We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Chetna Mehta. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Chetna below.

Chetna, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

It was 2016 and I was counseling at an urban city high school in San Francisco, working with undocumented brown and Black kids who needed more positive role models and adult figures in their lives. Trump was on the path of being elected as the president of our country and the air was thick with fear and confusion.

I had to go to acupuncture 2-3 times a week just to regulate my nervous system. With the political and social climate at the time, I was also in graduate school to become a therapist and was figuring out if I was even “worthy” of this path. Personally, I felt that I was too unstable and unwell to be a stable and well influence for these youth.

After speaking to some family members about my woes over the holidays, I came into the new year of 2017 with a daily drawing practice to let myself express on the page without pressure or expectation. After weeks of drawing whatever I felt the need to express, I discovered some gems in my pile of pages; some were violent scribbles and some were quaint and loving affirmations, simple words of what I wanted to hear in the moment. It was tender and poignant to revisit these drawings weeks later.

As began to share the affirmations and tender drawings that emerged in this practice with people close to me, I got more and more requests of printing out the art for them to keep as well. In June of 2017, I opened an art shop at www.mosaiceyeunfolding.com, selling prints, posters and stickers with this art.

The shop has gone through iterations since, raising thousands of dollars for me as the artist and for causes that matter like financial literacy for black and brown kids, yoga training from a liberation-oriented perspective, and rematriation of indigenous land in the Bay Area.

After I graduated from therapy school, I started a private practice as well and chose not to follow the path of licensure. I offered workshops and then programs for people, especially BIPOC, women and non-binary folks who want to develop their creativity and compassionate ability to affirm themselves and their communities.

Now, my business is a six-figure organization with a team of folks who have gone through my programs, created art and businesses of their own, and who align with my mission to be a steward for peace, love and freedom through expressive healing arts in community circle.

While I still feel unstable and unwell at times, I affirm with myself and others that it’s natural and normal to feel that way. I find love and worthiness even in my instability and unwellness, and in that, I fortify my groundedness and my peace.

Chetna, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

As a daughter of a pre-school teacher, art-making has always been a part of my life. I am a granddaughter of Indian and South African diasporas and as an immigrant and third-culture kid always questioning her belonging wherever I am, creating learning and connecting spaces for play and exploration is my most rewarding thing to do.

My training, education and experiences span social sciences, counseling psychology, yoga philosophy and practice from a liberation-oriented perspective, cultural exchange, leadership and mentorship, somatics, mixed media and expressive healing arts, ceremony and ritual, and cultivating peaceful circles. All of my experiences and lives within this life informs my work today.

My organization, MOSAICEYE, uses expressive healing arts in reflective community spaces to challenge the personal, interpersonal and systemic barriers to our creative inheritances, to engage in the process of gaining awareness, actualization and fulfillment of our individual and collective gifts, to cultivate respect each of our bodies with their respective shapes, colors, abilities and limitations and to honor our sacred inter-relationship with communities around us and Earth.

We offer visual art prints, stickers, educational posters and books, as well as community gatherings and coaching to help folks practice more compassion and creativity in their lives and activism.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

The art I create helped my brand go viral on social media. I started, and continue the practice, of making art that nourishes my soul and offers me catharsis first. When I post art that authentically lives true to that mission, it inevitably relates and resonates with other people.

When people see themselves and their humanity through the art, they repost, tag and share it. Through people sharing and reposting the art, more and more people were brought to MOSAICEYE.

So I stand by this advice for creatives and makers today; you are your first audience, make art that is honest and true to you first ,the resonates with you first, and you want to give standing ovation for first. If you share it with others, maybe they’ll resonate with it the same way, maybe not. But at least you have your own standing ovation, which to me is the most sustainable nourishment for a creative practice.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

As a liberation-oriented and conscious business, capitalism isn’t my primary priority. This doesn’t compromise my organization wealth, if anything, it values all the currency of connection, well-being, love, peace and balance that we cultivate, in addition to multiple six-figures.

This is reflected in how I lead my team. At the beginning of each team meeting, we spend some time grounding in our bodies, checking in generally and moving slowly. We prioritize people over “productivity”. This lets folks know that they matter, that they can show up authentically, that they are allowed to be human in the space, and that we can honor each other’s humanity even as we work together.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.mosaiceyeunfolding.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/mosaiceye
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/chetnamehtamosaiceye
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/mosaiceye

Image Credits
Photo 3 by Michelle Castillo