May 83 min read

Expressions of Wellness and Recovery

May Mental Health Awareness Month

May is a special time here at My Voice Media Center. All around the world, people celebrate Mental Health Awareness and the celebration of recovery, wellness, and resilience.

We are glad to welcome you into our space every year to experience the wellness that art can bring to people.

Our participants practiced for months to prepare for this moment and this Friday was a great

success!

F1rst Friday Event with Arts Consortium

Each year the Arts Consortium, our home provides us the space and the welcome to host a F1rst Friday event. We courageously put on performances and gave our goodie bags and prizes all night.

F1rst Friday is the event that the Arts Consortium hosts each month, all year round. May is special because My Voice Media Center can present and be the artist in the AC gallery, presenting our sessions, our facilitators, participants' work, and our program as a whole through artistic expression. This is how it got the name, "Expressions of Wellness and Recovery".

The Art of Movement Presentation:

Our Volunteer, Sheila A., was able to pull together the Art of Movement session and become an inspiration for presentations that the facilitator George Jagatic presented. Sheila also worked hard on creating original music, with Jeff B. Sheila helped to create t-shirts for the event as well.

The t-shirts were created to express how we associate colors with different emotions and music as well, which was inspired by Merry Miller-Gass' session Art and Feelings, along with the Guitar session while Thomas Fetch was a facilitator.

Much of the time and effort Sheila put into "Expressions of Wellness and Recovery" this year was dedicated to Thomas Fetch our previous Guitar facilitator who helped Sheila remain on her path of wellness and recovery by encouraging her to continue practicing music and playing guitar.

Sheila continues to be determined, and a wonderful artist who continued his legacy of helping others and performing, continued to play guitar, and now practices her original songs with our new guitar facilitator, Hector Uriarte.

Hector also helped Sheila practice her guitar before F1rst Friday. Sheila has written more than 10 original songs throughout the past 2 years and performs at Barrel House's open mic night each month.

Sheila A.; May 2024 Volunteer for Arts Consortium who helped create the F1rst Friday presentations in the Art of Movement session (Thank you Sheila!)

Susan, Drew, Sheila, Kris, and George presenting Creative Movement for "Expressions of wellness and Recovery from the session Art of Movement; May 2024

Our Photo Booth

This year we enjoyed creating a photo booth for our visitors and our big night!

My Voice Media Center would like to truly thank ALL those who participated and provided for this event. Our partners Prop 63, Tulare County Health and Human Services Agency, California Arts Council, Community Services Employment Training(CSET), Tulare County Court Appointed Special Advocates(CASA), and ALL of our facilitators who helped over the past few months and joined in for the night's festivities.

My Voice would also like to give a great big thank you to our board members at the Art Consortium, who take good care of us at the Arts Consortium, MVMC's home:

Board Members:

Donna Orozco

Ernie Kayak

Michael Kreps

Jahazeil R. Lino

Mark Robinson

(MJ) Mary Jo Estes

Terry Van Huss

Amaris Cisneros-Valdez