Youth Create Wholeness

Here is a project near and dear to my heart:

Last year SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) Ads Center awarded a grant to some friends of mine to create art, community and social inclusion for people in recovery. This project reached out most directly to 18 to 25 year olds with a message of self-direction, empowerment and peer support.

What went down was a series of "art raves" in Charlottesville, VA; the painting of a magic bus in Williamsburg, VA and a mural with the Monacan Indian Nation at Bear Mountain in Amherst County, VA.

Getting money to create artwork is dreamy, and then the hard work sets in. Thankfully it is fun and connecting and gratifying. It is a time to see people at their best.

Now I will show you a whole bunch of pictures, which will speak louder than words.

Magnetized Tyvek signs to move around town. Painted by artists Flora Baily, Nina Burke and Jona Baily along with the other 20 cool community folk who showed up last Saturday.

 Flora is smiling because she brang this project into the world

 a brilliant wild cat, a "spirit animal" chosen by one of the Moancan youth

 at work on the mural

 Spirtworks: "Recovery on Wheels" I made that up. They probably have something more clever.

And here is some moss on a rock of the strikingly beautiful bear mountain. Even the smallest children seem reverent (at least the times that I saw them!)

Further infomation:

Here is the link to the Ads Center http://promoteacceptance.samhsa.gov/CSI/default.aspx and here is what they have to say about themselves: "People with mental health and substance use problems are more likely to fully recover and rebuild their lives when they have access not only to care and services, but also to social, economic, educational, recreational, and cultural opportunities that most citizens take for granted. A socially inclusive society promotes the necessary supports and opportunities for people in recovery to contribute to their communities as peers, parents, employees, residents, students, volunteers, teachers, and active citizens."

Here is the link to the Monacan Nation: http://www.monacannation.com/aboutus.shtml


"Bear Mountain in Amherst County has been the home of the Monacan people for more than 10,000 years. The earliest written histories of Virginia record that in 1607, the James River Monacan (along with their Mannahoac allies on the Rappahannock River) controlled the area between the Fall Line in Richmond and the Blue Ridge Mountains.

The most western of Virginia's eight tribes, the Monacan Nation - over 1,700 strong - preserves our past heritage and ancient customs, bringing together the Siouan language and culture."

Here is the link to Youth Create Wholeness: http://www.vocalvirginia.org/#/youth/4557449041"Our mission is to empower youth with mental health disabilities to transform their communities and selves. We encourage youth to define and discover their own paths to recovery and wellness, and provide the tools to work within the mental health system as well as to build alternative systems of support. We do this work through sharing our own experiences and knowledge. We build power and community through self-expression.

We know that our identities as people who have experienced emotional turbulence, mental health crisis, or extreme states of consciousness (commonly labeled as "mental illness”) are lived in context of our background. We are not just our diagnoses or our lack of diagnosis; we are human beings and we are complex. We know that only by affirming our lives and experiences as people with different kinds of dis/abilities, people of many faiths or none, people of color and indigenous people, poor and working class people, and people with varying expressions of sexual orientation and gender identity, can we integrate ourselves and our communities and live in wholeness."

And the link to Spiritworks Foundation Center for the Recovery of the Soul:
http://www.spiritworksfoundation.org/

"The mission of SpiritWorks Foundation is to help individuals and families sustain long term recovery from addiction, and to help children and youth live free from the intergenerational cycle of addiction in their families"

Good Things Are Happening

This summer has been kid-crazy. Either we are having a lot of fun or we are torturing each other. It didn't leave much time for blogging.

Today was a perfect weather day. I spent some time cleaning, some time reading on the porch and some time pursuing the internet. Here is one good and inspirational thing:

http://projectrowhouses.org/

"Project Row Houses (PRH) is a neighborhood-based nonprofit art and cultural organization in Houston’s Northern Third Ward, one of the city’s oldest African-American communities....

PRH is founded on the principle that art-and the community it creates-can be the foundation for revitalizing depressed inner-city neighborhoods. This principle was is in part based on the philosophy of German artist Joseph Beuys (1921 – 1986) who coined the phrase “social sculpture,” which transformed the idea of sculpture as an art form into a social activity. Thus, the mission of Project Row Houses is to create community through the celebration of art, African American history and culture. PRH has established programs that encompass arts and culture, neighborhood revitalization, low-income housing, education, historic preservation, and community service."

affordable housing/interactive art/young mother's program/after school program/artist incubation/artist residencies/color....every neighborhood should be this awesome. This looks like the coolest place on earth.

