MAD May
THE MISSION
We are excited to partner with Inside Our Minds in creating and curating free programming that melds mental health, individual and community care, and creativity through a radical lens. Participants will explore a different mental health theme each week through interactive art-making, digital art exhibition, and co-learning opportunities.
Join us every Saturday in May for free workshops led by exciting special guests from the Pittsburgh community.
Speaking of mental health, check out a recording of our most recent show, Sadapalooza (March 2021) along with some mental health resources!
“Did You Know?!”
educational content on rad mental health, updated bi-weekly-ish
Radical Mental Health Video Series
updated weekly-ish
May/BE/MAD
a virtual art exhibition exploring radical mental health
Featured Artists
adrift Arguello
Elise Delgado
A.M. Disher
Jessica Gaynelle Moss
OTHER WORKS BY
Emily Paige Armstrong, Olga Brindar, Ryan Dancho, Mila Fejzo, Lena Kinney, Almah LaVon Rice, Philip Morkert, K. Rose Quayle, Chanika Svetvilas, Sara Tang, David Gray Widder
curated for MAD May by Abigail Lis-Perlis of folkLAB and Alyssa Cypher of Inside Our Minds
gallery music by Spencer Liberto, improvised while “walking” through the exhibition
What is mental health?
How does it affect how we define ourselves and see the world?
What does it mean to take mental health out of the confines of the mainstream medical industrial complex, remove the stigma that society attaches to it, and view it through an inclusive, anti-oppressive, radical lens?
These are the questions that this interdisciplinary exhibition invites you to contemplate. The artworks collected here were each created by artists who identify as having lived mental health experience. They may identify with a medical diagnosis, they may be self-diagnosed, they may choose not to label their experience, or they may have experienced a particular circumstance or event that affected their mental wellbeing.
These artists are each multifaceted human beings from a variety of backgrounds and life experiences. They are not a monolith of “mental illness” and, in fact, may not choose to associate with that phrase at all. When you view their work, we hope you see a glimpse of a world that appreciates and acknowledges the multitudes of mental health perspectives, experiences, and identities; a world which cherishes autonomy and self-determination and holds space for both trauma and joy.
about the artsteps platform
Artsteps is a free virtual art exhibition platform, embedded here for your viewing ease. The platform is new and does have its limits. We recommend using the guided tour function, clicking images and text to get a closer look and read more information, and running very little on your browser at the same time.
If you have issues with video playback, it could be a browser issue. Check out artstep’s FAQ and Help section for more information about how to optimize your viewing experience. For video playback, you can also click the “Watch On YouTube” feature to view the video pieces on YouTube.
Show+Tell
the MAD May Grand Finale
Monday, May 31st, 2021, 7-8:30pm est
Facilitated by Nicole Gallagher
Processing + Storytelling + Art + Community
++Limited to 20 guests++
The event will begin at 7pm and run ninety minutes (90) until 8:30pm, on Zoom.
Join facilitator/storyteller Nicole Gallagher & special guest storyteller Sara Tang (both from Stories in the Time Of), and our May/Be/MAD: a virtual art exhibition featured artists (adrift Arguello, Elise Delgado, A.M. Disher, Jessica Gaynelle Moss) for a one-of-a-kind, close-of-the-month event!
What it is: Part community conversation, part art & story-sharing, and part peer-to-peer support space
What to bring: Bring yourself and (optionally) something to take notes with and/or a piece of your art to share.
The Theme is: Processing. That could mean processing your MAD May experience, processing what you hear and see at the event, processing the past year+, or processing something you are going through right now.
What to expect: This is a participation encouraged workshop! Our facilitator wants participants to know that this event was designed to be a safe space for folks to share. You are still free to just listen. Participation with "camera on" is always optional.
THE AGENDA
INTRODUCTION: folkLAB, Inside Our Minds, and Nicole will all introduce ourselves, talk a little bit about MAD May, and the theme of processing
SHOW: We will take a look at the artworks by our four May/Be/MAD: a virtual art exhibition featured artists (adrift Arguello, Elise Delgado, A.M. Disher, Jessica Gaynelle Moss)
TELL: We will hear two stories from Nicole and guest storyteller/co-creator of Stories in the Time Of Sara Tang that fit with the theme of processing. Nicole will also tell us all about some exercises she has learned to help here regain calm and control in moments of stress/PTSD (a PDF of instructions will be provided)
SHARE: Inspired by peer-to-peer support spaces, this will be an open time/space to share art, thoughts about what you've seen or heard at Show+Tell or during MAD May, or just share whatever you want to get off your chest and process out loud. For all participants (including you!) and totally optional.
