LOCAL ARTISTS
Creativity lives within us all, but not everyone gets the opportunity to share their art with the world. The Unsung Creatives Showcase allowed seven artists the chance to show their creative projects to an audience for the first time. The art show was the result of an eightweek workshop where each artist developed their work, executed it, installed it and helped organize the art event. The showcase featured a gallery exhibition, live music and poetry, an artist panel and a community art wall where guests could make their own work to add to the show. Although the event was for one day only, the showcase lives on at Jo’s Cafe where the artists have hung their work for the whole month of May. There are creativity stations at each table with paper and crayons where guests can add their own artwork to the walls, already amassing 140 pieces of community art in the first five days.
The Unsung Creatives Showcase is the result of Expressive Arts facilitator Ellen Rebecca Geis’s mission to reawaken creativity as a force of healing and inspiration in people’s lives. Geis is an Expressive Arts Therapy student pursuing her education through Lesley University’s remote program. She has been facilitating classes at the San Marcos Public Library that use expressive art therapy techniques to help support the creativity and mental health of San Marcos residents such as her Express Yourself! adult art class and her adult theatre class, Explore Your Characters. The showcase is the result of her capstone project and represents her belief that not everyone has to be an artist but that everyone is creative, and creativity deserves to be celebrated.