Thinking of Jerome Caja

I culled this photograph of Jerome from http://www.boston.com/community/photos/raw/2008/12/a_long_way_from_mayberry.html

I've been paying more attention to my dreams lately. And I woke up this week remembering Jerome Caja and seeing his work in San Francisco almost 20 years ago. I saw little paintings of drag queens done in nail polish on tin foil. Beautifully done. Campy and wise and wacky. He also used bottle caps, plastic ashtrays, liquid eyeliner, glitter and coal.

He was also a performance artist and a character.

Read more here: http://www.queerculturalcenter.org/Pages/Caja/CajaIntro.html

Plenty more of his racy art to be seen on the web

...and Counting:

http://wafaabilal.com/html/andCounting.php
Wafaa Bilal's brother Haji was killed by a missile at a checkpoint in their hometown of Kufa, Iraq in 2004. Bilal feels the pain of both American and Iraqi families who’ve lost loved ones in the war, but the deaths of Iraqis like his brother are largely invisible to the American public.…and Counting addresses this double standard as Bilal turns his own body – in a 24-hour live performance -- into a canvas, his back tattooed with a borderless map of Iraq covered with one dot for

each Iraqi and American casualty near the cities where they fell.

JR, French artist, wins humanitarian award

 

http://jr-art.net/

Quasi legal street art - images of the poor on the grand scale - a desire for the art to speak, not the celebrity

"Winning such a prize is a consecration for JR and a headache. He was refusing to give media interviews yesterday because he regards celebrity as an obstacle, even a threat, to his work"

Bulb planting time

http://www.guerrillagardening.org/ggseedbombs.html
and time to toss some seeds into empty lots - instructions on the link above
(and some gorgeous pics from the site http://www.guerrillagardening.org

Here is how Wikipedia defines it:

Guerrilla gardening is gardening on another person's land without permission. It encompasses a very diverse range of people and motivations, from the enthusiastic gardener who spills over their legal boundaries to the highly political gardener who seeks to provoke change through direct action. It has implications for land rights, land reform. The land that is guerrilla gardened is usually abandoned or neglected by its legal owner and the guerrilla gardeners take it over ("squat") to grow plants. Guerrilla gardeners believe in re-considering land ownership in order to reclaim land from perceived neglect or misuse and assign a new purpose to it.
Some guerrilla gardeners carry out their actions at night, in relative secrecy, to sow and tend a new vegetable patch or flower garden. Some garden at more visible hours to be seen by their community. It has grown into a form of proactive activism or pro-activism.

The art of Richard Lange and Judith Selby Lange

In 1999 we started collecting plastic debris—carrying it away by the bagful— all from Kehoe Beach, a remote stretch of the Point Reyes National Seashore, in Northern California. Certain items would catch our interest: milk jug lids, combs, toy soldiers, disposable lighters, cheese spreaders from lunch snack packs. We were attracted to things that would show by their numbers and commonness what is happening in the oceans around the world.

The plastic we continue to find is not left by visitors; it is washing up from the ocean. Back in our studios we clean, sort and categorize the pieces according to color and kind. We use the plastic to make artworks including large sculptures, installations, photo tableaus and jewelry.

We are a collaborative team. Our love of nature is combined with our interest in science to produce an on-going series of art works about the oceans and the environment. While the content of our work has a message about the spoiling of the natural world by the industrial world, our final intent is aesthetic and celebratory.

Judith Selby Lang    Richard Lang

http://www.beachplastic.com/beach_plastic/What_and_Where.html

The street art of Samuel Francois

http://www.samuelfrancois.com/scales-of-the-universe-the,242.html
Maybe I should not move out of my crazy shack, I should just decorate more with the junk, glam it up a bit and get over the long drive to town and relative isolation?

They say good art inspires....

MURALS

http://www.gualicho.cc/html/walls.htm

These murals are in Cuba.

Actually, Cuba, poor as it is, has a good bit of street art, even though a lot of it is Castro and Che. But there are the brightly painted houses and decaying dance halls and amazing artists. Cuban people are art, actually.

