Art as medicine

To commemorate May as Mental Health Awareness Month, the Wailoa Art and Cultural Center has invited Self Discovery Through Art participants and others associated with mental health service provider Care Hawaii Inc. to exhibit their work in its galleries.

An opening reception is slated from 5 to 7 p.m. today. Light refreshments will be served; the Harlan Wolf Trio will entertain.

The exhibit serves to show the public that art can be therapeutic. Through the creative process, participants experience an awakening that enhances healing and sustains recovery from mental illness.

Hilo-based Self Discovery Though Art is a structured psychoeducational studio art program where participants are taught to use the language of art to create a nonverbal vocabulary for self-expression. They create a symbolic language to illustrate distorted thinking patterns and correct them with further art making. Drawing inspiration from cognitive behavior therapy techniques and clinical neuroscience of art therapy, the program is created in the style of famous visual artists.

Artists including Ken Charon, Patti Pease Johnson, Patricia Hoban and Ester Szegedy have shared their expertise with the group on several occasions. The program’s facilitators are former public school visual art educator N.J. Moses and Nidhi Chabora. Chabora, an advanced practice nurse, received the American Psychiatric Nurses Association’s 2012 Individual Innovation Award for creating this program.

Wailoa Art and Cultural Center is free and open to the public from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday; and from noon to 4:30 p.m. Wednesday. For more information, call 933-0416 or email wailoa@yahoo.com.