Cultivating the Shero Within: MOTHER
Cultivating the Shero Within: MOTHER is a two day life-size painting workshop for women who have lost their mothers. Recreate yourself as a life-size super shero, integrating your mother’s legacy into your powers.
Day 1: Friday, July 24th. 7:00p — 9:00p
Day 2: Saturday, July 25th. 10:30a — 4:30p
You will…
Identify the characteristics of your mother, exploring sources of your super powers including objects, metaphor, and symbolism
Immerse your experience using the paintbrush as a healing tool that expresses feeling and thoughts through color, line, shape and textures related to your connection and revelations
Define who you are and what you carry forward as sacred and intentional from your mother
Accessible to ALL levels of visual art experience! No previous drawing or painting experience necessary.
Open to all women—cis, trans, or otherwise—and nonbinary individuals who find alignment in women/femme-centric spaces.
Submit this form to register.
Recommended donation is $250.00.
About Our Facilitators
Amana Harris is the Executive Director for The Center for ArtEsteem and a strategist and leader in the field of community arts. Under her leadership the organization has received numerous awards and she’s been a professor at California College of the Arts’ since 2008. Amana is a trained Attitudinal Healing facilitator with over 30 years of leading healing circles. Her book, Self As Super Hero: Handbook on the Creation of the Life-Size Self-Portrait is a testament to her 32 years of experience in arts education and the power of art to inspire children, youth and communities. Amana has a BFA in Drawing and a Master of Arts in Teaching.
Amana lost her mother in October of 2025. Her mother, Aeeshah Clottey, is the co-founder of Attitudinal Healing Connection, Inc and set forth a legacy for Amana to step into and drive.
Ellen Morrison is a community artist, Licensed Clinical Social Worker and mediator. Her consultancy specializes in bridging differences across power and privilege with an eye on healing and transformation. With over thirty years of experience in community mental health and a lifetime inspired by a lineage of social and arts movements, Ellen integrates a creative, trauma-informed, relational approach to her facilitation.
Ellen lost her mother in August 2024 & is guided ever since by her last words to “choose beauty.”
ArtMobile at Bookworm Block Party: Bay Area Book Festival 2026
We’ll be outside and having a blast this upcoming Sunday at the Bay Area Book Festival’s Bookwork Block Party!
Navigate through MLK, Jr. Civic Center Park toward Milvia Street to find the ArtMobile in the parking lot of Berkeley City Hall.
Our team will guide you through crafting a custom bookmark, designed within your imagination or inspired by our theme for the day: fantasy!
Learn more about the Bookworm Block Party on the Bay Area Book Festival website.
Self As Super Hero Panel: Bay Area Book Festival 2026
The Center for ArtEsteem presents "Unleashing the Super Hero Within," a panel exploring Executive Director Amana Harris's curriculum, Self As Super Hero: Handbook on Creating the Life-Size Self-Portrait. ArtEsteem students and teachers will engage in dialogue about today’s youth, their creative needs, and the Self As Super Hero curriculum as a critical catalyst of self-reflection, family and cultural research, societal assessment, and artistic development.
The Self As Super Hero curriculum is a foundational aspect of ArtEsteem’s work, centering the student artist as they reinvent themselves to be the Super Hero they want to see in their communities. Students identify issues, both personal and in the world, and develop super powers based on their talents, the five senses, and objects of importance that can directly solve the problems they have identified.
28th Annual ArtEsteem Exhibition
Over the course of the school year, ArtEsteem students delve deep within themselves to create final projects for our annual exhibition, touching on topics revolving cultural history, mental health, environmental sustainability, introspective reflection, and self-expression. Their efforts result in artworks that represent a range of mediums, techniques, and intentions.
2025 Cycle of Gratitude Fundraiser Luncheon
ArtEsteem invites you to join us at our annual fundraiser luncheon, where you will help us in generating vital economic support for our programs and services while participating in facilitated, deep discussion.