OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, August 11, 6 – 10 PM during Franklinton Friday
Additional viewings by appointment

Artist Statement:
They say people have demons. I have monsters.

My life has been full of struggles, homelessness, addiction, rape, suicide, abuse, and abandonment. I started painting my “monsters” as a way to feel better about life in general. They make me laugh, they make me cry, I get angry, or feel calm. The more I painted them the more I started thinking about everyone else’s personal stories, what’s happening in the world, and what I feel is not talked enough about… mental health. I started my work for myself and now I use it as a voice to speak for those unheard, those who feel shame, those who feel completely lost, to show my own vulnerability and my monsters, to show that survival is hard, but possible, and give others out there like me some hope and a sense of wanting to keep going.

About Emily:
Emily Strange was born in Columbus, Ohio. At a young age she found herself involved in anything creative, however the “dark side” got to her and took her away from creating for a number of years. During this time Emily went through a number of traumas and decided to move out of Ohio. She went to get help from a homeless shelter and began creating again. This shelter offered her a job in the art department after seeing her talent and helped her get her GED, take her SAT, and apply to colleges. Emily got a full scholarship to Parsons School of Design and moved to NYC where she lived for the next 11 years. Her senior year in college, Emily’s best friend took her own life because of a heroin addiction. This moment was when Emily chose sobriety. Art became a way for her to stay on her path of sobriety, painting her “Monsters”, to put them on the canvases as a way to get them out of her head.

Thinking on a larger scale to be a voice for others like her, she creates installations hoping to educate the uneducated on what addiction is really like and touches on surviving mental illness, PTSD, rape, homelessness, and suicide. She strives to be heard for the people that are seemingly invisible.

Emily is now a full time artist living in Columbus, OH with 8 years of sobriety.