In July 2021, Todd and Alisa Whysong were recovering from the unthinkable: Their 15-year-old daughter, Katie, took her own life that March after a battle with depression.
Despite her young age, she had a legacy: Shortly before she died, she enlisted the help of her art teacher to begin an art campaign full of positive messages to champion mental health.
Katie wasn’t able to see her idea through, but her parents did.
With help from that same Fox Chapel art teacher, Nanci Goldberg, they started The Positive Painting Project. The organization engages the community with no-skill-needed panel painting, over which one of six “messages of hope” are overlaid, such as “It’s OK to not be OK” and “You are not alone.”
A few of those events had taken place by that July, when the Whysongs, of O’Hara, first met muralist and sign painter Christian “Mad Rabbit” Miller at an art show at Etna’s .5 Gallery.
Most of Rabbit’s body of work was rife with “bright colors, creepy characters” and “a lot of silly nonsense,” as he describes, but that show was different and a breakthrough, of sorts.
“It was one of the first times I created a body of work that really explored my struggles with mental health and grief and suicidal ideation,” he said, noting a suicide attempt in February of that year.
Nearly 1½ years later, that meeting proved fateful as Rabbit became the Whysongs’ “first and only choice” for The Positive Painting Project’s first public mural, erected in early November.
Rabbit’s sign-making know-how proved useful, as the piece was approved by Sharpsburg council to hang from upper portion of the Kennedy Park basketball court’s fence, an unusual position requiring a lightweight, durable material and plenty of hardware.
Painted on two 4-by-10-foot panels made from thin sheets of aluminum with plastic composite between them is Rabbit’s lighthearted style, with bright hues of orange, yellow, purple, green and blue dancing as orbs and ribbons behind a more serious message: “You Matter.”
It’s one of the six phrases The Positive Painting Project uses, but this one was personally selected by the artist.
“It’s just something that I needed to hear a lot in periods of my life,” he said. “I want it to start the conversation and break down the stigma around mental health, about suicide especially.”
The Positive Painting Project is known for holding painting events at local schools, libraries and community events. Erecting their first piece of public art at a park holds special — and intentional — significance.
“Teenagers see it in their schools, at the library, and now at their bus stop, which there’s one right in front of the Kennedy Park mural, and it’s now also a playground,” Alisa said.
“The message really is ‘You matter everywhere.’”
Learn more on IG @thepositivepaintingproject and @mad_rabbit_lab.
Abby Mackey: amackey@post-gazette.com and IG @abbymackeywrites.
First Published: December 3, 2022, 11:00 a.m.
