{"id":35745,"date":"2025-01-23T17:57:11","date_gmt":"2025-01-23T22:57:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=35745"},"modified":"2025-01-23T17:57:14","modified_gmt":"2025-01-23T22:57:14","slug":"you-reminded-me-that-i-am-an-artist-chats-rekindles-senior-creativity-at-art-showcase","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/you-reminded-me-that-i-am-an-artist-chats-rekindles-senior-creativity-at-art-showcase\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cYou reminded me that I am an artist\u201d \u2013 CHATS rekindles senior creativity at art showcase"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Everyone has a special talent, but whether we use it \u2013 and how often \u2013 can be a different story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Saturday, CHATS \u2013 Community & Home Assistance to Seniors \u2013 hosted a unique showcase of artistic talent through their first Community Arts Showcase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Featuring paintings, sculptures, handmade jewellery, pottery and textiles, the show, which was held at the Aurora branch of the Royal Canadian Legion, was the brainchild of Alexis Gada, a Caregiver Education Counsellor at CHATS.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThings like hobbies and things we do for self-care and to bring us joy often come up \u2013 and art is one of those things that comes up every now and again, so I had it on my mind,\u201d Gada explains. \u201cOne of my clients shared with me that her husband used to write her poetry and I thought to myself, these are things that would more or less be invisible in our community because they don\u2019t talk about it unless somebody asks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cCHATS is always trying to make sure that we are amplifying the visibility of older adults in the community, so any opportunity to do that is a good opportunity. I thought to myself, wouldn\u2019t it be fun if I sort of find out about who has all these talents and would they be willing to loan their work to show so that the community could enjoy it?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The majority of work submitted by the talented seniors was a mix of the passions they pursue on their own time, but with some works from art therapy programs \u2013 such as one created through one such program at Markham Stouffville Hospital \u2013 in the mix as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFor the most part, people were absolutely happy [to share their work] but some people were a little shy or thought maybe their stuff wasn\u2019t \u2018good enough,\u2019 but even those people came around at the last minute and said, \u2018Actually, I would really like to put my work in.\u2019 It was great to see them get the courage with that sort of thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe hope is it will also inspire older adults to get involved and start hobbies. Some of our pieces are from people who only started this story after retirement versus the people who had artistic expression in their lives forever. Our hope is we can start to make this an annual event.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Given the feedback they received from CHATS participants in the lead up to the January 18 event, that\u2019s one hope that could very well come to pass.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cA lot of participants have thanked me for doing this because not only does it give them an opportunity to show their work, but as one of our participants said, \u2018thank you for doing this because you reminded me that I am an artist.\u2019 That was a really nice [piece] of feedback to get because in our lives, it gets so busy,\u201d says Gada. \u201cWe hope that we can\u2026continue to inspire people and get people to come out and be involved in something that is easy to participate in and to appreciate. We have a few art galleries in sort of the York Region area, but something like this\u2026 I guess it is a little more fun because it is right in your community, it is closer to home, and there\u2019s faces to the names!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everyone has a special talent, but whether we use it \u2013 and how often \u2013 can be a different story. On Saturday, CHATS \u2013 Community & Home Assistance to Seniors \u2013 hosted a unique showcase of artistic talent through their first Community Arts Showcase. Featuring paintings, sculptures, handmade jewellery, pottery and textiles, the show, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":35746,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-35745","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/01\/2025-01-23-07.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-9ix","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-14 09:45:34","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35745","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35745"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35747,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35745\/revisions\/35747"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}