Pity this article has to be penned by Evangelical Focus , but there you gop that’s the world we live in today
Visual art is a first-rate way to get people’s attention on almost any topic. Even marijuana.
In November 2012, Colorado, now my home state, became the first US state to legalize marijuana use for recreational, non-medical purposes.
Since then, we have suffered predictable consequences, including negative mental health effects, marijuana-impaired drivers causing accidents on our highways, and a repulsive smell entering our residence when someone was smoking in the unit below ours.
(We also had a positive impact when a Christian family chemically refined marijuana to eliminate the psychoactive component, THC, and ended up with a compound that provided relief when administered to young children with epileptic seizures.)
The more permissive sectors of contemporary Western societies have embraced drugs and other expressions of lifestyle freedom, often despite obvious health and social risks.
The arts community can, from time to time, favor exploration and permissiveness. Happily, public health practitioners take a more precautionary approach.
The more permissive sectors of Western contemporary societies have embraced drugs and other expressions of lifestyle freedom, often despite obvious health and social risks
On June 5, Nancy and I dropped in at our city’s arts center and unexpectedly encountered opening night of an art exhibit on the health effects related to marijuana — and not one that uncritically celebrated the joy of getting “high.”
Rather, it was an exhibit called Hear/Say, which seeks to artistically portray “how today’s highly concentrated cannabis affects health.” The exhibit was developed by the Colorado School of Public Health’s Colorado Cannabis Education, Research and Policy Project (CO CERP).
Staff members present for the opening night explained that the exhibit was designed to bring together artistic expression, personal experience, and public health messaging, so as to encourage people to think and engage more deeply about the topic of cannabis.
The artists represented marijuana’s impact in various creative ways, including leaf patterns imposed on fabric to simulate the glazed feeling of being stoned; blurred brain scan images; micrographs of neurons; visual representations of hallucination experiences; and roaches walking around on the brain.
Aisha Brown’s work “As Advertised” (2026; see photo above) was accompanied by a thoughtful statement by the artist.
Brown explained:
“This work examines how trust is built through the language and design of public health messaging. Information about THC potency, dosage, and safety is often presented with a sense of clarity and precision, even when the data itself is inconsistent or still evolving.”
Using portraiture and a visual language borrowed from advertising, the work mimics the calm, polished tone of official campaigns. Soft color palettes and familiar formats invite a sense of ease and credibility, while subtle contradictions in text and detail begin to disrupt that trust.
The figures exist within this tension. They are presented with care and familiarity, reflecting how these messages are received in everyday life. There is no immediate alarm, only a quiet friction between what is shown and what is implied.
Within Hear/Say, this work questions how authority communicates risk, and how easily belief can be shaped by presentation. It asks the viewer to consider not just the information itself, but how that information is framed and who benefits from the story being told.
The Hear/Say exhibit seeks to artistically portray “how today’s highly concentrated cannabis affects health.” It was developed by the Colorado School of Public Health’s Colorado Cannabis Education, Research and Policy Project (CO CERP)
Scott Margolis wrote in his statement about “The Corner” that when marijuana was not legal, it “carried an anti-establishment, rebellious, and slightly dangerous quality that teenagers have always been drawn to. Addiction touches many families, including mine. With today’s technological distractions and easy-to-access legal cannabis, kids growing up now face challenges very different from those of previous generations. The story behind this painting reflects how something simple can become more and more complex, drawing you in and holding your attention the same way profit-driven, highly potent, culturally accepted, legal pot can entice and entrap vulnerable populations. Aimed at teens and young adults, this work informs and warns of the risks and potential long-term damage commercial cannabis can cause.”
Margolis’s work ingeniously represents the attractiveness and impacts of marijuana. The red lines radiate out, but the placement of the 90-degree angle in the middle of the work entices viewers into the corner.
The colorful concentric rings resemble a polar grid, but their predictability is overtaken by an asymmetry full of false starts and dead ends. A noisy, dark effect at the center blocks the playful circles.
The multiple layers of paint demonstrate how obscured and lost the past can become.
“The closer you get to the corner,” Margolis wrote, “the less you can see. The compulsive use of circles forms a density of texture that fills your peripheral vision, restricts the flow of the composition, and forms a dizzying, buzzy cage of black paint.”
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