Unbound
What becomes possible when 1500 people from diverse backgrounds come together for an entire year to make large-scale art? What if the resulting artwork is built in a most unlikely place: a high-security state psychiatric facility? What stories can be told and appreciated? How much healing, empathy, and inspiration can emerge?
It’s deceptively simple.
You create paper maché hearts
by pressing paper into molds,
but the ripples of healing and
connection are profound.
Unbound, a striking 80-foot sculpture featuring 800 handmade paper maché winged hearts amplified by movement, song, and spoken word, was built and painted behind the locked gates of California’s Department of State Hospitals-Napa. A unique work of wonder created by patients, therapists, teens, and community volunteers from around the Bay Area, in a very complex location, during the ominous early days of the COVID pandemic.
Unbound pioneered an innovative, groundbreaking, but ultimately replicable model: combining behavioral health services, creative art therapies, community artmaking, and high-level artistic design and craftsmanship.
500
psychiatric patients
200
therapists &
hospital staff
350
youth
volunteers
450
community
volunteers
Unbound was a healing and transformative experience for all involved, and has received press and awards at both the state and national level recognizing both the project's therapeutic impacts on well-being and its artistic design.
The United States is suffering an epidemic in loneliness and social isolation, a mental health crisis that is inordinately impacting youth and those facing economic, social, and medical barriers.
Artist Tracy Ferron conceived the Unbound project inspired by her childhood experiences with her brother, Bob, who suffered with paranoid schizophrenia and spent much of his life in California state psychiatric facilities. Knowing the hopelessness and isolation faced by those with severe mental illness and their families, Ferron began working with the symbol of the caged winged heart in 2017, which for her symbolized deep grief, loneliness, and the state of feeling immobilized by trauma.
She envisioned Unbound as an epic community art collaboration as a way to uplift and include those who feel most unseen and forgotten, and to advocate for mental health awareness. Her intention was to build this artwork of hope and liberation through an inclusive, accessible and empowering community process. Collectively made public art offers an innovative and powerful creative and therapeutic response to the growing forces of fracture and division in our society.
“No one asks for a severe mental illness or the cascade of judgment, shame, fear, and isolation that impacts millions of people and their families. Unbound was created as a testament to how our family can come together with radical inclusivity and open hearts to create beauty, forge compassion and acknowledge those who feel most unseen and unloved in our society.”
- Tracy Ferron, Founder of Life On Art
DHS-Napa is one of California’s largest state psychiatric facilities, with approximately 2,300 staff treating around 1250 patients. Patients are sent there by the court system for being deemed incompetent to stand trial, not guilty by reason of insanity, or civilly committed individuals on conservatorships.
“Oh, I look so happy!”
- Patient, upon seeing a recording of herself dancing.
Camille Gentry, Chief of Rehabilitation Therapy Services, Alicia Brewster, Dance Therapist, and the Executive Team at Dept. of State Hospitals-Napa embraced the unique opportunity of a creative project to foster connection between the patients, staff, and the outside community.
The teams faced significant bureaucratic and logistical hurdles to make and install the artwork in a strictly controlled locked forensic facility. Every item down to each individual screw had to be accounted for.
A music therapy group led by Karen Moran wrote and performed an original song, “You and I Unbound.” The patients had the idea to invite community volunteers and staff at LOEA to record a track of the chorus, to mix into the final version, so that both the song and the artwork were collaborations made by people inside and outside of the hospital.
Once the Unbound hearts crossed the gate at Napa State Hospital, Gentry and her team of 70 multidisciplinary therapists worked with over 500 patients for a period of 9 months to complete each heart, exploring what it means to be ‘unbound and free’ through a myriad therapeutic, recreational, and rehabilitative modalities:
Art Therapy / Painting
Music Therapy / Drumming / Songwriting
Recreation Therapy
Dance & Movement Therapy
Occupational Therapy
Photography
Spoken word
The recreation hall at DSH-Napa is not only filled with hundreds of hearts – dramatic theatrical lighting casts hundreds of winged heart shadows on the walls and floor. This inspired dance therapist Alicia Brewster and her team to film the shadows of their patients dancing as an exploration of what it means to be unbound and free. When one patient saw her video, she exclaimed, “Oh, I look so happy!”. Many patients had never seen themselves on video and were thrilled that their dancing could be seen by their friends and family online.
Gentry credits Unbound with forging a sense of belonging for patients and hospital staff and “providing patients with a unique kind of purpose.”
This groundbreaking project was created through a cross-sector collaboration of the state hospital system, nonprofit organizations, artists, engineers, designers, creative arts therapists, educators, philanthropists, and community volunteers.
Ferron and the team at Life On Art galvanized the 800 volunteers to make three dimensional paper maché hearts that would ultimately be completed by the psychiatric patients to transform the large recreational hall into an evocative healing space.
The social design of the Unbound project is integrated and complex. To make hundreds of hearts, hundreds of collaborators were needed and Ferron intentionally sought out underserved populations to include as co-artists. LOEA partnered with nonprofits who serve the shelterless, dually diagnosed individuals, and at-promise youth. Alliances and collaboration agreements were formed with schools, teen centers, and churches to make hearts as part of their community service projects. Hundreds of volunteers made hearts for patients to paint and express themselves. Each heart was created by many pairs of hands.
The innovations of Unbound have been recognized at the state, national and international levels.
Director’s Top Award 2023
Camille Gentry and Alicia Brewster,
Department Of State Hospitals, Napa
“The Top 100 projects embody not only the creative prowess of top visionaries in interior, architectural, or public spaces, but also symbolize how art and design bring peace, prosperity, and profound meaning to our lives.”
