An Artist's Journey

One spring morning in 2009 I received a newspaper clipping in the mail from my friend, Lyn.  It was an article about ArtPrize coming to our city.  She had written across it in red ink, “You should enter a painting,” ArtPrize, a citywide event was launched in Grand Rapids that year.  I didn't think I was ready for competition. I had packed away my paint brushes for fifteen years while raising our four children as a Navy wife stateside and overseas. But with Lyn's encouragement, I decided to take it on. At that point, very few artists completely understood the scope of ArtPrize. It was new. We were all part of an experiment. 

The next year I entered again, this time with more confidence. Cindy, my cousin, phoned with an idea: “Pamela, would you like to develop an art piece for the American Heart Association with the Go Red for Women initiative?” It took me only moments to respond, “Sure. We will need a young survivor with a story.” She was ready. “I have the perfect family. I’ll get in touch with the Ruggeri’s and get back to you.” A few days later she called back, “They’re in.” 

As part of entering, the artist has to find a venue to display her work—a bank wall, a hotel lobby, a restaurant, a city park. I struggled to secure a place. One curator said, “We receive 500 emails a day from hopeful artists looking for a place to hang their work.” Learning that I was unable to find a place, Mr. Ruggeri offered to speak to his contact at the Amway Grand Hotel. That life-changing phone call secured a spot for my first exhibit, Woman in Red. I breathed a sigh of relief. Unknown to me at the time, that prime location jumpstarted a career. Three years later the hotel management told me people were still talking about Woman in Red. 

In 2011, at the invitation of Metro Hospital, I created an exhibit focused on Kara, a young cancer survivor. Adjacent to three watercolor paintings, I placed a metal tree where people could hang notes to honor loved ones who struggled with cancer. Including a hands-on feature felt like a big risk. This was the first time I had tried an interactive exhibit. Optimistically, I decided to prepare 1500 cards for participants' notes.  The first exhibit day felt nerve-wracking. Would people respond? 

By the second day, all 1500 cards hung on the tree. Every few days, my husband rushed to the print shop to get more cards. My mother bought all the kite string at three Home Depots. Daily, streams of people flooded into the exhibit space. All day long, I cut string for cards. Hundreds of visitors paused by my table to tell their stories. 

People of all ages came. Some shed tears; some hung their cards and took photos. Others stood quietly by the tree and reflected. All the effort felt worthwhile when I overheard a visitor say, "Just the act of writing the message and hanging it on the tree made me feel like I was part of the healing process." 

One afternoon I noticed a young woman lingering at the Healing Tree with her phone. She explained, “Our friend, James, has terminal cancer. My other friend is at the hospital spending the last few minutes with him.” Then her phone rang. James had passed away. In that sacred moment, the young woman hung a memorial card on the tree that read, “James lost his battle.” By the close of ArtPrize that year, 20,000 cards dangled from the tree. Each of them represented a story.

By 2014, five years of hard work began to bring new, unexpected opportunities. That year I created The Scarlet Cord in a collaboration with Women At Risk, International (shown at bottom), to raise awareness of sex trafficking in America, even in places like Grand Rapids. Inside a 40-foot storage container at the Ford Museum, thirty weathered doors lined the walls. A red cord looped around each door handle, binding the doors and five works of art together.

Those doors represented thousands of abused children living behind closed doors. While seventy volunteers helped tie scarlet cords around the wrists of 30,000 visitors, dozens of women lined up to tell our team their stories of sexual abuse. Speaking up for the very first time, they wanted someone to acknowledge their pain; they needed to grieve out loud. After the enormous response to this work, The Scarlet Cord traveled to Northwestern Michigan College, Grand Valley State University, Acton Institute in Grand Rapids, and Phoenix, Arizona by special invitation for the week of the 2015 Super Bowl.

For ArtPrize in 2015, I designed an exhibit called Hometown Hero to commemorate the life of Army Spc. Eric T. Burri, a local soldier who lost his life in Iraq at twenty-two. The exhibit featured Eric’s portrait set against a backdrop of a massive American flag in the lobby of the Amway Hotel. I decided to use acrylics, though I had hardly any experience with the medium. It was a risk. I had only a dim cell phone image to work from for the bigger-than-life portrait. 

