Creative Arts Program

Visual Arts Course
Please join us for this open studio style class as we explore ways to strengthen your creative expression through drawing, painting, and creating mixed media works of art. For veterans and first responders, especially those experiencing the effects of service-related trauma, such as PTSD and traumatic brain injury.

About the instructor: Cammeron Batanides is an internationally known fine artist and children’s book author/illustrator whose works have been featured across the United States, in Jamaica and throughout Canada, at the 2013 New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, and at the legendary Los Angeles Fine Arts Building. She was the first live painter for The Wailers, on the USS North Carolina Battleship, and at Wilmington’s historic Thalian Hall’s inaugural reggae show. Cammeron has recently returned from Washington, D.C, where over 40 of her original works were exhibited adjacent to the Smithsonian at Pepco Edison Place Gallery. Cammeron’s originals were simultaneously displayed in Leland, North Carolina at Leland Cultural Arts Center.

Creative Writing Course
In this course, we will learn writing forms and techniques to help process our stories and transform them into art. Classes will consist of generative writing prompts, occasional in-class readings, and in-class sharing.

About the instructor: Michael Ramos is an Iraq war veteran, a writer, teacher, book designer, editor, and the art director for Ecotone magazine. His work focuses on dispelling myths about war, warriors, and veterans, and bringing military and civilian communities together through the power of art. You can find his work in Fourth Genre, Slice, PANK Daily, and other places. His essay collection The After: A Veteran's Notes on Coming Home (UNC Press 2024) received a starred Kirkus review and is available now from UNC Press.
Offered through a partnership with VFW Leland 12196 and soon-to-be nonprofit, Veterans Creative Arts Program.