Good Hart Artist Residency highlights disability advocacy and art

PETOSKEY — Artist Genevieve Ramos doesn’t shy away from telling people about the worst night of her life.

That’s what she did this month at the Crooked Tree Arts Center as she spoke about her art and her life experiences.

When she was 20, Ramos sustained serious injuries in a car accident that left her unable to speak or walk. Art therapy afterwards helped change the course of her life.

Over a decade later, Ramos can speak (with difficulty) and walk (with a cane), but she is also able to tell her story with a paintbrush in hand.

“It wasn’t the literal loss of voice and physical abilities that informed my work,” Ramos said. “Instead, what I discovered was a way to express my experience of being a woman, a daughter of a Mexican immigrant and then a person with disabilities; these are elements of what my work is today and the narratives it tells, though now I’m deeply moved by community in addition to these elements.”

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Ramos is the artist-in-residence at Good Hart Artist Residency this month, as part of the residency’s Elevating Diverse Voices program, which holds a residency each year for an artist from a marginalized group in recognition of the value these voices offer to our understanding of the human experience. This year, the program’s focus is disability.

Ramos was nominated along with others by curator Matt Bodett, a disabled artist in Chicago, and selected by a panel of disabled artists in order to ensure the decision-making power rested solely within the disabledcommunity.

Through a partnership with the Crooked Tree Arts Center and Challenge Mountain, Ramos gave an art talk at Crooked Tree followed by a group art project designed to bring the community together to share in an experience of expression and connection.

Ramos painted three “power to the people” fists and invited community members to collage around the painting as a way of adding their voices to the message.

For more information about the Good Hart Artist Residency, visit goodhartartistresidency.org.