That's Space Media.

Welcome to Radio Headspace into Wednesday morning.

My name is Jessica Martin and I'm an art teacher and the co-creator of Pepp Talk, a hotline

where elementary students offer advice and encouragement to adults.

This week is all about the incredible benefits of art and how we can introduce more of it

into our lives.

Today, we are going to discuss how art can help us find resilience, especially after

we've experienced loss.

My work, whether I'm making a painting or doing an interactive community art project

or an installation, it's really about diving deep into the process and experience of creativity.

This really all gelled for me right after my brother died.

My brother was a mountaineer and he died on an expedition 20 years ago.

After my brother died and processing that grief, I was really interested in the stories

I was choosing to tell about him and I started to do a lot of research on memory and how

memory is inherently a creative act.

We're choosing to tell certain stories and not others, looking at the research that

talks about the more we remember a certain moment, the farther it is from the original

experience.

As our life changes and evolves, our memories of those people change and evolve.

I thought that was so beautiful because it was as if that person was continuing to live

and evolve over time.

Art is a great pairing for that kind of improvisation and picking and choosing different things

...