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Giving a Voice to All Grant Recipient: Cape Cod C.A.N.!
here do we turn in life’s difficult moments? Erin Bressler turned to art. “It’s very therapeutic,” she says. “I love art. It is just peaceful and calming.” Art, she says, is what helped her through a brain tumor and the multiple surgeries she was forced to endure at the age of 4. “I’ve been tumor-free for 20 years,” she says, proudly, inside the community room at the LIFE (Living Independently Forever, Inc.) community in Hyannis this past May. And art continues to play a significant role in her life; she makes beaded crafts that include pins and wine stoppers that she sells at the Hyannis Art Shanties overlooking the harbor during the summer. She donates a portion of the proceeds to support charities that help children suffering from brain injuries and other chronic illnesses. On this day, Bressler is focused not on her own personal art, but on a collaborative one that is being funded, in part, by the AFCC. She is one of 136 participants from roughly a dozen different organizations that are contributing to three mosaic murals being dubbed “The Natural Wonders of Cape Cod.” The pieces are expected to be unveiled in September and will be displayed at the Cape Cod National Seashore Salt Pond Visitor Center in Eastham and the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce’s Visitors Centers in Centerville and Wareham. The project is being organized by Cape Cod CAN!, a nonprofit that exposes people with disabilities, like Bressler, to the beauty and wonder of the arts. Giving individuals the opportunity to express themselves through creativity, says Cape Cod CAN!’s Managing Director James Hurley, “provides them an outlet where they can actually shine.”
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GIVING A VOICE TO ALL
That is just the start of what AFCC Executive Director Julie Wake views as a bigger role for the arts on Cape Cod. “We are seeing the arts being integrated in a wide variety of healthcare and community settings for therapeutic, educational, and expressive purposes,” she says. “The arts are a great connector and path to healing and selfexpression, serving as the perfect medium where people, regardless of their backgrounds, can show the world who they are.” At LIFE, a small group spent a few hours doing just that under the watchful eye of Cape Cod CAN!’s art director Tessa D’Agostino. Individually, they glued buttons, beans, rice, and an array of different-colored sea glass onto pieces of paper that will be combined to make something beautiful. “It is good to know this will be displayed where a lot of people can see it,” says Elisabeth Bowman. While the mural will give others joy, she spoke to what creating art gives her: “It can often, when you really get into it, take you to places that you have never been before.” “It can also help you relieve stress because you’re giving yourself that time for self-reflection,” Tessa adds. Tessa, who also oversaw the individual pieces of the mosaics being created at the LIFE campus in Mashpee and the Riverview School in Sandwich, admits she is continually amazed by the talents of those she teaches. “They are artists and a lot of times they aren’t seen as that,” she says. The AFCC knows that giving people opportunities to display their talents is important. Art is the mechanism for doing so. “Art is such a healthy outlet for expression,” Tessa says. “When I get to see them create different projects and have a voice they wouldn’t normally have, that is very inspiring.”
Pops by the Sea 2016
