MENTALHOOD CULTURAL INITIATIVE - CREATIVITY SPARKS HEALING

Artists Edo and Reggie McFly were part of a panel discussion the MentalHood Cultural Initiative

Art and advocacy converged at Josephine’s on East 79th Street when the MentalHood Cultural Initiative hosted its Masculine Male Brunch—a morning of honest conversation, community, and the kind of radical vulnerability Black men are too rarely given space to express. Among the voices in the room were Pigment International artists Reggie McFly and Eddie “Edo” Santana White, who spoke alongside fellow participants about mental health, creativity, and the intersections between the two. Edo, a Pigment family OG, who lost his beloved mother this month, openly and poignantly shared his circuitous path to art with the group.

MentalHood was founded by Victor Love, a Chicago entrepreneur determined to erase the stigma that keeps Black men from seeking help or simply speaking honestly about their interior lives. The Masculine Male Brunch served as the launch event for Love’s new podcast, which will continue the conversations started around the table—exploring how culture, identity, and mental wellness are inseparable.

For McFly, who shared that he is a visually impaired artist much to the groups surprise, and Santana, participation was personal. Both artists have long understood their practice as rooted not only in aesthetics but in survival—a way of processing, witnessing, and insisting on joy even in the presence of pain. Their presence at MentalHood underscored a growing conversation within Chicago’s arts community: that cultural spaces and mental health spaces are, at their best, the same space.

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