This introduces a new practice in my jazz-like interweaving of many art practices which I’ve been blessed to work within.  I am referring to the Community Art Project SEEN and HEARD which I propose to launch in the Spring of 2015  in the communities in which I live and  I work; Northwest Indiana and Tinley Park, respectively

If you’d like to be a participant in this practice,  here is a link to the  form on the SeenHeard Community Art Project website which will allow you to tell your story through two particular senses:  Sight and Hearing – hence the project’s name “SeenHeard”  

If you’d like to know more about the proposal I am presenting to potential community partners, it includes the following ambitious objectives.  If you’d like to get involved in any way, contact us on the SeenHeard website .

The Socially Engaged Art Project Objectives are:

• To create an evocative art work, (which has process as a key component)  that facilitates people’s  sensory recollection and a way of sharing those recollections of moments, places, and emotions in their own lives.
• To strengthen and deepen connections in the community through the sharing of people’s stories and the collective experience of  create a  new socially engaged art work (process) about these experience.
• To create an aesthetically appealing and memorable installation/work of art (process and product)
• To raise awareness and experience of collective art making as a creative collaborative act of the community, thus a compelling force for transforming individual and communal life  in deep and meaningful ways
• To create an art work (process) that is provocative and critical enough to make people think about issues beyond the scope of the work, to call into question superficial assumptions
• To engage artists in the community in the development and implementation of  a model for ongoing collaboration with the larger local community in planning and executing collective art work that has as a goal the understanding that art is not an elite activity, but is the creative birthright of all people
• To set the stage for an ongoing community efforts to continue making new socially engaged art dealing with issues of importance to the community