VISUAL ARTS
Welcome to Heard’s Visual Arts gallery. In these posts you’ll find images of our client’s original art. Enjoy!
Each artist whose likeness and/or work is posted on our site has signed a Heard media release or verbally given permission for their likeness and/or the artistic work they created to be posted on this site and shared via our social media platforms.
The Ultimate Man Cave
December 4, 2023: When our visual arts teacher, Sharmila Karamchandani has a class, we know magic happens. Her art challenges are always creative and meaningful, but even we weren’t prepared for … creating a man cave? Yes, that’s what she asked the artists of the Arlington County Detention Facility Community Readiness Unit (CRU) to imagine. On her Facebook page Sharmila wrote, “…I am always surprised to see the end result what comes out during these sessions…I always leave with so much to think and contemplate about. I feel blessed to be able to do this type of work in the community and let art be the vehicle to create meaningful conversations and hear people out. Each person has so much to offer if we care to listen.”
Top left: This person has always loved this retro design chair, speakers, a carpet where he can pray, a singing bowl and bowl to burn sage during his meditation.
Top right: This person has put colourful lights that drop from the ceiling, a table at the center to sit and play games. A library of books as he loves to read, bean bags to sit on, a big TV and all four corners have speakers for surround sound.
Bottom left: This person drew icons of what would be prominent in his man cave. Definitely music and peace and balance.
Bottom right: This person has a sacred place where he can go pray, meditate. He didn’t want any other distractions. He said he can process better in silence and recharge when there are no distractions.
A Reason to Celebrate!
September 27, 2023: The ask came pretty late. Could we support the City of Alexandria’s Recovery celebration? Led by the city’s Opioid Treatment Program team, this event celebrates those in addiction recovery. In years past we offered a creative writing seminar, and this year was a little different. They had already purchased canvas frames and markers – could a Heard artist lead this event? Was our Heard visual artist, Sharmila Karamchandani, even available?
Yes, she was. Phew. The hard part was over. And we weren’t really sure what Sharmila was walking in to. It was a new venue, with other activities happening simultaneously. Would anyone even stop by?
And of course they did, and Sharmila made that happen. She wrote: “At first, the visitors were apprehensive to draw or paint anything. We had different size canvases, paint markers, regular markers, and different colored papers. Most of them started by saying they couldn’t draw or paint. or they would say “I am really bad at art.” I then invited them to give it a chance, come sit with me and color and just feel how the pens felt against the canvas, I offered to write their names in an abstract way or Realistic (their choice) and then they could just fill in the colors or make designs of their choice. Also, they could quiz people to find all the letters in their names.
Art revealed its Magic. They were amused by this. Slowly, people started giving it a chance and very soon a one-hour session turned into 3 hours with a table full of visitors engrossed in coloring and feeling happy with working on their pieces. In the end, most of them who gave this a chance left with personalized canvases and big smiles A lot of them said how therapeutic this time felt when they were coloring. Two of them said it felt more enjoyable than their other therapy. Feel blessed to be able to do such meaningful work in the community. I truly had a great time.”
Puppet Masters
July 12, 2023: With just two days’ notice, Sharmila Karamchandani led the most amazing visual arts class with the alumni of Together We Bake (haven’t tried their chocolate chip cookies yet? They are amazing). Sharmila said she asked the women to “… create puppets of a person who had the most positive influence on them. There was some very interesting sharing and there were so many lessons hidden in what people shared. I am so humbled with the trust all the participants had and openly shared some very personal stuff. So grateful for today’s experience.” Here’s four of the new puppets below, and the heartwarming stories that accompanies them:
“She made a puppet of her daughter who has immense compassion. Her daughter pushes her to be a better person and is constantly focused on helping everyone. Even strangers. Some personal stories were shared and we were all in tears with so much compassion shown by a 12-year-old.”
“She made a puppet of her 7-year-old and told us how her young daughter is truly her sunshine. Her daughter and her profound comments encourage her every single day and makes her feel like she is a rockstar. Her story and the details about certain events left us speechless as to how this young child is such a blessing in her life.”
“She made a puppet of her mom. Her mom was an eccentric person. She is gone but our artist feels her presence. She shared how her mom was always saving all the animals. She was taking care of a wolf and a wolf puppy and they had all sorts of rescued animals at home. Growing up she found these things weird but now she appreciates these aspects of her mom.”
Who is Renting your Head Space?
