Healing Through Arts

The soul-baring art and poetry of their Maui Prep students was prominently displayed in a renowned museum thousands of miles away from the school’s campus. “This is the most meaningful body of work I have ever seen my students do,” Mrs Lloyd remarked, raising her arms in triumph and awe as she scanned the gallery.

The unlikely collaboration began when Maui Prep parent Ashley Carroll (Skye ‘28, Isla ‘29) connected Jackson Hole artist Anne Muller and Mrs Lloyd after the fire. “From the beginning, my intention was to facilitate healing through art,” recalls Ms Muller. “As an artist, I know how powerful expressing yourself with art can be. It takes you away from what you see to what you picture.” Ms Muller gifted funds to the Maui Prep Art program so that Mrs Lloyd could promote recovery and rebuilding through creativity and composition. Lloyd recalls Muller telling her, “I am giving you this money because I believe that healing comes through art.” Art provides an outlet when words fail.

Ms Muller connected Lloyd with Jackson Hole High School art educator Shannon Borrego and the school’s chapter of the National Arts Honor Society (NAHS), a nationwide scholastic organization that includes Maui Prep. The two chapters tele-conferenced to discuss ways that the Wyoming high school students could support the Maui students’ well-being and healing through art. They settled on a collaboration commonly called, “Exquisite Corpse.” (a similar project appeared in the Spring 2023 edition of Wingspan, available at mauiprep.org/wingspan). Under the direction of literature and composition teacher Mrs Jessica Lucia, Maui Prep sophomores penned poetic responses to the poignant and thought-provoking question, “What do we gain from loss?” Then, Jackson Hole High students created visual interpretations of their tender, vulnerable, and raw words.

The entire exhibit was a complete student effort, from the written descriptions on the placards down to the arrangement of the art in the space, which the NMWA designates for student work with a grant from the Lea Charitable Trust. Ms Muller and Ms Borrego met with Mrs Lloyd and Mrs Lucia to tour the exhibit. “To see, in that very large hall, the visual manifestation of the journey so many students had made in making their art, was deeply moving to me,” she recalls. “I am still in absolute awe of the energy and passion that brought the students of two different schools, miles and miles apart, together to address their feelings of loss, gain and love through art.”

In addition to the collaborative works, original artwork by Maui Prep students were part of the exhibit. Pueo artists contributed pieces in various media of their favorite memories. Lloyd chose the theme as a healing exercise for students to creatively process their own reactions to the wildfire.