FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 2024
Mind Matters: Socially-driven art project Meta Betties hosts a new group exhibition at The Canvas 3.0
In partnership with Creatives Care and Foxylab New York, the 40+ artist exhibition includes panel discussions, mental healthcare resources, live performances, and a fashion line in support of Student Mental Health Helpline Act
New York, NY – In partnership with Creatives Care and Foxylabs New York, socially-driven art project Meta Betties hosts Mind Matters, a group exhibition raising awareness and support for emotional well-being through art, on July 12, 2024, at The Meta Betties Gallery powered by The Canvas 3.0 at the Oculus: Westfield World Trade Center.
Mind Matters brings together 40+ artists from diverse backgrounds and mediums to share their personal stories and experiences with mental health, offering a collective narrative that aims to inspire understanding, compassion and community. One of the participating artists in Mind Matters will be awarded their own 2024 solo exhibition in the gallery to be announced live at the group exhibition. Unlike past activations focusing on cultural conflicts and social injustices, in Mind Matters, Metta Betties will highlight personal challenges of mental health, bringing a humanized and vulnerable aspect to the collection for the first time.
Mind Matters will feature physical and digital art, as well as live performances from artists around the world. There will be an opening performance by Kanami Kusajima, aka “Let Hair Down,” a New York artist known for dance and performance art in Washington Square Park, and Carlota Perez De Castro, a multidisciplinary artist known for performance, body painting, and painting. This will be the first collaboration between the artists and the ongoing live performance art will open the group exhibition. Mind Matters will also feature The Strangers Project, which celebrates the stories encountered daily from both strangers and ourselves, fostering connections with people and something greater. It creates spaces for discovering and sharing stories, all collected in person from passersby. These stories span all ages and walks of life. New stories are shared daily and collected nationwide.
Founded by artist Blakelee Pieroni, Meta Betties is a multidisciplinary creator that intersects art, fashion, performance, and the blockchain as catalysts for social change. A provocative subversion of 1940s pin-up imagery, Meta Betties examines ongoing social issues with aggregated, activist-based tools that not only inform its collectors but also incentivize community action.
Meta Betties is partnering with Creatives Care, a community of artists, providers, and supporters, securing the future of the arts by providing free services to help artists access affordable, high-quality mental healthcare. Creatives Care will be hosting a panel discussion with psychologists and artists and will provide mental health care resources for artists throughout the event.
Meta Betties is also partnering with Foxylab New York to co-create a connected fashion line with a NFC tag that supports passage of the Student Mental Health Helpline Act currently in front of Congress. The “It’s All Play” personas are based on emotion and mental health, centering the image of the white rabbit, a symbol rooted in aspects of new beginnings, tranquility and hope. This collection represents Pieroni’s interpretation of neo-expressionism within a PFP-dominated culture, incorporating bright colors, large objects, cultural context, symbolism, and messaging throughout. “As an artist, my emotions often get the best of me. I feel it all, all the time, and it’s all play,” describes Pieroni.
About Creatives Care
Creatives Care Network, Inc. (CCN) is a NY-registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Our mission is to ensure the future of the arts by providing access to affordable mental health care for artists. Creatives Care built a referral network of mental health providers who have a personal connection to the arts and are willing to see artists and musicians at significantly reduced fees. Our staff provides free consultations to artists on navigating the mental health system. It helps connect artists to affordable treatment options using our referral network and other low-free treatment options. In addition, the organization aims to build a treatment access fund to bridge the gap between a provider’s reduced fees and what an artist in need may be able to afford. Creatives Care increases awareness of the role of mental health in the arts by organizing concerts and events, building relationships with artist communities, and creating educational programming.
According to a 2016 study by Help Music UK, 71% of classical musicians reported issues with anxiety and panic attacks and 61% reported symptoms of depression, a rate up to three times higher than that of the general public. These difficulties are compounded for artists from underrepresented or underprivileged backgrounds and those who additionally contend with the ongoing stigma around mental illness and treatment. Artists also face significant barriers to accessing treatment because many lack adequate health insurance. Protecting the future of the arts requires not only supporting arts institutions but individual artists themselves. Creatives Care achieves this by bringing the mental health, artist, and supporter communities together to invest in artist well-being and development, finally addressing a crisis that has persisted for too long.
Website: https://www.creativescare.org/
Instagram: @creatives_care
About Foxylab New York
Foxylab New York is a creative laboratory that merges art and fashion. We are an ARTWEAR clothing brand and the community MAGAZINE that serves as a go to source for inspiration and discovery of world creative talents.
Website: https://foxylabny.com/
Instagram: @foxylab.newyork
About Meta Betties
Meta Betties is a concept art collectible that serves as a running social commentary on current events and cultural conflicts. Inspired by classic pin-up girls of 1940s America, Meta Betties are reborn as modern evangelists that call attention to social issues and injustices through iconic symbolism and message. The art is provocative and chaotic, and minted on the Ethereum blockchain each Meta Bettie serves as a timestamp of social issues and human progression as real-world events unfold. The IRL subject matter feeds the project endlessly from year-to-year and collectors get to invest, trade and act on the issues that drive the culture towards progress, or to ruin. The Brand seeks to pioneer new models for using art + the blockchain as a catalyst for social change.
Website: https://www.metabetties.com/
Instagram: @metabetties
Twitter / X: @MetaBetties
About Blakelee Pieroni
Pieroni holds a dance media degree from Marymount Manhattan, complemented by training in oil painting and Sound Design. Integrating these mediums, she has shaped a unique artistic practice showcased in NYC over the past decade. Recognized for choreography, painting, and digital performance art, her work has garnered attention in publications like Time Out, AMNY, WHITEHOT Magazine, Creatrix, Up Mag, Blockster, SuperChief, and ChaShaMa. In 2023, Pieroni curated “m OTHER,” a group exhibition for stepmothers, evolving into a documentary premiering at the 25th Through Women’s Eyes Film Festival in March 2024. Invited to perform at Art Basel Miami, she presented “Labor of Materiality,” encouraging audience engagement through a chipped egg that scanned to a petition for the Women’s Protection Act of 2023 advocating reproductive freedom.
Currently in residency at The Canvas 3.0 in The Shops at the Oculus in Westfield World Trade Center, she utilizes “Meta Betties,” her concept art collectible minted on the Ethereum Blockchain, to pave the way for digital activism. Pieroni plans to curate exhibitions in the space to creatives of all mediums exploring tech’s intersection with movement, human behavior, and fashion.
Website: https://www.blakeleepieroni.com/
Instagram: @blakelee_mover
