelessness, PTSD, military sexual trauma, and veteran suicide. With the oldest veteran of our group turning 90, our veterans from World War II, Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan represent diverse unity.

Although composed of separate ArtPrize entries, our collaborative venue offers freedom of creativity, despite the veterans’ injuries or lack of artistic training. Over the next couple of weeks, I will be introducing the healing art and artists from our new type of ArtPrize venue, where veterans come together to share the story of struggle—speaking hope into their darkest conflicts.

Yellow Ribbon

Yellow Ribbon around tree

Families tie yellow ribbons around trees to represent support for military loved ones returning home; the yellow ribbon also symbolizes suicide prevention. Expanding these traditions, I designed a veteran collaboration, called Yellow Ribbon, in partnership with Kent County Veterans Services. The broken, abstract trees portray the veterans’ resilience despite the long-term effects of PTSD, military sexual trauma, and veteran suicide. Dozens of veterans and their families, ranging in age from 2 to 92, helped sponge-paint the background.

The work also features four 8 x 10 paintings created by veterans. Exhibit visitors are invited to write uplifting notes on yellow ribbons and tie them to the trees, to honor and thank the veterans for their sacrifice. Following the exhibition, the Blue Star Mothers, a support group for military moms, will include the yellow ribbons in care packages for deployed soldiers.

Veteran workshop for creating Yellow Ribbon for ArtPrize

Our new type of ArtPrize venue gives veterans a voice as they share their stories of struggle and healing through art.

Yellow Ribbon is showcasing at Veterans Memorial Park.

A special thanks to Kent County Veterans Services, Zero Day, Office Max in Grandville, and Healing in Arts for making this collaboration of veteran stories possible.

ArtPrize 2021: The Yellow Ribbon Story

Behind the Artwork

Veteran workshop for creating Yellow Ribbon for ArtPrize

The initial concept for Yellow Ribbon took root, in partnership with Kent County Veterans Services, as we set our sights on ArtPrize 2020. Over the next few months, this community-based work involved ten veteran art workshops across West Michigan. We initially planned six workshops, but the interest level kept growing; veterans and their families felt excited to be part of this ArtPrize project.

In early 2020, the first workshop, sponsored by 92 for 22, swelled to capacity with eager vets and their loved ones. At the American Legion in Caledonia, Michigan, Vietnam veterans, along with their grandchildren, produced some beautiful art pieces. Female veterans gathered in Greenville, and aging vets from Grand Rapids Veterans Home also participated. The following month, more than 70 enthusiastic vets, along with their spouses, parents, siblings, and children, crammed into the historic American Legion in Marne to create art.

Veteran workshop for creating Yellow Ribbon for ArtPrize

As the pandemic emerged, the workshops came to a halt. But later in the summer, when the spread of COVID-19 slowed, we met outside with Veterans Upward Bound and WINC (For All Women Veterans), for the next phase of the work. In keeping with social distance protocols, each veteran or family group worked at a separate table and helped paint the background of the large wooden panels. Meanwhile, at Breton Woods of Holland Home, the elderly veterans received personal art kits to create their art pieces within the safety of their own rooms.

Veteran workshop for creating Yellow Ribbon for ArtPrize

Although we faced a pandemic, national political unrest, and the cancellation of ArtPrize 2020, we continued to find alternative ways to safely engage veterans. Everyone appreciated the camaraderie and the chance to be part of something bigger than themselves. As ArtPrize regrouped for 2021, the Yellow Ribbon project proved to be an important opportunity to help galvanize the West Michigan veteran community—especially during such extraordinary times.

Veteran workshop for creating Yellow Ribbon for ArtPrize

We would like to express hearty appreciation to the following organizations for their collaborative involvement in the Yellow Ribbon art workshops:

Girls Up Club – Zoom Art Workshop

Behind the Artwork

Girls Up interactive project

For the Girls Up motivational talk with Healing in Arts, I began by sharing how, as a 22-year-old, I was considering an art graduate program on the West coast. But I decided to reset my values and goals, changing directions. Instead, I went to Japan, to teach Japanese people how to speak English. After my talk, the girls colored wooden tiles with colorful patterns and completed the art mystery by building the wooden puzzle that formed a large butterfly. To end our session, I gave this challenge and encouragement: “When we give our lives to others, through whatever career choices we make, one day we will be able to look back and see the vibrant pattern of hope and healing.”

Girls Up Zoom meeting

Color Me Orange Collaboration

Behind the Artwork

Color Me Orange collaborative project

We shared one of our community projects and the corresponding lesson about swimming against the flow of culture with artist Dawn Baker from Alert Ministries. Alert creatively services incarcerated teenage boys at a Dallas juvenile detention center. Due to increased restrictions because of the pandemic, we encouraged Alert to actively seek permission to get the colorful artwork installed inside the boys’ living space—healing art lifts the heart. Previously, no artwork had been allowed, so we felt thrilled to see the finished wooden tiles, painted by thirteen teens, hanging in their common area.

Stories: A Healing in Arts Collaboration

Behind the Artwork

Stories project plan and completion

We are honored to create Stories, a collaboration with Youth For Christ and MDV Housing, located in Kalamazoo, Michigan. For this collective project, students within YFC’s program painted their own unique story on a wooden tile to include in the collage. The work emphasizes the importance of our personal stories and how our narratives define us. We also discussed how, if we need to make changes in our lives, we can rewrite our stories.

Collage of images from Stories collaborative workshop

Stories collaborative/interactive workshop