About three months before she was set to go to South Africa, Laura Mannion broke her leg.
“The day before I was supposed to go on my trip, I was declared weight-bearing,” Mannion said. “I was in a wheelchair the whole time.”
Now, three months after her trip, Mannion, a Purdue Northwest employee and photographer, displayed her images at the university’s annual women’s art exhibition. Mannion, who is also a PNW alumna, hoped her photos and story would inspire other young women.
“I didn’t leave the country until I was 26 (years old),” she said. “Now look at what I’ve done. … I had a goal to do 100 countries by 60 (years old), and I’m actually going to do it early.”
Mannion was one of 21 artists who had art displayed in the third annual exhibition Wednesday night. It was her first year, but some artists had participated since the beginning, said Raymond Kosinski, events coordinator for the university’s College of Humanities, Education and Science.
The women’s art exhibition was started in 2023 to help connect Northwest Indiana’s artists.
“It’s been amazing to see the connections not only between our students and staff with these artists, but the artists connecting among themselves,” Kosinski said. “That’s the spirit of building community through the arts and really bringing together people who celebrate the arts.”
Since the exhibition’s creation, Kosinski said he’s heard overwhelmingly positive feedback from staff, students and other attendees. The artists love it, Kosinski said, because it’s a free event where they can share their art more.
Kosinski’s favorite part of the women’s art exhibition has been getting to know the artists and discovering how connected the local art community is to one another.
“I’m friends with these people now, and that’s such an amazing feeling,” Kosinski said. “It’s cool to see that outside the exhibition and know these people are really building connections. That’s what inspires me, and that’s what we hope to do here.”
Various exhibition participants are part of Northwest Indiana’s Diversified Art Visionaries, a group dedicated to promoting arts in the region. PNW’s exhibition helps connect the group’s artists to each other.
Lyn Czapla, a local artist and teacher at Solon Robinson Elementary School, said the exhibition also connects her to young artists.
For Czapla, art is therapeutic. She creates Zentangle, which is drawing patterns and then painting them. Czapla also teaches Zentangle classes, marketed toward women who struggle with anxiety or need help calming their minds.
Czapla started Zentangle after her mother unexpectedly died, and she would create skulls that she saw in her mind. It then morphed into drawing and painting animals, and then into Zentangle.
“It was very therapeutic,” Czapla said. “I still fall in love with it, and I’m obsessed with it.”
Czapla enjoys the women’s art exhibition because she becomes connected with other artists and can hear their stories.
“Women have a lot to offer, and a lot of their work is really different,” she added.
Janel Hunt, a mixed-media artist, started creating acrylic paintings after she was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013. She developed post-mastectomy pain syndrome, which can occur after breast cancer surgery, and began taking art therapy classes at the Cancer Resource Center in Munster.
Hunt paints bright, colorful images of animals, including giraffes and flamingos.
“That’s what rattles around in my brain all the time,” Hunt said. “It makes me really happy, and it’s been really healing.”
Like Czapla, Hunt said her favorite part of the women’s art exhibition was connecting with other women and hearing their stories.
“Art is such a healing process,” she added. “Finding something that makes you feel good about yourself, that gives you a reason to get up in the morning, and it’s just an escape. I think everybody should have an escape.”
mwilkins@chicagotribune.com
