Art Restart Salon features honest conversation about mental health

The Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts at UNC School of the Arts will host “Creative, Vulnerable and Well,” the next virtual Art Restart salon on Wednesday, September 1, 2021 at 7 p.m. Eastern. The salon will feature an honest discussion between four artists, who will discuss the psychological challenges they have faced and share tactics they practice to develop their mental wellness. They will be joined by UNCSA Counseling Services Clinical Director Stephanie Cartwright.

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The uncertainty and upheaval of the past 18 months has magnified anxieties and vulnerabilities while also normalizing talking about mental health. Hearing others share their experiences offers an opportunity to find strength in community and incorporate healthy strategies in their own lives.

The salon will be moderated by recent Art Restart podcast guest Tara Rynders, a dancer, choreographer and video artist, who is also a veteran registered nurse, an Advanced Certified Grief Recovery Specialist and the founder and artistic director of The Clinic, an arts and play-based company that provides workshops, performances and research around burnout and secondary traumatic stress.

The panelists joining Rynders will be:

• Catalina (CATAPHANT) Bellizzi-Itiola is a San Diego-based visual artist, activist, educator, muralist and designer who creates highly textured, mixed-media abstract paintings based on her experiences with spirituality and mental illness.
• Frank Horvat is an award-winning multi-genre composer and pianist who explores a wide array of themes in his music from love to the environment, mental health and social justice issues.
• Boston native Cliff Notez is an award-winning, multi–digital media artist, musician, entrepreneur, and filmmaker whose art is a continuous exploration of the Black mind.
• Stephanie Cartwright is a Licensed Professional Counselor who oversees the daily operations of the UNCSA Counseling Center. She utilizes person-centered strategies mixed with a wide variety of philosophies created to fit the needs of her clients.

Register for Art Restart Salon

About Art Restart

The Thomas S. Kenan Institute for the Arts’ "Art Restart" podcast builds on the previous “Artist as Leader” interview series, which proves that artists are among the most nimble and resourceful leaders in our communities. The tumultuous events of the year 2020 led us to shift the focus of interviews to more urgently plumb artists’ innate capacity for creative problem-solving. In “Art Restart,” we explore what lessons artists took away from the year 2020 and how they are reinventing their fields to build a new landscape for the arts.