HEALING THROUGH ART:
The Kentucky Museum’s US Bank Celebration of the Arts offers creatives an opportunity to share grief
“Do you do hugs?” Hoffman asked Ramsey, moved to tears.
Gallery lights cast a warm glow on the artworks, artists, and patrons packed-in tightly at Western Kentucky University’s Kentucky Museum Friday evening, Feb. 25 of 2022, for the annual US Bank Celebration of the Arts.
Among the multitude of artists on display at the competitive exhibition, three shared a common practice: artmaking as a means of healing through grief.
Long-time Bowling Green resident Robert L. Smith, 78, said it was his wife’s dying wish that he took up photography as a hobby, after she passed.
“Even on her deathbed, she was thinking of me,” Smith said. His photograph, Cobblestone Cottage, depicts a small structure tucked away in sunbeam oranges, greens, and yellows of the woods at Kentucky’s Mammoth Cave National Park.
Though his wife’s request surprised him, Smith said, his quest to fulfil it has helped him to recover. Since her death, he’s traveled to numerous national parks across the U.S. in search of photographs, he said.
“Every time I’m out hiking, looking at all the beauty, I’m thinking of her,” Smith said.
On the second-floor showroom, Elizabeth Hoffman, a 2017 graduate of Western Kentucky University with degrees in graphic design and sculpture, stood before her piece.
Hoffman’s work titled Here I’m Happy, a large tapestry of watercolor pages from her children’s book three-years in the making, placed first in the professional drawing and illustration category. Its story follows a young squirrel through a journey of mourning—something Hoffman experienced herself, after the death of her mother, when she was 15.
“She used all of her emotion to develop the work,” said her father, Roland Hoffman, 61, an alumnus of Western Kentucky University himself.
“Her process of working through the grief has helped heal others,” he said. Hung on a display facing Hoffman’s, Stephanie Ramsey’s We All Have the Same Emotions, placed second in professional graphic design and digital art.
“All of my pieces are on mental health,” said Ramsey, a student at South Central Kentucky Community and Technical College.
“When my best friend died of ovarian cancer, the first thing I did was draw,” she said. In part, because of how art helped her to heal, Ramsey said that she hopes to become an art therapist.
Standing between their two works, Ramsey and Hoffman visited throughout the evening, sharing the experiences and stories behind their work.In a moment of respite from the bustle of the gallery, the two young artists shared a moment.
“Do you do hugs?” Hoffman asked Ramsey, moved to tears.