Our History:
The founder of Arting Ways is Lori VanMeter, a specialist in Memorial Art. Lori’s interest in this topic arose upon the onset of sudden widowhood in 2006. As an artist, she used creative skills and collaborations to explore and express the complex issues of bereavement, grief, and mourning after the death of her husband John. In 2011 She began creating memorial art for friends and clients and to exhibit at community events. In 2014 Arting Ways was formalized.
What We Do:
We offer informative and entertaining live presentations, called Art Twistory, curated for large or small audiences. Topics range from cemetery architecture to Victorian mourning garb, from the temples at Burning Man to sculptural coffins in Ghana, from roadside descansos to high art in fine galleries... and so much more.
We develop, facilitate, and lead workshops where individuals and groups can create memorial arts and crafts.
Through the Memorial Art Network we connect people with professional artists for commissioned memorial artworks. We are always seeking new artisans to join the network of talented professionals — please contact us if you are interested in participating.
Our storytelling platform, We the Bereaved, is currently conducting interviews on all aspects of mortality and bereavement; the content of which will be produced for anyone to hear and learn from these first-hand narratives. Please contact us if you would like to share your story.
We create and install exhibits for Dia de los Muertos or other community celebrations.
We author nonfiction articles and essays for professional and general interest media.
Our Mission, Vision, and Values:
Our mission is to facilitate art and creative expression in western funerary culture. We inspire and initiate healthier ideas, discourse, and actions related to death, dying and bereavement. We promote artistic endeavors as a vehicle for navigating death and bereavement. We serve anybody who is dying, bereaved, affected, or interested.
We envision a culture where mortality is an acceptable topic of conversation in polite society. We see a world where people spend as much time and thought planning their funerals as their weddings, and with as much creative ingenuity. We cannot avoid death, so let us make something of it.
We value the singularity of individual lives and the tangible commemoration of those lives. We value the therapeutic power derived through designing, crafting, and sharing memorial objects and narratives. We value the collective cultural history that is gleaned through man’s innumerable generations of creative mourning customs.
Arting Ways is fiscally sponsored by Fractured Atlas.
To make a tax-deductible donation click the button below.
