Reclaim Our Creative Voices
According to the world I was all wrong, but I did not want to be corrected.
When urgent beauty welled up from my broken ugliness, I felt a raw need to tack it down. Images, names, their music, quirks and synchronicity greeted me, promising that I could give such moments a place within the human experience. I never thought of their artistic merit, only whether they could contain the elusive scraps of truth that were both so precious to me, and so discarded by our society.
According to the world we are resources to be harvested body and soul, but this is a lie.
I am embarking on a painting series about creative expression as a useful container and conveyer of peoples’ truths. Inspired by my own history with this, I am curious how it looks for others. But maintaining an artistic voice in our isolated, algorithm-dominated, profit-optimized situation, is a long road. This body of seven poem-themed oil paintings will both uncover and celebrate the human reality of creativity, and put it in tension with forces that constantly suppress it.
In the spirit of this project’s inspiration (and as a way to generate its source material) I have partnered with Community Canvases’ Hy Carrel to offer a version of Kind Fools’ WRITE ON workshops. Known for fostering “authentic, positive feedback” and supporting everyone’s process through grounding practices, his approach embodies the idea that self-expression is a vital human birthright. We will play with responding to the paintings and poems I present each session. As some of your own poems begin to populate the paintings, we will start to see conversations between your creations and my imagery, between the poems across paintings, and amongst all of the visual themes that we produce together throughout the project’s unfolding.
These workshops are FREE, and there is no pressure to offer a poem to me for inclusion in my series. The workshops are meant to stand alone as a component of the project: an attempt to discover how we can really talk to each other using artistic language, and what becomes possible when we try. I plan to learn by your side, trust the process and take it one step at a time. Three workshops and seven paintings later, we will meet at Fitz Books and Waffles on June 5, 2026 to celebrate!
No prior experience necessary. The application is meant to gather folks with a genuine interest in participating in this project.
More Details
Who: Figurative artist Claire Connolly is collaborating with Kind Fools (of Community Canvases) founder Hy Carrel to invite you—her neighbors—to participate in her current project.
What: A community-rooted FREE art project. In a series of three free workshops led by Claire Connolly and Hy Carrel, a group of Buffalonians will reflect on the following: poems written by Connolly and her fellow participants, as well as paintings by Connolly that incorporate some of the poems. She is creating a series of seven 24” x 36” oil paintings that feature poems in conversation with each other, and compiling a book to commemorate the whole experience. During each session, participants will engage in mindful grounding exercises, free-writes, and have the option to develop their thoughts into poems. Everyone will have the choice to share their work during the workshops, to have their poetry included in the book, and/or to contribute a poem to one of Connolly’s paintings.
Why: Our society puts us under constant pressure to consume, whether via our pocketbooks or our attention. When we consume, we do not create. Connolly herself yearns to normalize artistic expression as an ordinary, useful, accessible mode of human communication. She is convinced that we all need more opportunities to reclaim our creative capacities, and to develop them coherently in community with others.
Where: Welcome/Info Session and Exhibit Opening/Chapbook Debut will be at Fitz Books and Waffles. Workshops will be held at TBA Buffalo institutions such as the Unitarian Univeralist Church of Buffalo, the King Urban Life Center, The Frank E. Merriweather Library, and/or others. As location details become available they will be posted on the events page.
When: See below. The events page will include more details as they are announced.
October 2, 2025 / Welcome and Info Event
October 16, 2025 / Poetry Workshop #1
January 8, 2026 / Poetry Workshop #2
March 5, 2026 / Poetry Workshop #3
June 5, 2026 / Exhibit Opening and Book Launch
This project is made possible by the generous support of the Creative Impact Fund, through Arts Services, Inc.
This project is supported by Kind Fools, a program of Community Canvases, as well as Fitz Books and Waffles.