May 25, 2023: When Together We Bake requested an art class with Sharmila Karamchandani, we knew we’d have a winner! Sharmila’s art projects are always equal parts fun, insightful, and inspiring, and it has been several years since she had done a Heard project with them. And, it was even more magical that we had dared to hope!
Leading with the prompt “Who is renting your headspace?” Sharmila asked the 20 participants to think about the negative voices and positive voices inside our heads. How do we know if it is our voice, a cultural voice, a parental voice or the voice of peer pressure? How do we know what’s ours and what has been imposed on us?
Sharmila shared later (edited): “What an amazing expressive art session we had this morning!! [T]he participants dived deeper into their headspace and whatever no longer serves them good they were supposed to do a scan and throw all the bad renters out to make room for the good renters.
Happy Mother’s Day!
May 12, 2023: If you don’t follow our visual artist Sharmila Karamchandani on Facebook, you should! Aside from being a generous, beautiful human being, she writes the best Facebook posts about her work with us! They are so insightful and detailed that we admit to cut/pasting/minor-edit them here. Her Mother’s Day project with the Casa Chirilagua kids, done over the last two Fridays, was no exception and one of the sweetest posts out there:
Robot Helpers for Household Chores
April 28, 2023, Casa Chirilagua: Given a chance what kind of a robot would you want to help out with household chores?
Gratitude Amid Chaos
April 25, 2023, Arlington County Detention Facility (ACDF): Our art teacher Sharmila Karamchandani ran into some unplanned chaos today and yet she and the women in the general population of the ACDF still found plenty to be grateful for. Here’s a shortened version of Sharmila’s story:
Super Superpowers!
April 18, 2023: We’re just happy to be back at the Arlington County Detention Facility after three years of virtual – or no – classes! We knew Sharmila and her gentle art would be the perfect way to segue in with the general population. She wrote that she “…tasked [them] to create an entity that had special powers that was much needed in our world today…I am always amazed at what people create for this particular project. It’s so thoughtful…We had some very interesting conversations.
Quiz: Match the description with the superpower:
- Healing fly, a butterfly who senses any suffering and ailments with her special antennas anywhere in the world and can heal the person of any ailments they may have.
- Mother Earth, our ultimate super hero. With her powers of endurance and creation the woman needs to be honored as she is the source of all that exists.
- Blossom, who makes flowers and people blossom and bloom with her special powers.
- Guppy, who loves to give group hugs. She likes peace, harmony and love to spread with her special hugs.
- Food Man, who feeds the hungry and the homeless. His never ending faucet will provide you with any liquids be it juices or sodas. His side kick furnace can whip up any dish from any country for any amount of people.
- Rainbot, who has shower powers. She can do her special robotic rain dance and make it rain wherever and whenever needed, and can bless you with prosthetic limbs if you don’t have them (the creator’s friend lost a limb because of diabetes, hence Rainbot).
Cherry Blossoms and Dots
April 14, 2023: Our art teacher Sharmila Karamchandani summarized her Fun Friday at Casa Chirilagua so perfectly:
“Today at our Heard Fun Friday at Casa Chirilagua, kids from 1st to 3rd grades learned about dot painting and pointillism technique. We made cherry blossom trees and talked about their short-lived life. Then I asked the kids what were some of their experiences that were short-lived and yet they truly felt lot of joy and happiness with that experience.
Many tiny hands went up in the air. I was so surprised they were holding so much in their little hearts. A lot of them talked about their grandparents ( mainly grandmothers) who are no longer alive(almost half the class wanted to talk about them), one kid misses a baby bunny who he saw in his backyard but doesn’t know what happened to it, one of the volunteer shared how she had fishes and because of not knowing what was the right water to put them in, she accidentally put them in the wrong water and they died in two days. Some of them missed their pets who have died.
All of this happened so fast in about 45 minutes, we learned about a technique, some of them needed help with making their tree trunks, we spoke about difficult experiences and then cleaned up as most of them had white and pink paints on their body. They were all covered with paint. It could qualify as an immersive experience. 
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Phew!! Each time I leave the workshop my heart is so filled with gratitude to experience and witness these young kids. 
Fridays are fun indeed!!“
Springtime at Casa Chirilagua!
March 31, 2023: In case you haven’t seen the daffodils and tulips out there (and don’t you just love daffodils on the highways?), it’s springtime! So of course our Sharmila Karamchandani had her Casa Chirilagua kids create their spring magic. We’re going to hope really hard that this means the official end of winter weather!
Creative Writing
Visual Arts
Improvisation
Etiquette
Public Speaking
Dance
Singing
