The Embrace Project: Art as a Way of Belonging
Wynne Dromey ’25 started with a single painting: her adoptive mother holding her for the first time as an infant. “In the painting, my mom is physically embracing me, but she’s also embracing the fact that we have different identities,” says Dromey, who was born in China. That image became the seed of something larger — a sustained body of work and community practice she calls The Embrace Project.
Video by Natalie Hoang ’25, MBA ’26
The project has taken Dromey well beyond the studio. Funded through the Sara Bickman Arts Award, she led painting workshops at Abby’s House, a Worcester nonprofit serving women and children who are unhoused or survivors of abuse — many of whom had never picked up a paintbrush. She volunteered with Net of Compassion, distributing meals while talking with community members about creativity and their lives. The work earned her a Newman Civic Fellowship, awarded to students making meaningful change in their communities, with a nomination from Clark President David Fithian.
Her studio art capstone brings it full circle: a series of portraits of community members she met while volunteering, incorporating recycled materials and trash through a process called bricolage. “I want to show beauty in objects that are originally deemed as not valuable or discarded,” she says. A double major in studio art and marketing — and host of her own podcast — Dromey is already thinking beyond graduation, toward an art café and gallery with affordable living space for artists. “I think that everyone should consider what kind of impact they want to make with their artwork.”
