In the middle of the COVID pandemic, 1500 people came together in Northern California to make and paint hundreds of winged hearts for a striking 80-foot public artwork, Unbound.
This work of wonder was built in a highly unlikely place: a locked state psychiatric facility and was co-created by patients, staff and members of the public from around the Bay Area.
A Vision Realized
This year-long collaboration between Life On Earth Art and the California Department of State Hospitals-Napa (DSH-Napa) utilized an innovative new model of public art, combining behavioral health services, creative art therapies, and community artmaking with a high-level artistic design and craftsmanship.
Unbound has received press and awards at both the state and national level (link to awards page) recognizing both the project's therapeutic impacts on well-being and its artistic design.
The Beginning
Artist Tracy Ferron grew up in Southern California with two older brothers with schizophrenia, and experienced the isolation and hopelessness often faced by those with severe mental illness and their families. Her brother Bob spent much of his life in California state psychiatric facilities.
Tracy began working with the symbol of the caged winged heart in 2017, which for her symbolized deep grief, loneliness, and the state of feeling immobilized by trauma. She began to build winged hearts and cages as a way to explore both her personal childhood experiences and injustices in society. With Los Olvidados Liberados, her first installation for the Museum of Sonoma County in 2018, Tracy witnessed the sense of belonging and purpose volunteers felt while making the winged hearts together in community, the connections made by sitting side-by-side sharing stories, and making large-scale art together.
With Unbound, Tracy expanded this healing vision exponentially by partnering with one of California’s largest state psychiatric facilities. In partnership with their Rehabilitation Department of 70 therapists in a year-long project, the Life On Earth Art team created an 80-foot long sculpture of 800 winged hearts flying free from a cage. The Unbound project developed into nine months of therapeutic programming where 500 patients explored what it means to be unbound and free in multiple creative modalities including art, music, dance, spoken word, and drumming.
Ferron envisioned Unbound as a sculpture of collective liberation made up of hundreds of winged hearts fabricated and decorated through a connective community process.
“No one asks for a severe mental illness or the cascade of judgment, shame, fear, and isolation that impacts millions of people and their families. Unbound was created as a testament to how our family can come together with radical inclusivity and open hearts to create beauty, forge compassion and acknowledge those who feel most unseen and unloved in our society.”
Design
In the eye of a cyclone of steel ribbons stands an antique wooden cage dripping black resin from which hundreds of paper mache winged hearts fly free. Unbound was designed to be visually striking and to create a visceral sense of hope and liberation with the hearts flooding out and growing bigger as they fly from the cage through the exhibition hall.
Ferron designed reusable plastic mold forms to make seven different sizes of paper mache hearts so that the hearts appear to expand as they move out from the cage. The hearts range from nine inches to nine feet wide.
To make these hundreds of hearts, hundreds of collaborators were needed and Ferron intentionally sought out forgotten and underserved populations to include as co-artists. LOEA partnered with nonprofits who serve the shelterless, dually diagnosed individuals, and at-promise youth. Ferron also formed alliances with schools and churches to make hearts as part of their public service. Hundreds of volunteers made hearts for patients to paint and express themselves. Each heart was created by many pairs of hands.
Accessibility–Key to the design was working with non-toxic materials in an easily accessible process–with multiple steps for a wide range of ability levels to be able to participate.
This year-long collaboration between Life On Earth Art and the California Department of State Hospitals-Napa (DSH-Napa) utilized an innovative new model of public art, combining behavioral health services, creative art therapies, and community artmaking with a high-level artistic design and craftsmanship.
Unbound has received press and awards at both the state and national level (link to awards page) recognizing both the project's therapeutic impacts on well-being and its artistic design.