The artwork leaps off the walls in a riot of colour. At first, that’s all you see. Then you begin to notice the words: Resilience. Gratitude. Voice. Welcome home. This makes you curious enough to step closer and experience all of what makes Her Common Commentary so special.

Her Common Commentary is a collaborative art exhibit by Miya Fontaine and John Silveira, and is currently on display at Little Sprout Café in Abbotsford. Miya and John both work for Communitas Supportive Care Society – Miya is on staff at Little Sprout Café and John is an employment specialist. Miya is a poet. John is a calligrapher. They brought their talents together to create this unique exhibit.

“Her Common Commentary is my favourite poem,” Miya says. “When it was suggested that John would work with me to turn my poetry into art, I was tickled-me-pink”.

The suggestion to bring John and Miya together came from Employment Services manager, Stacey Murdoch. Stacey gets together with Miya from time to time to catch up. At one such meeting, Miya shared some of her writing and Stacey suggested that it would be wonderful if Miya could share her work with other people.

That’s when Stacey remembered that Miya and John were already acquainted with each other’s work.

When John first heard Miya speak her poem over a year ago, he was moved to ask if he could calligraphy her words. Miya agreed and he gifted her with a calligraphy of the poem. So when Stacey invited John to collaborate on a poetry project with Miya, John immediately said yes. He felt privileged to help bring Miya’s words to a different audience in a unique way.

“I love Miya’s ability to bring humour to difficult subjects,” John says.

Miya has always felt that poetry is best experienced aloud. She far prefers to hear a poet read their work than to simply read it for herself.

“It’s not just the words, it is the way those words are communicated,” Miya explains.

That can also be said of this exhibit.

Miya’s words are communicated in vibrant colour but also in John’s gentle, scrolling, black ink on white paper. While the frames give the content structure, all the words live outside the frames as if they cannot be contained. In fact, it wasn’t until John found a way to give Miya’s words a literal frame-work, that the exhibit became possible.

“At first, I thought we would just be able to stick the various components of the artwork directly onto the wall,” John says. “But then I learned that we weren’t allowed to do that, I thought that was the end of it. I didn’t know how I was going to tell Miya.”

Miya’s devastation was palpable and John truly wanted to find a solution. When frames were made available, it suddenly opened up a new way of looking at the exhibit as a whole. John set to work.

“The process became so freeing,” he says. “And when Miya came in to see what I had done and I saw her reaction, it was the best thing ever. It was such a restorative moment.”

Miya loved the way John brought the different components together on the frames, letting the words leap off the structure. It is a physical representation of how she feels about poetry.

“Writing, words, poetry bring me life and enjoyment,” Miya says. “These are frames without borders. Seeing what John did with the all the elements just made me say ‘wow.’”

For her part, Stacey was thrilled to see how a simple idea that she had put forward became a project in motion.

“Looking back, it’s amazing to see how a conversation, a creative spark, and a few connections came together to create something so meaningful,” she says.

Both John and Miya hope that people coming into the café and seeing the artwork will take the time to read and reflect on what they see.

“My joy would be that people would come away with a positive experience and that they would find a word or a phrase that really resonates with them,” John says.

Miya agrees. She hopes that the exhibit gives people an opportunity to consider their own mental health journey.

“I hope it sparks curiosity, that it allows people to reflect but also laugh,” Miya says. “I hope it inspires people and gives them hope.”

Her Common Commentary will be on display at Little Sprout Café through to December 2026. It can be viewed during opening hours, Monday through Saturday, 8 am -3:00 pm.