MAD May Workshops
Week Four: Identity and Mental Health
Workshop on Saturday, May 29th (2pm-3:30pm EST)
free or a suggested donation of $5-10
Co-facilitators Rachel Nunes and Daeja Baker, of The Sunflower Collective, have some questions: How does our mental health shape who we are, publicly and privately? What does it mean to think about mental health intersectionally with the other socially constructed aspects of our identity like race, gender, sexuality, and class? Dive deeply into these questions and more.
The Workshop
Mental Health and Our Identity
Saturday, May 29th 2pm-3:30 (est)
facilitated by Daeja Baker (she/her) & Rachel Nunes (she/her)
Join our mailing list to be the first to hear more details about other workshop opportunities.
Workshop Description
Using presentations, exercises and guided group discussions, this workshop will help participants gain an understanding of how mental health impacts each of us in different ways, based on socially constructed aspects of our identities such as race, gender, sexuality and class. Participants will be able to practice using an intersectional approach to the topic of mental health, by discussing how aspects of our identities present challenges, such as access to appropriate care, or how our identities spare us some challenges. Participants will also learn about language used to describe mental health or mental illness, and how the language we use and hear shapes how we relate to and speak about our own mental health.
Participation with "camera on" is always optional, please do not feel pressured to participate. You are free to just listen.
Run time: 90 minutes
What to bring: Yourself, that’s all!
About The Sunflower Collective
The Sunflower Collective is a cohort of Pittsburgh area individuals with personal and/or professional experience navigating mental illness, and working to create peer to peer community care infrastructure. They offer support groups as well as workshops and event support. Find them on Facebook or e-mail them @ sunflow3ercollective@gmail.com
Past Workshops
“What is Radical Mental Health?” a 101 introduction and discussion
Workshop on Saturday, May 1st (2pm-3pm EST)
Join facilitators from Inside Our Minds and folkLAB as they team up to offer a quick and dirty introduction to radical mental health and offer some art-making prompts inspired by the workshop content.
This workshop was 1 hour long.
Inside Our Minds is a Pittsburgh-based radical mental health organization that offers free-to-all mental health support and education programing.
This workshop has already occurred. Please e-mail us if you would like access to the recording which will be publicly available soon.
Registration is open for our other MAD May workshops, space is limited.
Join our mailing list to be the first to hear more details about other workshop opportunities.
Week One: Radical Mental Health History
Workshop on Saturday, May 8th (2pm EST)
Throughout the week (May 2-8) we will be featuring art and digital content that explores some of the untaught history of mental health through a radical, anti-oppressive lens.
The Workshop
The Blueprint: Bigger than the picture they framed us to see
Saturday, May 8th 2pm-3:30 (est)
facilitated by Mx. J. Coley Alston (they/xe) & Mx. Jule Arney (xe/they)
This workshop has already occurred. The recording will be publicly available soon.
Join our mailing list to be the first to hear more details about other workshop opportunities.
Workshop Description
Coley and Jule will present their perspectives on how the history of mental health has influenced our personal and collective presents. They will facilitate a discussion around these topic. Participation and "camera on" is always optional, please do not feel pressured to participate. You are free to just listen.
Run time: 90 minutes
What to bring: Participants can bring scratch paper, sketch book, tablet or other art medium in order to actively draw their ideal self.
The workshop consists of four sections/topics:
Intro and Art Prompt
History– the untold history. Topics like "Stolen People on Stolen Land," the medicalization of mental illness, colonization and gender, eugenics, historic diagnoses that were used to oppress the marginalized , queerness, genderqueerness, and the pathologization of Black liberationists as a weapon against them
Present Day– how the past influences the present. Topics such as Media representation and the Internet, global identities, manufactured binaries, neurodiverisity, tropes, and discovering the truth of our histories
Q&A/Discussion
Meet the Facilitators
“The histories of black and queer people in “Western Civilization” have been continuously obfuscated. As the present incarnations of the people, we continuously discover more of our truth through the past. How we choose to embody that truth informs our ability to manifest our future.”
Spotlight on Radical Work & Resources
When they aren’t facilitating awesome workshops for us, Coley and Jule both work for the Hugh Lane Wellness Foundation.
Hugh Lane’s mission is to improve the health of the LGBTQ+ and HIV communities in Western Pennsylvania. They offer a variety of services and supports to our communities, as well as expert training for organizations to improve their capacity to serve LGBTQ+ clients and staff. They have wonderful mental health support programs for youth and families. Check out their website for more information about their work and how to support them!