Top 100 Global Large-
Scale Artworks 2023
"This is a most impressive project/program in every aspect. It is collaborative, inclusive, tactile and visually stimulating and engaging…”
First Place Award for
Arts for Innovation 2022
“The Unbound art installation at DSH-Napa is truly one of the most inspiring and uplifting things to happen at our state hospitals.”
The design of Unbound is complex, requiring 7 different sizes of paper maché hearts, ranging from 9 inches to 9 feet. Artists and therapists worked with non-toxic materials in an easily accessible process–with multiple steps and entry points for a wide range of ability levels to be able to participate.
“Hundreds of winged hearts burst from a cage dripping with darkness.”
“The hall was to be “exploding with hearts, with love.”
In the eye of a cyclone of steel ribbons stands an antique wooden cage dripping black resin from which the hundreds of paper maché winged hearts seem to fly free.
Unbound’s design creates a visceral sense of hope and liberation as viewers experience the hearts flooding out and growing bigger as they fly from the cage through, and across, the exhibition hall.
Ripples of Impact
Stories of Patient, Therapist,
and Youth Volunteers
Through their involvement and varied contributions, participants reported an increased sense of belonging, purpose, and hope.
At its core, Unbound offers a vision of personal and collective liberation–freedom from the cages of trauma that hold us back. While our life stories and trauma are unique, there is universality to the struggle of being human.
Unbound gives hope that we can fly free from the traumas that bind us: personal, intergenerational, societal.
“The co-creative and participatory artmaking process embodies the message that we are all one, and that our liberations are interwoven and dependent on our commitment to love and compassion.”
- Tracy Ferron, Founder of Life on Art
Patient Stories
In a survey conducted by Napa Therapists, patients noted that participating in Unbound helped them feel more comfortable around, accepted by, and more connected to others. Patients also reported an increased sense of belonging, pride, and accomplishment, as well as being part of the greater community.
The very first heart to go into the hospital, affectionately named “Big Momma”, was a 15-foot winged heart that had an enormous impact on the patients.
One patient placed his hand on the chest of the heart and said:
“This shows me that even though I may have a brain disease, my heart is still pure.”
Many patients expressed aspects of their identities, one with a Pride flag, another with the eagle from the Mexican flag.
Others wrote messages “I miss you Mom. I miss you Dad”...
...and one whole unit decided their style was to make their wings polka dotted.
One patient, renowned at county and state fairs for his intricate collage work, created an exquisite collaged heart gracing the chest of a 9-foot heart near the front of the flock.
Dance therapist Alicia Brewster shared the insightful comments of one patient for whom the symbolism of the artwork had great meaning. The woman reflected:
“I have spent my whole life in this black ooze,” pointing to the black resin flooding out of the cage. She shared that she felt the cage represented the incident that brought her to the hospital but that now, after receiving treatment, she has learned to be more expressive and colorful and that she is now one of the bright hearts flying free. She especially appreciates the curved steel ribbons woven throughout the sculpture because “it shows me that it’s ok that my path has not always been straight.”
Therapist Stories
“The Unbound art installation at DSH-Napa, our oldest operating state hospital, is truly one of the more inspiring and uplifting things to happen at our state hospitals . . .”
-Stephanie Clendenin, Director of the California Department of State Hospitals.
“It just really got me so excited to know what the potential could be for staff and patients to collaborate - and especially the community piece - to know that Life On Art was reaching out to community members, it just made it seem that the community had a sense of connection to the patients that don’t usually feel that connection on a regular daily basis.”
- Alicia Brewster, Rehabilitation Therapist, Department Of State Hospitals, Napa
Volunteer Stories
The volunteers who built the 800 paper maché hearts experienced a sense of belonging and purpose while making the winged hearts together in community. Deep and comforting connections made by sitting side-by-side sharing stories, and making large-scale art together.
“And with Unbound, I'm able to take that trauma of my past and place it in these hearts and the wings . . . I feel so much healed. I feel so much lighter and I just feel so much more love for my brother that I haven't felt in so, so long. And the biggest thing for me is the fear is gone and there's a compassion and an understanding that he was doing the best he could and now I'm doing the best I can. And I think I'm doing pretty darn good.”
- Karen Anderson, Community volunteer
Youth & Teen Stories
Youth comprised the largest segment of community volunteers, and in many ways they were at the heart of Unbound. The project brought over 350 youth and teens a sense of community and purpose during the COVID pandemic.
Many teens participants appreciated the forum to talk about mental health. They wrote their feelings, hopes, and challenges on sheets of paper which they rolled up like scrolls and inserted into the center of their paper maché hearts.
“It was very peaceful and it was really fun knowing we were doing something productive and helpful”
Youth engagement was infectious: They added handprints,
...decoupaged news stories about tragedies,
...and societal pain,
...and wrote letters to the DSH-Napa patients, which were received with appreciation.
...and wrote letters to the DSH-Napa patients, which were received with appreciation.
Unbound Press
-
-
Napa Unbound: art installation made by patients, staff and volunteers takes wing at Napa State Hospital
-
Petaluma’s Life on Earth Art wins national award (November 3rd, 2022)
‘Unbound’ takes flight (June 3rd, 2022)
Life on Earth Art opens in downtown Petaluma (Sept. 2, 2021)
-
Local artists build a ‘hall of love’ at Napa State Hospital (Oct. 12, 2021)
-
Life with Lisa Bradshaw - Tracy Ferron (Jun 10, 2022)
The Creation of Unbound
Unbound: A Showcase of Patient Creativity
Make a Heart, Change the World
The Story of Unbound
Heart for
Mary Culley Strubel
Volunteers of Unbound
Collaborate with Us.
To learn more about Unbound, view it in person, and collaborate with Life On Art on a large-scale artwork, please email heartmaking@lifeonart.org or fill out the form with details.