Nature’s Light: Arts as Healing in Juvenile Justice 

Ongoing Painting Exhibit at Monterey Regional Airport

I have been extremely privileged to expand my teaching efforts in the community to include outreach with youth in the juvenile justice system through a California State grant-Jump StARTs.  Some of the work is now on display at the Monterey Regional Airport.  Travel through and experience the journey of self-expression from a different perspective.  The exhibit is accessible and open to the public-no tickets needed.  

Each object in this important show “Take me Back,” reflecting Monterey County’s history through the magic of museums, has a specific story to tell.  The Youth Art exhibit is a collection of visual stories about our incarcerated youth first learning to create naturalistic imagery and the transformation that began.

            

Our Youth Gallery exhibit, Nature’s Light: Arts as Healing in Juvenile Justice takes us back to our Youth Center resident students’ first major effort to create naturalistic paintings during a

Summer arts intensive in 2013.

This was a pivotal point in our collaborative arts program that led to student creation of 6-foot long group paintings depicting “Windows on the Outside World” now hanging in the County Office building.  Further building on this, by the end of 2014 our resident artists were working on the completion of

400 square feet of Naturalistic Murals for the Secret Garden in their own facility.

In 2015 after exhibitions in the community, they received a Senate commendation for

 “Creating outstanding art that will be on display in Monterey County”. 

Monterey County then received the National Association of Counties (NACo) 2015 National Arts and Culture award for Solutions and Innovation based on our collaborative design and impact of our arts program in achieving “life-changing” results.