Megan Howell, CEO and founder, Second Heart Homes. The nonprofit’s mission is to provide permanent housing and wraparound services to persons with mental illness who are currently homeless or are at-risk for homelessness. The Sarasota-based organization has assisted some 70 men and women in getting off the streets through a dozen homes it has purchased since 2019. Second Heart is funded by donors and doesn’t take government funding or sign mortgages for the properties it buys.
Diversion
Origami, the Japanese art of paper folding by using one sheet of paper to make things like animals, figures and objects. The ori in the word means to fold in Japanese and kami means paper. The art and practice of origami goes back centuries, with the most-known figure being a crane — which symbolizes longevity, good fortune and peace. Howell has been making and teaching others origami since about 2018.
Early on: Howell has long been fascinated by Japanese art and culture, having visited the country she calls her “happy place” multiple times. Back home, she connected with Kuniko Yamamoto, a Sarasota-based artist behind a national touring show called “Magical Mask, Music and Mime of Japan.” Yamamoto, who is from Osaka, Japan and has lived in Florida since 1992, also has a show for kids called Origami Tales, where she creates animals and figures that come alive in folk tales. She opened the Origami Air Art Studio in 2017 in Sarasota, and Howell started hanging around while not at Second Heart, helping Yamamoto behind the scenes. But she had no intention of creating anything. “I never thought of myself as an artist,” she says. “I can’t fold anything.”…