art as social emotional learning
See You on the Other Side is an integrated arts program directed by Erika Lutz, dedicated to social and emotional wellbeing of students and surrounding communities.
The pilot program resulted in a year-long collaboration with artists, students, educators, and community in 2021-2022. The mural, a 480 ft long artifact of the collaboration, transforms the entire courtyard of Amarosa Academy, an alt-ed secondary school run by Sonoma County Office of Education in Santa Rosa, CA. An homage to the strange, beautiful, and sometimes difficult transitions the teen students are navigating, the puzzle mural is a visual metaphor for their labyrinth-like journey of inner and outer transformation.
More than a mural, lead artists Erika Lutz, Alina Nuebel, and Kaya Rose facilitated over 100 people to paint the picture of a place to belong, heal, and grow through the spirit of creativity and the art of human connection.
ART as DATA COLLECTION
Journey to the Future is an interactive puzzle sculpture designed by Erika Lutz and Briona Hendren that centers the hopes of over 100 high schoolers and their visions of how the City of Santa Rosa should grow through the lens of health and environmental justice.
The interactive sculpture is a culmination of several world-building workshops themed around time travel and speculative fiction. The month-long collaboration brought local youth into the fold of building a more sustainable, resilient, healthy, and inclusive city through the 30 year General Plan Update.
Commissioned by Kimzin Creative, Santa Rosa’s Planning Department and Public Art Department, Journey to the Future amplifies the collective voice of Latino Service Provider’s Youth Promotores, ¡DALE! Educational Justice Youth Program, SCOE’s Youth Environmental Justice Coalition, and Roseland University Prep’s Environmental Science Class, and alt-ed students of Amarosa Academy.
ART as EMERGENCE
Texture of Love is an interactive backdrop led by Erika Lutz and youth artists in collaboration with On the Margins and Kimzin Creative. The collaboration centers Asesadores, a multidisciplinary counsel of QBIPOC artists who are re-envisioning how artists' dignity, belonging, and cultural safety can be better honored in Sonoma County.
The creation of Texture of Love involved a playful and experimental process. Asesadores created a texture of “future imprints” using pigment, movement, and objects with deeply personal and cultural significance they wished to call into the future. The texture was woven into a collage of imperfect map of First Nations, lands and vascular networks.
Texture of Love is intended to accompany the Asesadores as they expand into the far reaches of Sonoma County communities. An interactive element was designed to become a living texture of visual data that evolves with each new circle it reaches.
