From Grassroots Experiential Events to Mental Health Advocacy: 2019 OC Laureate Salina Mendoza Partners With IKEA Costa Mesa for 3rd Annual Art Therapy Festival

LOS ANGELES, CA — May 29, 2026. Artist Safespaces, a community organization building public creative infrastructure, has announced its 3rd Annual Art Therapy: The Mental Health Festival. The free event will take place on Saturday, May 30, 2026, from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM at IKEA Costa Mesa, transforming the retail parking lot and cafe into an interactive sanctuary designed to support mental well-being and transform isolation into artistic connection.

The festival is spearheaded by Artist Safespaces Founder and Executive Director Salina Mendoza, whose path bridges event marketing, live-event tech architecture, and fine art curation. At just 19 years old while in college, Mendoza was a lead field ambassador helping manage Vitaminwater's grassroots Los Angeles field campaigns, working on-site at high-profile VIP activations like the Emmys. She later transitioned into tech product leadership at Paciolan, where she served as the Senior Product Manager for Inventory Management and Maps, completely reimagining legacy venue inventory and interactive seat map experiences for live-event ticketing nationwide.

Fourteen years later, Mendoza is applying those exact same crowd-gathering, experiential tactics alongside her background in tech and spatial architecture to support mental health awareness.

"When I was 19, I was learning how to coordinate event logistics on the streets of LA, and later as a Senior Product Manager at Paciolan, I was designing the digital maps that help millions of people access physical live events. Today, with Artist Safespaces, we are taking those same spatial architecture and grassroots tactics and applying them to mental health awareness. By partnering with IKEA Costa Mesa, we are demonstrating how commercial spaces can temporarily serve as vital community 'third spaces' offering free mental health resources, bringing people together, and providing fair-market compensation to local working artists."

Salina Mendoza, Founder & Executive Director, Artist Safespaces

The 2026 festival follows Mendoza's solo museum exhibition, 1491: Taíno Alive, at the Fullerton Museum Center, which explored identity and emotional resilience.

This year's festival centers around the theme of Understanding and explores the core question: What do you think people get wrong about you? Supported by featured partner Art Supply Warehouse, the 3rd Annual Art Therapy Festival features an interactive lineup: