Last night Iain and I made our final trek to Northshore Mall to switch out the artwork at the I Am More Mental Health Resource Center & Gallery. Signs of the holidays are starting to encroach on the space, and soon it will be time the appropriate time to pack up and move on. Still, it was an emotional day.
Sixty-one locations, plus six months at Northshore Mall, meant planning an exhibition sixty-seven times. It’s been a monthly task since 2018, and this was the last time. Thankfully I still have new faces and words to share:
Nolisha makes her debut this month, with seven chapters from her extraordinary life. I reread them all yesterday as I prepped them for display and was emotionally overwhelmed again with the power of her story. She’s excited to see it in person for the first time with her family.
Also debuting last month and remaining through the end is the self-portrait and poetry of Joan Dobbie:
Joan’s poems tell the story of her family’s journey escaping from the Holocaust to a refugee camp in Switzerland where she was born, and then to America where she raised her family. She submitted her self-portrait from Oregon, and I ended up falling in love with her poetry and shared selections from her publications:
These are the miraculous humans I’ve been so lucky to meet and share.
I received the following comment from the Arlington, Vermont exhibit we took down this weekend:
Your work gives me strength. It helps sustain me and offers perspective and gratitude. I am in recovery. I too, am More.
Along with these new pieces are a few old faithfuls. You can see the very first I Am More portrait, Jim, along with Áine, Jonathan, Karen, Susie and Nell. The exhibition will be up through November 2nd, and then the portraits will return to their owners–the subjects.
Amy Kerr Draws Portraits 
Dear Amy,
I was so very hornored to see that you’d posted my poems and spoke of them in this Last Exibition post. So grateful that you accepted my picture tobegin with and for all that followed. Grateful to have met you altogether and wish you the most wonderful and successful future with whatever you are choosing to do next. Also, I hope you had a marvelous time in Scotland with your daughter.
And so glad to have almost “met” your husband through you Yesterday I was talking on Skype with my brother, David, who is a scientist living in Switzerland. I sent him a Youtube link to the SNOTBOT intro and he found it really interesting.
Anyhow, thank you for all you do, even those things you don’t realize you are doing, like inspiring me to actually take that trip to Boston that I’d been wanting to do for…welll… many, many years.
With all best wishes and a hug, Joan
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