Pamela Alderman
Cohort: 2025 - 2026
Website
About
Pamela Alderman is a West Michigan artist, writer, speaker, and the founder and executive director of Healing in Arts, a nonprofit organization that uses collaborative art to foster healing, connection, and community engagement. Since 2016, her organization has impacted more than 22,000 participants through trauma-informed art workshops, public installations, and community-based creative programs serving veterans, justice-involved youth, trauma survivors, refugee families, and underserved communities. As a social practice artist, Pamela is known for creating meaningful public art experiences that encourage storytelling, emotional healing, and human connection. Her work brings together diverse groups of people with projects designed to reduce isolation, strengthen community, and restore dignity through the creative process. Pamela is also the author and illustrator of the children’s book Sushi the Cat and speaks nationally about the power of creativity to build resilience, foster belonging, and activate cultural change.
Resilient Artist Projects
Faces of Resilience
This series of four watercolor portraits honors the resilience of U.S. military veterans and their ongoing journey toward shalom—a quiet sense of peace, wholeness, and restored connection. Each portrait reflects courage, endurance, and hope. The veterans are depicted facing the weight of their experiences while continuing to move forward with strength and resilience. Representing diverse races, genders, backgrounds, and generations, the paintings highlight both individuality and shared experience. The veterans portrayed have faced and overcome physical and emotional obstacles—isolation, PTSD, addiction, discrimination, and abuse—before, during, and after military service. Together, the portraits remain deeply connected through stories of service, loss, healing, and perseverance. The fluid nature of watercolor mirrors this emotional journey, balancing fragility, surrender, and resilience.
As part of the project, viewers are invited to become participants in the journey toward shalom by writing notes of encouragement to veterans or sharing personal reflections inspired by the artwork—creating space for connection, empathy, and healing through community.
The Lighter Weight of Being is the culminating multimedia and interactive event for the 2025 - 2026 Resilient Artist cohort.