I would really like to go back there.

Renovated gas station

Via MAKE:

"Tired of seeing the abandoned eyesore on a daily basis, artist Jennifer Marsh decided to cover this old gas station in 5,000 square feet of fabric.

With the help of professional and amateur artists from 15 countries and more than 2,500 grade-school students in 29 states, Marsh covered the 50-year-old former Citgo station — pumps, light stands, signs and all — with more than 3,000 fiber panels that are crocheted, knitted, quilted or stitched together."

I am impressed with a lot about this, but the sheer SCALE of it. Wow.

more art for breakfast

This encompasses all I find good and needed - art in the most unexpected places, beauty for no reason, inspired thinking and yummy, yummy pancakes! I do sometimes work at the glorious Blue Moon Diner here on Main st in Charlottesville, and I am a friend to Jon Hampton, powdered sugar stenciler extraordinaire, but these are great all on their own.

Prayer Flags

So far I have 59 and they are hanging in my office. I want 216. The idea was to create images of wellness and display them like so many open hearts. I have worked with people who are struggling with mental illness and those who are not.

They will hang in the entrance to VOCAL's conference in June at JMU. All my friends and anyone who wants to impress me should stop by my office and make one!

Everyone is Invited

I am feeling kind and inspired after a three day planning retreat for my job. There is the work of creating community not just for people with psychiatric labels, but the bigger work of making a place for every one of us at the table; the loud, the lewd and the lousy, along with the lovely (Sometimes I am all of these people in the course of the day). It may just come down to being very patient, very cool and for some of us, very maternal.

When I was in Cuba I was visiting a farming co-op, hearing a lecture in Spanish I could not really make out, and in the small audience were American commie tourists, babies, teenagers and real, real old people. And one of these old people was an Abuelo who was shouting out things like, "CIGARS!" and "PENNIES FROM HEAVEN!" and no one shamed him or made him leave. A kid about 10 winked at me and wound his little index finger around his ear, like "cuckoo." And while that sounds condescending, it really wasn't. It was just so that I could understand the way of it. You know, some people shout out.

more Icarus

I put that post up, but realized that I didn't really explain what makes the Icarus project so enticing. The website has galleries, discussions, resources, member journals and more. They talk about "mad pride". So if you are crazy or your friends or crazy......

The Icarus Project

http://theicarusproject.net/

This site has every idea I'm really getting at. The intersection between madness and brilliance. Jack Kerouac said this: "The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Aaaaw!"

Knitted tank cozy

Will I ever get over www.knittaplease.com ? I hope not.

PS I tasted bbq bear this weekend.

So beautiful

http://www.strongheartfellowship.org/akawelle/Jewelry.htm

Look at this beautiful girl! She is a refuge from Liberia where she collected bullet shells from the war to melt and make into necklaces. 100% of the profits go to the Strongheart House, a residential school for Liberian children.

So beautiful!

Art and activism is fun fun fun!

http://www.knittaplease.com/ABOUT.html

What to do with the unfinished knitting projects?

"Then it dawned on them… a tag crew of knitters, bombing the inner city with vibrant, stitched works of art, wrapped around everything from beer bottles on easy nights to public monuments and utility poles on more ambitious outings."

All over the country people are creating this unusual, handmade public art to make the streets a little more "warm and fuzzy".

Miranda July

http://www.learningtoloveyoumore.com/

Oh, Miranda July.

On this website she gives assignments and people do them and send them in and she displays what she online. Some communities put together shows with the assignments she has given.

I like this idea of interactive community art and I have my own ideas brewing...

Following the Moon idea

Once upon a time I had a sweet, daylight hours dream. Two of the many worlds I inhabit include the Mental Health Recovery Movement (through VOCAL, Inc my employer) and the world of craft, creative journaling and art life that I come home to. If friends want to stop by to craft and chat, I'm game. If my children's school wants an afterschool club, I show up with a stack of old books and some watercolors and we get busy. Soooooo....I had the dream of bringing the two worlds closer together and because I live in wonderland my boss encouraged me to follow this passion by putting together a lil baby pilot program of peer-led art and craftiness. And this blog will tell the story, even if I am just talking to myself.