Hometown Hero invited visitors to honor their own heroes by recording their names on the painting. Many Vietnam veterans among the visitors stepped up to the painting, and stood for a moment of silence, before solemnly recording the name of a fallen comrade. Then they stepped back for a final salute. Tens of thousands of visitors swarmed the art piece. The flag became thick with layers and layers of names. 

As visitors searched for a spot to record a name, I reassured them that it was alright if the names overlapped. Some of them squeezed a name into the space inside letters like O and Q.  The flag full of names became a visible reminder of how our lives are interconnected. Our heroes bind us together.  

The ArtPrize public voted Hometown Hero into the Top 20. It took 3rd place in its category. Afterward a new version of the exhibit traveled to the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. 

Some of my pieces have reached out to a more general audience. Let Go was selected for ArtPrize in 2017, again at the Amway Hotel. I collaged a 19-foot waterscape with yards of tulle fabric and pre-written let-go notes. Visitors were invited to identify a struggle, write a let-go note, crumple it, and toss it into the sea. The top of the painting represented the sea with shades of teal, blue, and white for waves. The netting below the large seascape represented the beach, where people tossed their notes.

Leading up to that exhibit, I created my own Let Go exercise. I was struggling at the time with a personal issue. Each morning that summer, I wrote a "let go" note on a piece of vellum paper, crinkled it, and tossed it over the edge of our bed. The notes started to stack up. By the end of summer, to my husband's chagrin, the big stack of wadded-up paper had risen to the top of our mattress. The hand-written notes stayed on the carpet for a few months, my reminder of no “take backs.” Elements of each ArtPrize exhibit often found a place in our home, inside or outside, as I tried to figure out how to develop each piece. 

Everyone who came seemed to want to let go of something. By the end of the 19-day exhibit, all the paper had been used. Seventy thousand let-go notes were stacked up three feet deep. The "sand" covered a gigantic area on the carpet in front of the seascape. Many of the participants, as they wrote their notes, spoke of experiencing sense of renewal. Small conversations at the installation revealed a surprising level of vulnerability among those willing to share stories of forgiveness, acceptance, and reconciliation. 

Every year people wanted to know how I kept track of the number of visitors that engaged with the work. It was easy. My volunteer team packed all the materials participants needed—cards, paper, string—1,000 pieces in each Ziplock bag. At the end of each ArtPrize day, I counted the empty bags. Five empty bags meant 5,000 people had participated. Each exhibit offered a different way to participate. 

Following ArtPrize that year, I heard numerous stories about people gathered at office water coolers, asking each other, "What did you let go of?" The healing waves from Let Go were washing across the city.

During the first couple of years, I never envisioned this big a plan for my art. I was still experimenting with what it meant to be a community-based artist. Most of the time, the work took shape with little yeses along the way. People showed up to help each time. I'm not sure why.  I always had enough volunteers, mostly my friends. Some felt passionate about raising public awareness. Others simply brought their generous hearts. 

In 2016, in the middle of my ArtPrize years, I founded Healing in Arts under the guidance of several mentors, with the support of the Marvin Veltkamp and a small handful of key donors. By 2022 it seemed clear it was time to launch out on our own and establish an official nonprofit. Initially, fear held me back. What if I couldn’t secure enough funding? What if things didn’t work out? But I moved forward in spite of these uncertainties. 

Last year we launched our first big international project, sending a thousand art kits to children in Ukraine and Mexico. To pull it off, my dear friend, Kathy Pluymert, and her family helped assemble a thousand drawstring backpacks filled with art supplies: paint, brushes, watercolor paper, and instruction cards printed in their languages. 

In 2024 Healing in Arts created a project for Mollie’s House, a safe house in central California for teenage girls rescued from sex trafficking. Our workshops continue to stretch across the country from Alaska to Florida to Virginia to California. This year our art team traveled to Budapest, Hungry to facilitate a series of workshops for people gathered from all over the world. 

I’m thankful to ArtPrize for the gigantic opportunity to develop as a person and an artist and eventually to establish an art-focused nonprofit. The process required more of me than I anticipated. Many times, I thought about quitting. Along the way, I faced a lot of disappointments—what I call my art wounds. But I managed to learn from each situation and move forward. I had to grow into each opportunity, to step into scary invitations, ready or not. Each experience prepared me for the next. With every step, my gratitude has grown. I believe in what I now consider a sacred calling. I'm waiting to see what door opens next.