Maddie Cantrell, 21, and a painting major at the Cleveland Institute of Art (CIA), grew up in the small town of Traveler’s Rest, South Carolina, with her grandparents, Alaine and Jim Sosebee, living just around the corner. Like many children, Cantrell’s grandparents played a big role in her life.

When Cantrell was 15 years old, in 2018, Alaine was diagnosed with metastatic pancreatic cancer and died within four weeks of her diagnosis. Then in 2022, when Cantrell was 19, Jim died in a car accident.

“It just was such a loss for me,” she recalls. “It was the first time I had lost anyone I was actually close with, and they were like secondary parents for me. It was a very close relationship.”

Now a rising senior at CIA, Cantrell has found her art to be an outlet for coping with the sudden deaths of her grandparents.

Artwork by Maddie CantrellThe result of her effort her exhibit is, “Living with Grief,” four paintings that illustrate the experience of living with grief, at Hospice of the Western Reserve’s The Elisabeth Severance Prentiss Bereavement Center, 300 E. 185th Street in North Collinwood.

“My work is centered around having to grow up without [my grandparents] and making a bridge between where I exist and where they exist,” Cantrell explains of her works. “It's not religious or anything. It's more like, how would I speak to them if I could? Or, how would we have a conversation, even though they're not here?”

The “Living with Grief” project began this year, when Cantrell was searching for a way to use her art as a tool to help others who are grieving.

She found her outlet when she became involved in CIA’s Creativity Works program—an internship for visual arts students in their junior year where the student pairs with a community partner on a project for professional development and real-world experience.

CIA gave Cantrell a $1,000 budget to work with, and she knew exactly what she wanted to do through Creativity Works.

“I wanted to make paintings because that's what I do,” she explains, adding that she was then connected to Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) executive director Megan Lykins Reich, who had curated the 2014 exhibit “DIRGE: Reflections on [Life +] Death.”

Through Megan, I was connected to Susan Hamme, [team leader of counseling services] at Hospice,” continues Cantrell. “That was such a valuable connection because, from the beginning, Susan was really excited.”

She says she and Hamme instantly related to each other, and Cantrell says her experiences with the in-home Hospice worker who stayed with her family when her grandmother was dying were positive and helped her cope with death.

“There's nothing more discouraging than talking to someone who doesn't want to understand where you're coming from, or isn't really engaging with your ideas,” Cantrell explains. “ Susan's support from the beginning was really important for me—that's why I chose to go with Hospice.”

The connection between Hamme and Cantrell created a mural hope that Cantrell’s paintings will comfort others also dealing with the grief of losing someone. She adds that Hamme was touched by the solace Cantrell was trying to create.

“It is a bereavement center, it is their job, but putting these types of things into something you can see—it's visceral in that way, you can almost feel it,” she says. “It helps in a different way than just having a conversation. Maybe they can feel as if they exist in this space with other people. A huge thing for me was creating community. Susan really loved that, too—being able to connect people through the project and make everyone feel represented a little bit.”

Cantrell says her work expresses the range of often conflicting emotions people can feel they grieve.

“There's such a duality to it, she says of grieving,” she says. “When someone passes, the whole family comes together, and it's kind of beautiful, although it's really tragic. And that same duality kind of just applies all throughout your life. There's despair in the fact that that person is absent, but there's also, like, joy to be found in their memory.

“My paintings definitely convey the duality of dealing with grief. it's just honest,” she continues. “It's not just going to be sad. You may feel guilty for feeling happy about certain parts of [life], but that's all part of it. I want people to know that it's okay to feel all those different things.”

“Living With Grief” is open to the public on Thursday, May 9 during the opening reception from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. at the Hospice of the Western Reserve’s The Elisabeth Severance Prentiss Bereavement Center, 300 E. 185th Street in North Collinwood. Following the reception, the work will only be on view to bereavement center visitors until August.