Westfield Valencia Mall Community Wall Art Reception: SAFE Exhibit

With the challenges our youth face today, especially with mental health and emotions, creating visual art allows for release and cleanse. Students are able to let go of harmful and repressed feelings through the visual arts. Students can be both expressive and SAFE (Support Art for Expression). This is where students can shine without any preconceived path and visually communicate through creativity and expression. There is comfort in being expressive, yet it is largely a course of chance. With this notion of SAFE, students are not dependent upon pre-existing images. Image sources can be helpful and at the same time stimulus for impulse in their creativity. Student artists and artwork, influenced by image sources or purely impulsive, attracts and invites viewers to feel this same mental release and cleanse. Students learn a great deal about themselves through their art. This is where students often discover themselves. Artistic expression is tremendously helpful with allowing students to figure out their identity and share it with viewers. Most importantly, simultaneously students get out of their comfort level when they express themselves through visual art. Yet, students are actually very relaxed and at peace.