By Cordane Meesey
On June 18th, for one brief hour, Sunrise and Sunset will come together to form a radiant Circle of Light. Hattie Ide Chaffee Home and the Smith Hill Library invite the public to join them for a ceremony celebrating this year-long Arts and Health grant project made possible by the RI State Council on the Arts and the Rhode Island Foundation.
Circle of Light is a collaborative effort between two very different communities: an inner-city library where many of the youth are at risk; and a calm, well-regulated home for the elderly in East Providence. But the two groups have more in common than you’d think. We all have a need to be seen and heard, and both the very young and the very old can feel disconnected from mainstream life. The reasons may differ, but the effect is very much the same.
One of the greatest benefits the arts can have on our health is in the area of mental health and well-being. Participating in the arts has a positive effect on people of every age, stimulating thought, elevating mood, and increasing movement and socialization. The arts bring people together. It’s a way to make a real change in the social determinants of health and to improve quality of life for all ages.
With this goal in mind, Hattie Ide Chaffee Home, Smith Hill Library, and artist Cathren Housley joined forces to implement a community collaborative art project to bring multiple generations together and provide large-scale art to enrich the environments of the intergenerational communities that the Home and the Library serve.
“Community Collaborative Art (CCA) was the only real choice for Circle,” says Housley. “It allows individuals to express themselves with pure color and emotion. When I bring the individual paintings together into the larger, overall design, I sometimes enhance colors, but I never alter the composition of the images or the intent of each artist. Everyone who contributes becomes a real part of the creative process and is credited in the final piece.”
HIC has been building an Arts Academy for several years, with strong programs in dance and theater. Rachel Balaban (Teaching Associate and inaugural Artist in Residence at the Warren Alpert Medical School at Brown University) and Barry Marshall (actor, director, and educator in drama and theater) have been improving quality of life for seniors at HIC for several years. Julie Adams Strandberg and Balaban had also built an HIC affiliation with Dance Legacy and Fusionworks. Adding a visual arts program was the next logical step.
With the sponsorship of HIC’s Chief Executive Officer Barry B. Zeltzer, PhD, Strandberg and Housley worked together to land the funding for the project. In order to bring in an intergenerational element, Housley called upon her longtime collaborator at Smith Hill Library, Youth Services Specialist, Jennifer Romans. A schedule was set for workshops and ideas went into motion. This was when the surprises began and more questions arose – what makes CCA unique is that when the artist develops the initial concept they have no idea what kind of art the community will give them, or how it will fit into the visual impact. Circle of Light had an extreme difference in the age of participants. The Smith Hill crew ranged from 4 to 14, with young moms often pitching in. At HIC there wasn’t a painter under 90 in the whole group.
Then there arose the matter of the finished art. It had to enhance both venues; but how to create a single vision that could be shared by two different communities? Housley saw an apt metaphor in the making of the solution: What if two pieces of art were created and designed in such a way that when they joined together, a third piece of art would appear between them, one that represented the beauty and power that the merging of generations could bring?
The task of creating Sunrise fell to the youth and families of Smith Hill, while the residents in HIC painted Sunset. Each 8′ x 4′ collaborative collage utilized the natural colors of dawn and dusk. The design of the paintings is such that when one is inverted and placed over the other, a circle of light is completed by the union of the rising and setting suns.
The paintings will come together once, in celebration, before each returns to its place of origin
as a permanent installation.
You can witness that event at 200 Wampanoag Trail in East Providence on June 18 at 5pm. The Circle of Light union will be a surprise, even to the artists who were part of its creation. Join the artists and organizers for the revelation and revelry. Refreshments will be served.
Ed note: Cordane Meesey is the artistically adventurous pen name and persona of artist Cathren Housley