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?
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 very unique work of wonder created 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
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 Earth 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 Earth 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
Top 100 Global Large-
Scale Artworks 2023
First Place Award for
Arts for Innovation 2022
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 Earth 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.”
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 Earth 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
