We Rise Alum Spotlight: Tiesha Harrison Raises Awareness About Domestic Violence and Online Safety Through Art
This fall, artist and entrepreneur Tiesha Harrison will collaborate with the R.E.A.L Friends Don’t Campaign and Paint Phoenix Purple “The Sunflower Soul Project” to raise awareness and foster dialogue around teen safety online and domestic violence.
R.E.A.L Friends Don’t Campaign
Harrison is responsible for designing and producing a piece of art to be displayed in the lobby of ASU Gammage. She will also co-lead, with the McCain Institute, a 90-minute design workshop with youth (12-18 yrs old) this fall of 2022 on online safety.
The R.E.A.L. Friends Don’t campaign is a national online safety campaign to increase awareness and educate parents, caregivers, and young people about online safety and empower parents to protect their children from harmful content, grooming, or online exploitation. Launched in December 2020, the campaign offered in Spanish and English provides caregivers and youth with comprehensive resources and practical tools to protect themselves and those close to them from potentially dangerous content or bad actors.
Paint Phoenix Purple “The Sunflower Soul Project”
In this workshop, Tiesha showed participants her fun and free way of creating an intuitive abstract painting of a purple sunflower. Together, they explored mindfulness exercises, mark-making quotes, and painting with bold purple colors, in support of domestic violence survivors.
Tiesha Harrison was also selected this past summer by Phoenix Phabulous ExperienceTM to create the collection’s new mural to represent “Phoenix 2020 to 2025: The Great Pivot.”
Phoenix Phabulous ExperienceTM is a storytelling program and indoor mural collection sharing history in major time periods of Phoenix
“As I collaborate with organizations, I aim to expose the voices of those who have been silenced by inner doubt, to encourage them to fully embrace their undefined soul,” Harrison said. “I want my brushstrokes to evoke sensations of vulnerability, connecting viewers with vibrant manifestations of truth.”
From the ancient Hohokam civilization to the imagined future, the murals reflect a commitment by each artist to learn about an assigned time period and portray the unique and dramatic story of Phoenix. The murals spotlight the fortitude it took to create a vibrant desert city, now among the top-five largest metropolitan regions in the United States.
Starting October 1, Phoenix Phabulous Experience is promoting a schedule of storytelling programs open to the public. For more information, visit the Phoenix Phabulous Experience website.