When the issue of health in a community comes into question, some people turn to alternatives, like art, to make a healing impact. The Art Heals series explores how people have come to terms with emotional and physical trauma through writing first-person narrative, poetry, painting and other types of art making in an effort to find a place of healing and peace.
Allanah's Story
After being bullied most of her life, Allanah Kenoras-Schwandt withdrew from the world, even taking herself out of traditional school for a while and going into an alternative program, just to get a break from the incessant pestering, all because she didn't fit the norm among the rest of the students.
Kenoras-Schwandt, now 23, said it was because she was always a bigger kid and emotionally she paid dearly for it. She missed art so much she went back to high school for greater opportunities.
"Making art was a lot about escape for me and then it was about learning to do things and getting recognized for it," said Kenoras-Schwandt, who is First Nations, Scottish, Irish and German.
She grew up with her mother and knew very little about First Nations culture that's part of her through her father's side of the family. She learned more about the culture during her time at Grand Forks Secondary.
In her art classes, she experimented with pottery oils, acrylics, sketching, photography, computer art and is now relearning water colour, oils and acrylics but she's drawn to charcoal.
"Basically the messier the process is, the happier I am," said Kenoras-Schwandt.
She made a real breakthrough when she was invited to join a First Nations group for an art project.
"We had someone come into the school and ask us if we would work on a mural," she added. "So art helped me to express myself. It helped me get connected more with a part of me that I hadn't known before."
At 17, Kenoras-Schwandt knew the bright lights of Emily Carr University of Art and Design was her dream. She wanted to be able to make art for a living but she was questioned if that was a realistic goal.
"It's a good question from my family - it is," she said. "And I didn't have an answer."
So Kenoras-Schwandt, who liked the policy-making side of the law, thought that might be something to explore.
As she toured many universities to find her niche, the people and policies at the University of Northern B.C. appealed to her.
"I fell in love with the people and the structure of UNBC - just for how beautiful it was," said Kenoras-Schwandt started at UNBC in 2009 with public administration and community development as a major, with a minor in business. Then she took some time off.
To get back into art making after a five-year hiatus, Kenoras-Schwandt took the university's canoe course last year. There was a group project where half the carving on a dugout canoe was left to the students to do and then they each made a smaller model and carved their own design on it.
"I started to make more art and it helped me find myself again because I wasn't doing art up until then," said Kenoras-Schwandt, who now keeps a sketch pad by her bed and incorporates art into her daily life.
Ultimately, Kenoras-Schwandt would like to take the art certificate offered at the College of New Caledonia then transfer to Emily Carr for the second year.
"Because that, of course, is still my bright star in the sky," she added. "But I'm also looking at other options because I was at university, then working full time and I learned that money does make the world move, so I'm looking into taking the welding course next fall and looking into using it as part of my art."
That way she could work in the industry and have a new creative outlet as well.
"Ideally I would like Emily Carr to be my last schooling," said Kenoras-Schwandt. But she's still working that out.
