ARTLife717 is the public-facing name of Mental Health Awareness and Creative Arts Gallery, a nonprofit mental health and creative arts gallery in Hudson, New York. We provide an inclusive space where people across the mental health and recovery spectrum can exhibit creative work, take part in free art classes, and connect with others through the healing power of art.
Our gallery welcomes work in all mediums and encourages artists to grow, thrive, and expand their creative lives. Through rotating exhibitions, community workshops, and wellness-centered programming, ARTLife717 uses art to reduce stigma, build connection, and celebrate the creativity of people with lived experience.
Call for Artists: Stories in Color
ARTLife717 is now accepting artist submissions for Stories in Color, an upcoming exhibit exploring the emotional, personal, and cultural significance of color.
Artists on display are encouraged to use color as a form of storytelling — whether focusing on a single color, a full spectrum, or the ways color connects to memory, identity, mood, healing, and lived experience. Abstract, representational, and mixed-media work are all welcome.
Artists interested in participating can submit their work through the form below.
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeInb_fa3hYtCw3HeXOO23jN3Er8J2Z4QWgIXQ5R6nDS-_Jyw/viewform
Current Exhibit
Creating Calm
This exhibit focuses on the visual and emotional language of calm, grounding, and restoration. Artists are encouraged to share works that evoke stillness, peace, soothing color palettes, ritual, meditation, or personal practices that help maintain balance.
Recovery in Motion
We’re excited to share the final video from **Recovery in Motion**, our recent stop-motion animation workshop at ARTLife717 led by Jesse Sanchez.
The workshop brought together PROS participants from the Mental Health Association of Columbia/Greene Counties, NY, and other community members to design simple characters, create short animated sequences, and collaborate on visual storytelling projects using a stop-motion app. The finished work titled “Recovery Fields” was compiled and screened at our recent **Creating Calm** reception.
Stop-motion animation can be especially meaningful in mental health recovery, offering a creative, non-verbal way to tell personal stories and express internal experiences. Building animation frame by frame mirrors recovery itself, calling for patience, intention, focus, and steady progress over time. Because the workshop was team-based, it also fostered collaboration, communication, shared problem-solving, and confidence through artistic expression.
We’re grateful to everyone who participated and helped bring this project to life.
ARTLife717 will be lighting the gallery teal in recognition of TD Awareness Week, May 3–May 10, 2026, in collaboration with NAMI Columbia County. Tardive dyskinesia is a movement disorder that can affect the face, body, fingers, and toes, and awareness can help reduce stigma, encourage treatment conversations, and support those impacted. Visitors are welcome to view the current exhibit, Creating Calm, throughout May and early June.
One-time donations to our nonprofit organization
can be made through our PayPal Giving Fund
or by mailing a check payable to “The Mental Health Awareness Gallery” to:
Brian Belt P.O. Box 543 Philmont, NY 12565
Recurring monthly donations can be made by clicking ‘Donate now’ below
NAMI and ARTLife717: Help for those with mental health disorders and their families
By DEBORAH E. LANS HUDSON —
The Columbia Paper – Thursday, February 27, 2025
The truth is that no one by mental health disorders. Some are more serious than others, and some are manifested by substance use disorders. One in every five individuals (roughly 60 million Americans) lives with a mental health disorder at some time in his life, and the families of those individuals are inevitably affected as well. Almost 50% of all adolescents (13–18-year-olds) experience some form of issue, and 22.2% suffer what the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) classifies as a “serious” mental health disorder, meaning one that seriously impairs the ability to function. NIMH says that only two-thirds of those affected receive some form of therapy.