Art of Community

Nayely Furcal Marte ’23 Major: Business Economics and Global Studies Faculty Mentor: Nicholas Longo, Global Studies Art has been used to create a spacious place for many people and has been a way to express themselves differently without using communication. There are many ways to do art: art can be painting, sculpture, literature, agriculture, cinema, music, or theater, no matter how individuals use it to help release emotions. Creating art as the artist or using it as the audience can help lift depression and positively heal mental health. Using art as a way of healing has represented patients and individuals throughout their lives. The power of art can lift many emotions. Where many patients’ illness affects their lives countless times: affecting their social relationships and moods; all over the world, patients’ disease takes over their victims. The disease takes control of all the patients around the world. It impacts their emotions, causing stress, influencing their social life, and most importantly, negatively impacting their health. When a person gets diagnosed with a chronic illness, they also suffer from depression, stress, and anxiety. Art is a way to help develop and compact the adverse effects that diseases create on the human body, including stress, depression, and anxiety. Dr. Fred Schitman once said, “You can cure a disease, but healing an illness requires the elements of art.” As well as for individual humans who do not suffer from illness but use art as a way to overcome hard times in their life which can be financial, emotional or grieving or even a way to overcome breakups. Art creates a safe and peaceful place for its user to overcome those issues and experience their emotion uniquely. Using art as a form of healing makes a positive outcome for the situation. Art does not only help to overcome difficulty; it also helps to improve your emotions in a healthy and reasonable way. Every individual should have the opportunity to express their emotions through the use of art. To help humans overcome hardship or disease and depression, they need to be in control of their feelings; they need to let free and start over; a painting gives the audience many perspectives, but the only one who knows its story is the painter. This is similar to art being part of healing; to fully heal, we must let go of what is holding us, and to forget, we need to put in something (art)