In her newly appointed role as Arts & Wellness ambassador for the Atlantic Center for the Arts, M.B. was asked to comment on her work, the arts, the community, and her new role with ACA.
 

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What do you most love about your work combining health and the arts?

For me, creating art has always been a way to care for the heart and mind. Working as an Ambassador for ACA, where we consciously join arts initiatives with an interest in healing, has been some of the most rewarding work in the arts that I have ever done.


What inspired you to pursue this field?

I think art makes us more human – or at least it reminds us of our humanness. Emily Dickinson once said that she writes poems in order to know what time it is. Making art is a wonderful way for us to value the minutes and days in our lives.


How have the arts been transformational in your life?

Wonderful shifts in ways of seeing – in ways of being -- have occurred for me through my teaching and through my interacting with other poets in New Smyrna
Beach and in Volusia County.


What’s special about the people of Volusia County or New Smyrna Beach?

People who live in our county – especially artists – truly love our surroundings. The flora and sounds of our county frequently color the poems that people produce in my workshops. There’s a wonderful rhythm that we all march to here – it’s a pace and beat that shows up in our poems and visual art.


What is the most rewarding part of your work with ACA?

The people whom I have had the chance to come to know and love has been the most rewarding part of my work with ACA. So many talented and generous artists make up the community called “ACA”. I have felt very blessed to have been welcomed into this community.

3/28/2019

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