From now until May 10th, Akin Dupont member Jill Smith is participating in CAMH's One Brave Night and raising funds to support mental health. Jill Smith recently started a new position at the CAMH Foundation. And this campaign is near and dear to her heart!

Did you know that one in five Canadians experience mental illness in any given year? And yet many don't consider it a real health issue. By supporting this fundraising campaign with a donation, YOU can shine a spotlight on mental health. Together, we will help shape a world where mental illness is seen in the same light as every other illness, and all people receive the care they need and deserve.

Jill Smith is an interdisciplinary artist based in Toronto, Ontario (1995). Her most recent work explores everyday absurdity, as well as the connective possibilities of materiality. By re-contextualizing familiar motifs with organic, bodily forms, her work calls into question how one both exists and performs as a social body. While Smith’s work stimulates the imagination through whimsical and nonsensical colour and form, it is the relatable, yet ambiguous materiality that offers a platform to question the familiar, and escape to the alien and the uncanny.

As a thank you, for each donation Jill Smith will be making a mini ceramic sculpture. She will be delivering/shipping them to each donor after May 10th. Please donate today and help Jill Smith reach her fundraising goal $1,000.00. Every little bit helps!