"This painting marks years of walking through a certain kind of night—a deep walk through ancestral healing of trauma around abuse, trying to listen and find a route …that could help clear this pattern of abuse in the family. This was medicine for that. ...There is help and assistance that is not always visible. It was a turning point for me as a mother, artist, and human."- Denise, portrait subject and co-creator
Forming a creative collective, dreaming ways for art to touch people and communities
After a twenty-year hiatus, Jeffrey Dorsey began painting once again. Over five years, twelve rich and intimate portraits emerged, each portraying someone with a full and remarkable story. He calls the project Another Light. (You can see more about his process, the people and the paintings on Jeffrey’s Facebook page for the first phase of this project.)
Given Jeffrey’s heart for people and community, and the breadth and diversity of personal stories found among the portrait subjects, a traditional gallery exhibit doesn’t seem right. The search to figure out the right fit led to a pair of questions:
– How might this collection of story-laden portraits be a catalyst for profound public conversations?
– What if the answer was created collectively by the artist and his subjects?
Select details of the paintings
Click to enlarge
This is just the sort of question that lights us up.
Platforms for voices that touch lives. Acts of collective creativity. Courageous conversations about trauma, healing, race, power, loss, and transformation. We couldn’t resist.
With Jeffrey taking the lead, the collective has started dreaming of ways that the paintings, people, and their stories can create opportunities for collective healing. The next steps for phase II, called Another Light: Making Space for Healing, involve identifying spaces to install the project, building co-created public and private programming led by participants of the collective, and raising funds to market and document this phase.
Okay Then’s Marc Rettig is supporting the work through planning and playful imagination, and hosting and facilitation. Okay Then aims to stick with the collective through the long creative process, because we know something wonderful can happen when these stories meet new communities.