The 90×30 foot wall adjacent to the TownHall II Integrated Health Services will soon have a new look. Greater Cleveland local artist Kimberly Henderson is giving the wall a makeover, displaying her popular “Bipolar Butterfly” art to convey the message of mental health advocacy.
“There is going to be a butterfly here and it is interactive so you can stand in front of it and have wings to get a picture,” Henderson told The Weekly Villager.
Having started work on the wall on June 10, Henderson has finished with most of the top of the wall and will soon be busy painting her famous “Bipolar Butterfly” in the middle of the wall and then will illustrate the lifecycle of a butterfly next to it. The project is expected to be completed near the end of June.
Henderson said TownHall II has presented her with her largest canvas ever, and she is going to use every square foot of the wall to convey the beauty and struggles of mental health.
“It is for all mental illness because they struggle internally and what people are going through is a lot of different turmoil,” she noted. “I think Kent is a beautiful town with lots of canvasses everywhere, so I am hoping that it spurs and inspires more public art.”
Henderson’s “Bipolar Butterfly” is a well-recognized series, having been displayed across Stark County and Summit County in communities such as Akron, Canton, Cuyahoga Falls, Stow-Munroe Falls and Hudson. TownHall II will be the first in Portage County to display Henderson’s message of mental health awareness to the community.
According to TownHall II CEO Tamara Hunter, the non-profit organization wanted to convey mental health advocacy through the message of metamorphosis.
“There was something about the butterfly and the way a butterfly had a metamorphosis that really spoke to us as treatment providers,” she noted. “You start off in a cocoon and you walk into treatment and over time you end up just morphing into this beautiful butterfly.”
Hunter said that she became aware of Henderson’s work through her own travels in Canton and along with the help of Kurt Ruehr, TownHall II’s CFO/COO. They then contracted Henderson through the help of the Portage County Art Board.
Having been a professional painter for approximately 10 years, Henderson said that her artistic career took a drastic turn when she suffered her first manic episode when painting a butterfly.
“I was painting a butterfly for self-growth and metamorphosis but for some reason that I could only attribute to my manic brain, I made the left side dripping away,” she acknowledged. “When I shared with my audience about my mental health, I recognized how a butterfly represents mental illness.”
According to Henderson, the right side of the butterfly demonstrated how an individual tries to represent their most beautiful self in spite of their own internal struggle while the left side demonstrated the true turmoil.
Henderson dubbed her work as a “Bipolar Butterfly” and received positive feedback. Since that fateful moment, Henderson has taken on a platform of mental health advocacy through her own art with her “Bipolar Butterfly” speaking for itself, as she has strived to find a light for people to find the help that they need.
“This has taken on a life of its own. People responding is so meaningful to me; it is making a difference. Several times I thought about stepping back,” she said. “In the beginning, it was a lot of donated time and donated effort. Now we are getting grants and funding and it has definitely been a labor of love for me.”
She added that another reason she wanted to engage in a mental health platform was hearing the news through NPR that the second-highest cause of death for people between the ages of 10-34 is suicide. Through her work as a mental health advocate, Henderson said that she has personally discovered that the strongest barrier for mental health advocacy is stigma.
TownHall II Marketing Director Kevin Brosien praised Henderson’s “Bipolar Butterfly” piece as perfectly representing the message that the organization tries to convey with its treatment of mental health disorders.
“What Kim is doing in her bipolar butterfly project by bringing awareness to mental health and reducing the stigma of mental health challenges that people face is what we do at TownHall II, so it was just a perfect union of what Kim is doing and the services we have been providing for 50 years.” he said.
