Let’s talk about the idea of “healing and well-being”…

What is well-being? What are your personal experiences

with healing or well-being?

What are ways we can heal and promote well-being?

Exercise Eat healthy foods Medicine Rest Outdoor recreation Visit the doctor Put a bandage on Humor Make art

Many artists address healing and well-being by creating art

Vincent Van Gogh

The Names Project: AIDS Memorial Quilt

Gregory Van Maanen

JMKAC Culinary Art Car https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xs-R86juEaU

Let’s learn the story of Emery Blagdon…

In the early 1960s, Blagdon (1907-1986) began to create art for the purpose of healing. In a shed behind his house, the entry was his workshop, and the larger space became an increasingly dense environment filled with his creations. He illuminated the site with strings of lights and hand-painted light bulbs in coffee-can fixtures attached to the floor.

Motivated by the death of his loved ones from cancer, Blagdon worked for nearly thirty years on sculptures and paintings he called collectively “The Healing Machine.” Through the different materials he used, combined with manmade and natural electricity, Blagdon believed that he could harness the powers of the earth to cure illnesses.

He made small intricate shapes out of bent wire joined into complex assemblages, incorporating masking tape, sheet metal, aluminum foil, medicine bottles and waxed paper along with mechanical odds and ends picked up at yard sales.

Healing and Well-being

Imagine yourself in Emery Blagdon’s space. Given his use of electricity, light, and properties of energy, how do you think you would feel if you were inside the Healing Machine?

Considering what you know about Emery Blagdon, what objects or processes do you think the artist used to represent healing? Why?

Healing and well-being: Personal Connections

• Can you identify ways people show or share healing and well-being? (bumper stickers, AIDs Memorial Quilt, fundraising walks and events)

• What objects might you use to symbolize

healing or well-being for yourself? Why?

Create Reflect on a personal healing or well-being experience that you would like to express.

Examples of mobile response themes might include: illness, cancer, veterans memorial, bereavement, mental health and suicide, natural disasters, healthy living

Create

Gather materials of interest and begin constructing individual components and assembling your mobile.

Consider adding personal narrative by incorporating text, photos, poems and memories to personalize your mobile.