Collaborate in the Community
Safe Spaces
Sheppard Pratt and artist Myung Jin Choi
2007
For ten weeks in June, July and August, 2007, Baltimore Clayworks, with support from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation’s Artist and Communities program, hosted artist Myung Jin Choi of the Clay studios in Philadelphia. While at Clayworks, Myung worked with students in the Forbush School of the Mann Residential Treatment Center of Sheppard Pratt Health Care Systems. Myung and the students created and installed a collaborative sculpture entitled, “Safe Spaces,” on the Sheppard Pratt Campus. The theme “safe spaces,” emerged from Myung’s childhood memories of needing to find safe spaces to retreat from the world. Each week, she introduced a new project or concept coupled with a new hand building technique as they worked with clay. Some of the projects included “my friends” in which students created portraits of their friends in clay, and “letters” in which students created slab and wrote a letter or message to a loved one, friend or to themselves. Once they had written the letter, they chose to leave it open for others to read, or to roll it up and keep it private. All of the pieces made were incorporated into a large sculpture that is now a permanent fixture at the hospital. Myung felt that the most satisfying and successful aspect of the whole project was when she saw her students running up to the sculpture during installation, looking for their pieces and proudly pointing them out to their caregivers, friends and family.
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