Clarke University art students have completed a collaborative art project with Crescent Community Health Center (Crescent) driven by the goal of engaging with and providing art to underserved populations, including many low-income and racially and ethnically diverse people. Participants had the opportunity to see and engage in art as both a personal expression of experiences and a community-wide representation.
Starting in February 2023, Crescent patients were encouraged to draw in sketchbooks in clinic waiting rooms. Guidance for drawing was made available in English, Spanish, and Marshallese languages. The line drawings produced by patients were then collected, scanned, and digitally collaged to create 20 unique screenprint editions. 200 screenprints will be distributed to the Crescent patients later in August free of charge.
The scanned drawings will also serve as source material for the image design of a large-scale, interior mural to be painted in the Crescent expanded community space in a newly renovated outbuilding. The mural will be painted in the summer of 2023. Local muralist, Miles Turner, will direct the project and it will employ Clarke Art + Design students and others. This effort will offer a platform for historically underrepresented populations in the arts to have a voice to create and share meaningful art to be proudly displayed. This project is funded by a 2023 City of Dubuque Arts & Cultural Affairs Special Project Grant.
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