Last spring, Boulder High senior Kate Thompson wanted to include a memorial in the yearbook to students who had died since she started high school — four by suicide, one who was hit by a car and one who died from cancer.

While she eventually received permission from the Boulder Valley School District’s administration, she found the need to fight for approval disheartening. She added that she’s passionate about metal health after experiencing the trauma of having someone close to her become suicidal.

“The school doesn’t do enough, and the community doesn’t do enough, and it needs to change,” she said.

Through her yearbook efforts, she met parent Merlyn Holmes and joined her teen-driven community arts initiative, SEEN. Holmes, whose son Landryk was a Boulder High sophomore when he died by suicide in 2022, is the founder of the Creativity Alive arts organization that’s organizing SEEN.

“It was a very reassuring thing to feel like I was able to do something,” Thompson said. “It’s starting conversation. Conversation is the first step to change. SEEN is a great way to make people aware and get rid of stigma. We want mental health to be a thing that people are OK talking about.”

The latest installment of the SEEN series is on display at the Boulder Public Library’s Canyon Gallery through Jan. 31. The gallery is located at 1001 Arapahoe Ave.

Several free events also are planned around the exhibit this month. Creativity classes, taught by Holmes, are scheduled from 4:30 to 6 p.m. Jan. 9 and 16 in the gallery space. An exhibit finale, with music and performances, is from 1 to 3:30 p.m. Jan. 25. For more information, go to creativityalive.org/seen.Holmes said the exhibit is dedicated to six high school students from Boulder — Landryk, Ava, Rizzo, Gunar, Jonny and Emmasayge — who have died by suicide in recent years. One section of the exhibit was created by the moms of several of those students as a way to honor them.

“This is a big, big issue that no one has been talking about in a way that can prevent future deaths,” said Holmes, who included her son’s track shoes in the exhibit. “It’s something that people should know and acknowledge.”

Amy Thompson, whose daughter Ava was a Boulder High sophomore when she died by suicide in 2022, created a collage of selfies that Ava took while at Boulder High for the exhibit.

Ava was on the lacrosse and mountain bike teams, worked as a checker at King Soopers, was creative and sported diverse hairstyles.

“I wanted to show different parts of her personality,” Thompson said. “The exhibit is something I wanted to support. For many kids, art is a way to express themselves and to be seen.”

She said her daughter was the third Boulder High student to die in the span of just a few months.

“We have a clear, huge problem in Boulder,” she said. “I’m heartbroken by this trend in our community, and I would like to see some changes made to improve it.”

Another contributing artist was Boulder High senior Sunami Chalaune. A friend of Landryk’s since elementary school, Chalaune created a T-shirt for the initiative that features an eye, as well as a piece that shows Landryk reaching toward the sky to fly away with wings.

“It was a good way to help me send him off,” Chalaune said. “It really helped me progress through the grief and gave me clarity that I could become a digital artist.”

While the initiative is led by teens, Holmes said, the 100 pieces of artwork in the exhibit were created by artists who range in age from 8 to 89.

“It is intergenerational because we all need to be seen,” she said. “Its mission is to cultivate mental health, creative expression and human connection for everybody.”

The current exhibit is the fifth, and largest, installment. The inaugural SEEN art show and performances were in April at Boulder’s Ozo Coffee on east Pearl Street.

Holmes said she started the initiative because there’s a need for creative ways to express feelings about difficult topics like death, grief, mental illness and suicide.

“Our language has failed us,” she said. “People don’t know what to say. School districts and organizations don’t know what to say. It’s not that anyone’s bad, at all. It’s just that without the language, these topics have become hush-hush in our culture and that hugely contributes to the pain we feel and the cycles of mental illness.”

She said many people have shared with her their stories of suicide attempts or dark phases in their lives after going to a SEEN exhibit.

Art, she said, gives people “a way to share and express and see other art and know I’m not alone in this. It has allowed people to talk about it. They can share their compassion and grief.”

Holmes said she’s now seeking a volunteer leadership team to form a board of directors, plus an executive director, to make a SEEN its own nonprofit and continue the work.

“We have great momentum,” she said.