Now in its third year, the Creative Exchange Fund, administered by The Medium in downtown Springdale, supports local artists by providing financial support and a space to take creative risks. KUAF is partnering with The Medium to profile some of this year’s 37 multidisciplinary artists. We’ll hear about their art, their process, and what it means to be a creative in northwest Arkansas right now.
LaShelle McBride’s immersive installation Bloom Room is dedicated to survivors of domestic violence and the agencies who help them. Bloom Room will be open beginning tomorrow at 11 a.m. at The Medium. LaShelle, who took up painting when she was 47, talked with KUAF about Bloom Room while seated inside her paint-and-sip studio, Paint Your Power, on North Second Street in downtown Rogers.
McBride: So my name is LaShelle McBride, and the title of the exhibit is The Bloom Room, and it’s going to be an immersive space at The Medium this weekend. Starting on Friday, it’s free to the public, and it’s going to be amazing. We’re going to have a DJ, we’re going to have art tables. We’re actually going to plant an actual seed, and there’ll be a little story behind that. We have a curated art gallery that’s curated by survivors, made by survivors of domestic violence.
So that’s what this is all about. It’s about healing from domestic violence. Male, female, it doesn’t matter. I am a survivor. I was married for 27 years to an abusive man. And I didn’t know about the women’s shelter. I didn’t know about any resources. I didn’t know how to get out. I stayed with my abuser for eight months before I figured out how to get away with my kids.
And this sounds really weird. It took me forever, but I figured out the way that I heal is by healing other people. And it’s probably a little self-serving that I feel better when I help other people. But if you can teach other people how to heal themselves by helping other people, you’ve got a whole chain reaction going on there of women helping women, or men, or whatever.
I have a group called Voices. It’s on Facebook. I started it 11 years ago, maybe with just me and two of my friends, because I didn’t have a safe place to talk. In a year, that grew to 300 women in northwest Arkansas. We are now around 800 women. And it’s women only, and it’s called Voices. It is a 24/7 online support group. We’re not a nonprofit, but we have been able to help other women get cars and get out of bad situations, show them where resources are. I keep tabs where all the resources are and keep those updated. And so anybody that needs to reach out can find us there, and they can speak freely in that group without fear of anybody seeing it online or anything.
You’ll be able to plant a seed in a glowing cup. There’s going to be a whole thing about that. We’re going to have immersive magnetic flower boards where you can create your own flower arrangements. The big cool thing that we’re going to have is a six-foot-tall and probably four-foot-wide cage in the center, a bird cage. And this cage is being made by my friend who also got the grant as well, Regina Lino. Me and Regina have been friends way back, and she wanted to use the cage. She’s a low-vision artist, so she does tactile art, and the cage is kind of like a Maya Angelou theme. Kind of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. And then you’re also going to be able to get in it, and there’s going to be little things that you can play with and touch and move around.
We’re also going to have two big tables full of art. So while you’re there listening to the music and the cool atmosphere, we’re getting flowers everywhere and butterflies. Oh my gosh, I want to see everybody. Not just survivors. I just think it’s going to be a really cool experience.
It’s going to give people an idea because you never know when you’re going to run across somebody, or if it happens to you or one of your kids or your sister or something like that. So at least they’ll have a little bit of knowledge of there are resources out there. There is healing that can be had. People can come back from this.
I’m hoping that we inspire a lot of people to not just heal other people or help other people, but heal themselves. Because really, you can’t really heal people when you’re still broken. That’s the way I feel.
LaShelle McBride’s Bloom Room is open to the public at The Medium beginning tomorrow at 11 a.m. It will close Saturday night at 6. Admission is free. Partners like the Northwest Arkansas Women’s Shelter, Peace at Home, and the Northwest Arkansas Center for Sexual Assault will also have a presence.
LaShelle McBride talked with KUAF about Bloom Room inside her studio, Paint Your Power, in downtown Rogers.
The Creative Exchange series is produced by KUAF Public Radio in partnership with The Medium. Support for this project comes from the Tyson Family Foundation. The Medium and the Creative Exchange Fund are projects of the Creative Arkansas Community Hub and Exchange, or CACHE. For more about this project and the 2025–26 recipients, you can visit themedium.art.
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