Collect Your Thoughts
This program exists with the support of the National Endowment for the Arts, Creative Pinellas, and the Pinellas County Board of County Commissioners.
Collect Your Thoughts (CYT) is an art journaling community program created to offer a free and accessible artistic self-care practice to South St Pete adults.
CYT Creators, Steph Hargrove and Rose Cervantes, have built 100 art boxes full of collage supplies, written an art journaling guidebook, and are hosting six public events where adults residing in South St. Pete can join them on the journey to improved mental health through the practice of art journaling.
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Work for the program began in February 2022, and the project will culminate in an art show featuring images from art journals in January 2023
Join the Collect Your Throughs Community!
Upcoming Events
Final CYT Event!
What's Collect Your Thoughts? Watch here:)
Meet the Artists
Steph Hargrove
Steph Hargrove is a painter and installation artist engaged in social practice art. Steph collects community donations of items such as cereal boxes and junk mail to create interactive installations that raise money and awareness for social and environmental issues. Her work saves rainforests, feeds hungry families, provides arts education for orphans, and supports ocean conservancy.
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Steph has extensive experience in developing community outreach projects through art. She has hosted over twenty art gatherings to fund arts education for Kenyan orphans since 2014. Steph spent two years as an artist in residence with Rick Lowe, the director/co-founder of Project Row Houses, at Trans.lation Vickery Meadow in Dallas, Texas. As market coordinator, Steph worked directly with immigrants and refugees in the community. She taught art workshops for children and adults, secured art supply donations, managed vendors, and forged relationships with galleries to connect Vickery Meadow residents with art spaces throughout Dallas.
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Rose Cervantes
Rose Cervantes is a Cuban creative committed to building community and deconstructing harmful stigmas. Her poetry and art centers on mental health, Latinx heritage, and the dualities of the human experience. Through her website, local publications, and poetry events, she illuminates taboo topics like family, identity, addiction, death, and sexuality. Rose is fueled by uplifting people who don’t fit inside “the box” of dominant white culture and passionately creates vulnerable spaces where art encourages authenticity.
Rose is the narrative lead for the Latinx equity collective Mi Gente Mi Pueblo where she plans community art events and practices empathetic listening. With her communication and teaching background, she uses a toolbox of storytelling techniques and research analysis to connect the arts with inclusive impact. She is currently co-facilitating a healing writing workshop to amplify Latinx voices and encourage healing across cultural lines and among all walks of life.
