Artwork for the Soul
Art, Self Help, Perseverance

Transcript

Rachel Ortiz: My name is Rachel Ortiz, and the name of my business is Artwork for the Soul and Spiritual Things. 

Voiceover: Rachel's long military career left her with a lot of questions, and she found many answers in her artwork. 

RO: It's deep. It's about feelings. It's about putting our feelings on canvas. I started doing this in 2019, but I was still in the service. I just retired in March after 27 years of service. I started out in the reserves, then active duty, I never went overseas, but I've had my share of grief stateside. I compared getting out of the army, out of the military in general after so many years, like someone coming out of prison after 27 years and everything is different and we ask ourselves sometimes, and I'm sure society asks, man,  why do these people keep going back? They keep going back. It is all they know. It is all they know. I started out wanting to do this because of all the pain with myself and many other vets and just people in general. We feel pain. It's usually from hurt. Hurt causes us to be angry. Anger makes us do stupid things sometimes. And I decided to turn it around and put it on canvas. That anger, that with therapy of course, helped me to channel, you know, what I was feeling. The artwork is my way of getting through that pain, putting my military career on canvas, and not just saying how horrible it was because it wasn't all horrible. There were good parts. How do we get through those hard parts? I do it through drawing. Through putting it out there. My pieces are about love. It's about unconditional love, what that means. 

VO: Rachael uses nature and reconstruction in her work as a metaphor for how we can all move past difficult times.

RO:  I have a piece that I love very, very much that I made. It's actually two lobster shells, real lobster shells, and they're broken. And then I have a couple of pieces of seashells in the middle that are also broken. And the saying is broken and beautiful because we could be broken, but we're still beautiful. So my artwork is all about healing. I have a small little piece. I don’t know if you'll be able to see it, and it's kind of depicts a soldier carrying the cross and there are bullets flying. One side the bullets are hate, anger, pain, and the other bullets are going on towards him are hope, love, and healing 

VO: Art is only the beginning of Rachel's work. Her infectious energy for healing naturally flows into helping others, and her next goal. 

RO: To open up an art show, art store, I’m sorry,  and sell my art pieces as well as my spiritual pieces, and eventually open up a nonprofit. The Living a Dream spiritual center where you come in, whatever you believe in, whatever you feel. That's what I want you to bring to the center. And it'll be a place for you to be safe. A place to just be you and do art. And I'm going to have it set up so that they'll be able to draw, perform, whatever it is that they want to do as far as art is concerned. And talk to me about those feelings about, you know, when you're angry, when you're hurt, and how we can put it on canvas. And go into the inner city and start telling our youth, let's put down the guns and pick up an art brush, Let's pick up a mic. I don't care what you believe in, God, Allah, good orderly direction, but believe in something other than yourself and you'll see how things can change. 

VO: Rachel Ortiz is going to change the lives of veterans and young people. If that's the kind of good you want to see at your next event, reach out to her. She's making a difference, one piece of art at a time.