Youth Go Big on Mental Health Awareness with Giant Puppet
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Zhaleh Almaee, program director for The Nest at right, demonstrates how eyes might fit into the head of a giant cat puppet being built by local youth, while Rose Martin from The Benji Project, left, and Jefferson County Fairgrounds art building superintendent Sam Wall show off the ears. Beacon photo by Derek Firenze [/caption]
Have you been struggling with your mental health lately? An animal companion with a cozy sweater has a message of care for you at the Rhody Parade this weekend. No, not the corgis. Look for the eight-foot-tall cat puppet.
This whimsical and heart-warming large-scale art project is being designed and built by local youth as part of The Benji Project’s 2024 Mental Health Awareness Month. While its size certainly raises awareness, the actual act of building it has been at least as helpful to the cause.
“The process of creating and talking about it has also been a really meaningful thing for the people involved,” said Heather McRae-Woolf, executive director of The Benji Project. Spanning over two weeks, the Benji Project has been offering a series of art creation workshops for youth held at the Jefferson County Fairgrounds Commercial Building. “It gives young people an opportunity to have their own reflection about their own mental health and questions that might have come up for them,” she said.
The Benji Project was founded in 2017 in response to the suicide of a cherished Port Townsend teenager. The core of the nonprofit’s programming are summer camps and school programs that teach proven tools such as mindfulness and self-compassion to young people, their families, and communities.
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Benji Project staff members Steve Baird and Rose Martin try out a hoop skirt under the cozy sweater to fatten the cat belly. Beacon photo by Derek Firenze [/caption]
“I like to reframe mindfulness as this notion of paying attention to your surroundings, to yourself, taking a pause. It’s about self-awareness and awareness of your context,” said McRae-Woolf. She went on to explain how with awareness comes the need for compassion. “Sometimes when we’re really paying attention to ourselves and our environments, there’s really hard things that we experience and see. How can we be gentler with ourselves during that process?”
While they’ve used a specific program for 8-week courses, which they have condensed into shorter classes to take into schools, a giant puppet is something new.
“In this project, we’re taking some of those insights and inspiration, and we’re taking it into another realm,” said McRae-Woolf. “One thing that resonates with a lot of young people is using art as a way of being mindful and both gaining self-awareness and expressing oneself.”
From the beginning, they’ve asked youth to reflect on what mental health means to them and how they want to express their own struggles through imagery.
“We had a really great brainstorming process,” said Rose Martin, who has worked with The Benji Project for the last year and has been running the workshops. She described the early stages of the process with youth writing ideas on a window with glass markers during a pizza party.
While there were many different takes, a particular theme kept repeating. “The one that was the most consistent was animals,” said Martin. “For some, it was a dragon, for some it was a shark, for some it was their dog or a cat.”
“The flip side of it was a cozy sweater, or a blanket, or a sweatshirt,” she added. “Something that’s oversized and cozy. So we took those ideas and put them together.”
While the feeling of comfort comes across clearly in these images, deeper reflection brought out more metaphors. A lively discussion led to cats playing with a ball of yarn that can unravel and fall apart and also be put back together. They also talked about how holes in sweaters can be patched up to symbolize healing.
When I spoke with some of the youth working on the project, they shared with me how art has helped them.
“With animation, anything can happen,” said Lily Newsome, age 19. As she showed me her sketchbook filled with detailed drawings, she added, “It’s calming.” She went on to excitedly describe experimenting with many different mediums such as, “oil, pastel, watercolor, acrylic, alcohol markers, crayons, pencil. It keeps it interesting.”
Zoey Doray, also 19, has previously sold some of her art at The Nest. “It’s important to understand yourself better and be able to see things through a different perspective,” said Doray. “If something horrible happens, but you can turn it into art, then it becomes something beautiful.”
The first workshop I visited involved a dozen or so young adults, supported by a rotating crew of 7-10 somewhat older folks. Staff members from The Benji Project were joined by partners from the Fairgrounds and other youth-focused nonprofits like The Nest, a youth center-slash-coffeeshop, and PT Artscape, which puts on the Wearable Art Shows.
Local puppeteer and teaching artist Thaddeus Jurczynski also leant his expertise to the workshops. Jurczynski has been teaching for over thirty years and making giant puppets for over twenty. He told me that his largest puppet was 14-feet tall. Most recently, he made puppets for a local youth production of Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream.”
While the puppet was only in its beginning phases on that initial visit, everyone was dreaming big with ideas like rotating eyes and retractable claws. I watched as Jurczynski directed teens to cut out shapes from cardboard which would fold and fit together to make the head of the cat.
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Caring messages on patches decorated by local youth wait to be added to the sweater. Beacon photo by Derek Firenze [/caption]
I also saw patches decorated for the sweater and oversized sleeves stretched out. Margie McDonald, who leads the Wearable Art Show through PT Artscape, had her hands busy directing the cutting and fitting of all that cloth. Patches and cloth strips were also taken beyond the workshops to schools and to The Nest to get as many young voices as possible involved.
To help facilitate the back and forth of those materials and young artists, Zhaleh Almaee, program director for The Nest, helped provide transportation using “The Nest Mobile” to get kids from The Nest’s location in Uptown to the Fairgrounds and sometimes even to their homes after everyone was done creating for the day.
Once completed, the giant puppet will make its way down Lawrence Street during the Rhody Parade carried by youth. The Benji Project then hopes it will continue to live a long life, making multiple appearances across town.
“We have had some discussion about where would be a good place for this message about youth mental health to appear in the community in a fun way,” said McRae-Woolf. “Maybe the cat will appear in a business or maybe at various outdoor events. Certainly at The Nest. I’m hoping it will make multiple appearances at The Nest.”
