Gallery Statement
The VOICES Art Gallery
The VOICES Project: Designed to be Different
Listen to yourself and in that quietude you might hear the voice of God.
Maya Angelou
Giving voice to one’s life stories offers transcendent experiences to artists as they share their journey, experiences, challenges, struggles, learnings, and awareness. In the process, artists grapple with and understand themselves and their lives in different ways. Only by pausing and reflecting can we extract meaning from what we experience. When we do this, each moment becomes a possibility for growth, for gathering a bit of wisdom. When we open our eyes, we have the opportunity to continually learn from our own experiences and from those around us.
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.
Marcel Proust
Speak your mind even if your voice shakes.
Maggie Kuhn
The Voices Project provides a venue for neurodivergent teens and young adults to creatively express the stories about where they came from and where they're going. Too often, neurodivergent voices are stifled and/or not taken seriously. This project elevates voices that need to be heard -- voices that truly prove that people with neurodivergent brains were Designed to be Different!
The Voices Project grew out of a desire to hear more clearly the unique inner experiences of those teens and young adults whose hearts, minds, and brains apprehend the world from many diverse perspectives. As professionals and parents we work hard to help these individuals adapt their strengths and challenges to a world that often does not understand. No map exists for how to best help but if we are looking to sign posts we need go no further than the words and images that they use to convey their rich and complex inner life. This Gallery is part of a larger effort to create a safe and accepting space that invites people to express - clearly and directly – who they are -- and hopefully in the process help us become more compassionate partners in their growth and healing.
The message behind the words is the voice of the heart.
Rumi
We invite you to take a moment to pause and reflect on these pictures, videos, words and music - on the ways in which the moments and experiences captured here might serve as teaching stories for you in your journey. It is only when we pause to look within -- to gather the pieces of our past, to put together the puzzle that day to day might seem so fragmented, so disjointed -- that we begin to discover the patterns of change, begin to unravel the deeper meanings, begin to understand why we have chosen how we have chosen -- and begin to make peace with the hard turns of our lives.