Week Two: Radical Mental Health & Pathology
Workshop on Saturday, May 15th (2pm EST)
Throughout the week (May 9-15) we will be featuring art and digital content that explores the roots of pathology and the Medical Industrial Complex as well as alternatives to them through a radical, anti-oppressive lens.
The Workshop
Radical Mental Health and Pathology: Many Paths, Many Voices, Holding Our Truths
Saturday, May 15th 2pm-3:30 (est)
facilitated by Sara Tang (she/they)
Workshop Description
Artist and educator Sara Tang (she/they), of the #notwhitecollective and the monthly story telling project “Stories in the Time Of”, as we push back on the medical industrial complex’s definition of mental health and mental illness and discover some of the oppressive roots of pathology. We will offer alternatives to pathologizing mental health experiences and engage with some art-making and poetry-making prompts inspired by the content.
Run time: 90 minutes
What to bring: It would be helpful for participants to have paper and art-making tools with colors, as well as writing tools ready to use prior to the workshop.
What to Expect:
Sara will offer alternatives to pathologizing mental health experiences and engage with some art-making and poetry-writing prompts to practice a new ritual of pathology alchemy.
In this workshop participants will mindfully co-create a space in which we examine, excavate, and decolonize how we relate to medical health complexes. Together, we rethink the nature of "pathologies" as they have been defined by capitalist health complexes. (15 minutes) Participants will map out methods, both empowering and oppressive, that have shaped their experiences. There will be mindful sharing and discussion of alternatives that have been explored and that are options for future exploration. (20 minutes) With an art and poetry prompt, participants can practice a new ritual of pathology alchemy wherein they use their inner wisdom and intuition to transfigure the oppression and paradoxes of pathologies. (30 minutes) The opportunity to share and discuss this process will be given at the end of the session time. (10 minutes)
Meet the Facilitator
Sara Tang (she/her, they/them) is a multidisciplinary artist, illustrator, and creative facilitator who has called many places home, including Pittsburgh. Tang’s purpose in all her creative gatherings, works, performances, and endeavors, is to Draw others In to a deeper empathic encounter with themselves, with others, and with the mystery of humanity and existence. Her pieces often explore the strange and beautiful, especially as related to multiracial and multicultural identity, generational story excavation, mental health, and the healing of health conditions.
anthropologyofmotherhood.com | Digital Content Curator
Week Three: Radical Mental Health Care
Workshop on Saturday, May 22nd (2pm EST)
Throughout the week (May 16-22) we will be featuring art and digital content that explores some of the mental health care and radical self-sustaining practices outside of the medical industrial complex that we can do for ourselves and our community.
The Workshop
Body as Resource, Body as Teacher, Body as Muse
Saturday, May 22nd 2pm-3:30 (est)
facilitated by Moriah Ella Mason (they/them)
This event has already occurred, a recording will be available shortly
Join our mailing list to be the first to hear more details about other workshop opportunities.
Workshop Description
Many mental health diagnoses - like anxiety and PTSD - are a result of pathologizing the natural response of a person's nervous system to living under the violence of capitalism, racism, etc. But our bodies have the potential to be our greatest source of resilience and our greatest teacher. In this workshop we'll unpack the workings of our nervous systems and how experiences of daily stress or traumatic events can interfere with our ability to process and move through these experiences. Through lecture, discussion, somatic drawings, breath work, self-massage, guided movement, and stretching we'll practice ways to listen more deeply to our nervous system, muscles, and organs tuning into the body as a resource for healing, a teacher of resilience, and a muse for artmaking.
Run time: 90 minutes
What to bring: Participants can bring scratch paper, sketch book, tablet or other art medium in order to actively draw their ideal self.
Meet the Facilitator
Moriah Ella Mason (they/them) wants to understand who we are, how we got here, and how we’re all thinking and feeling about that. An artmaker, educator and bodyworker, they combine rigorous academic research with lived experience, words with dance, brain with body, living in the tension between ways of knowing and methods of being.Over the past decade Mason has created 7 evening-length performance works and a number of installations, video pieces, and short movement works. They have been granted residencies at Future Tenant Gallery (PGH) and Pearlarts Studios (PGH), and their works have been presented at the New Hazlett Theater (PGH), Kelly-Strayhorn Theater (PGH), vox populi (PHL), wild project (NYC), WOW Café Theater (NYC), and BAAD! (NYC). In addition to their work as a creator and performer, Mason is a licensed massage therapist specializing in trauma-sensitive bodywork. They bring their deep background in embodied practices to their work (both paid and volunteer) in a variety of community organizing roles. Mason is currently a dance MFA candidate at Temple University and aspiring to bake the perfect babka.