Carol Es

http://esart.com/projects/journal/http://esart.com/projects/journal/
"The Journal Project began in March 2004 and continues to this day. It is a continuous, stream-of-consciousness diary created on manila, hand-cut garment patterns. Using only pattern making pencils, inks, and stamps for manufacturing, I write or draw whatever comes to mind in the moment. The patterns shapes are prepared just as they would be for manufacturing, like when I was a kid working beside my father in downtown Los Angeles. Satirical textile terms, rants, poems, dreams, and anecdotes are included; personal worries about being an artist and working in the art world. It's a candid view into one artist's life. The pieces are then installed somewhat like a mosaic - shapes are pieced together in an aesthetic fashion and fashioned to the wall with colored sewing pins."

Birthday Picnic

All of these photos: www.aaronfarrington.com
Incredible paper mache masks by Jessika Flint

Birthday with my Time Twin! This is what we do on October 15 - dress up, have picnic cake and wine and take pictures.

I am going to start reporting my "thrift scores". Tattered parasol with lucite handle in the pink wig photo. Makes me really happy.

Yayoi Kusama

I love finding an artist who is new to me (but in this case, someone who has been creating for many decades) but feels like an old friend, or even a part of my own psyche. She has lived in a mental institution in Japan since 1977, painting the polka dots ("infinity nets") that she sees in hallucinations. She writes, paints, sculpts, draws and stages installations and happenings of epic proportions. My heart races when I look at her work. I really do feel my molecules breaking apart, or something dramatic like that,

I found this in Juxtapoz magazine: "From paintings as a teenager, to her experimental performance work while living in NYC in the 1960s, to major and immersive installations, to her return to painting and voluntarily living in a psychiatric institution, the Tate's examination of Yayoi's amazing career is thorough and extensive. What the viewer feels leaving the exhibition is that the artist was a art project herself, presenting each project and work as an extension of her life and lifestyle."

http://www.juxtapoz.com/Current/yayoi-kusama-tate-modern-london

And Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yayoi_Kusama

October is Thrilling Because it is Spooky and Inspiring

Just watched the Roky Erikson documentary, "You're Gonna Miss Me". I have to post this video, which was shot during one of  his many stays in the mental hospital.

He was a genius, through and through. He had an odd childhood, forced electroshock and over 300 acid trips. That is where this poem comes from. It's more than 7 minutes long but it will give you chills, I promise.



These are images from needlepoint/group therapy sessions at Hammer Museum in LA. Images are culled from Josh Greene's blog.

 http://www.josh-greene.com/2010/07/group-therapy-needlepointing/

Sidney

It has been a week in my neck of the woods. The picture above is Sidney Tapscott. I can tell you a few things about him:

1. He was an old gray haired man the first time I saw him and old and grey this week. This week he passed away at the age of maybe 85 or maybe 92.

2. He wore denim overalls and black framed glasses.

3. He introduced some of the best bands in town. The Hackensaw Boys (who he introduced as the Arkansas Boys) and the Hogwaller Ramblers (who he called the Tennessee Ramblers) and he played harmonica too.

4. He was a street sweeper. He kept the sidewalks clean and was paid by downtown merchants.

5. My friends own a diner and it was written in the contract that they would feed Sidney whenever he came in. One thing he liked to eat was pancakes and one thing he liked to drink was Dr. Pepper. The waitresses cut his pancakes into small pieces, even during the busiest brunch shifts. I have cut many a pancake for him.

This same diner organized his birthday parties, his wake and his funeral.

6. The Facebook group that started in his honor (about 3 days ago) has 1677 friends right now.

7. His eyes twinkled and he was a real flirt. He had a lot of "girlfriends" and a lot of these girlfriends were waitresses.

It's hard to explain what it means to me.  We all knew he had this hard life but I don't know the details. The care that people gave him was genuine.

Celebration!

 

Look at this party!

In September I was in Hanover - Ashland, VA. The Community Services Board sponsored a Recovery Festival held at the city Arts building. I drove past it at first, thinking it was a wedding. White table cloths, flowers, sunshine, fruit and veggies and lemonade - then came booths and booths of art made by people with psychiatric histories. Art of every stripe - hand-painted helmets, lithographs, altered books, flower arranging, photography, painting...then came the drum circle! And amazing hula hoopers! And a live band!

Somehow my name was put out there as a person who could speak about art and recovery on the stage with a microphone. And I really want to do these sorts of things even though I can't stand so much attention! (I know people look at me, covered in tattoos with my loud, goofy laugh and assume I love attention, but I promise I'm an introvert)

Sometimes I talk about how few rituals and celebrations we have built into our society - I really believe we are meant to make music together, to make art, to celebrate. This was wellness in action - a glorious day!

(all photos - www.photosbyjoelle.com)

Telling Stories

I hear a lot of good stories. And I had the idea to tape them and put them in a slideshow format like a beautiful piece that I saw on the New York Times website. Somehow I didn't realize how much I am not like the New York Times - in terms of knowledge, know-how,  resources, equipment...

Barbara is a friend of mine, nearly 35 years my senior. She has shown me a different way of  "growing up" than I knew was possible. And she achieves a lot through the art of storytelling.

Here Barbara tells me about the purple lady, an artist and character who impacted her life.

http://hosting.soundslides.com/mkv9v/

May was Mental Health Month

I may need all of June to recuperate! I had a garage sale/fundraiser for Firewalkers. Then we hosted a Wellness Expo with On Our Own on the 20th. I put out a little art group leaders guide book. We applied for grants because our money runs out in July. Then the VOCAL conference and all that brings. In my case it brought a crown making workshop, among other festivities. Here are some pictures:

I had all of my usual art supplies and together we made crowns. At the end we had an official crowning ceremony where we took on a title, such as Princess of Faith, Queen of Books and King of Jews (this one caught me off guard!).

Being an activist can be draining and I'm not even much of an activist! Happy to have this time to play...

What have ya'll been up to?

Great audio peice in the New York Times

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/09/16/health/healthguide/te_schizophrenia.html

In other news, I am going to be on public radio talking about what it is like to break down, why we need a variety of services (and quick access to them) and why it matters.

AND this coming Saturday is art group at the VOCAL office 11:30 until 1:30. malaina@vocalvirginia.org for more info.

Really?

German toymaker Paraplush has designed a controversial new line of toys with an assortment of psychiatric disorders. The company advertises stuffed animals who suffer from a range of mental illnesses (bipolar disorder, depression, multiple personality disorder) and even come packaged with a personalized medical history and treatment plan.

"'Patients' from the Paraplush toy company include Dub the turtle with severe depression, Sly the snake who suffers from terrifying hallucinations, Dolly the sheep with a multiple personality disorder and a crocodile with an irrational fear of water,"

http://www.parapluesch.de/

http://theicarusproject.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=183257

San Fran

I came to San Francisco to talk about Firewalkers. First with Wendy at Underground Ads, the amazing folks who did the graphic design for the book (http://undergroundads.com/), then to the staff at New Leaf (a LGBT counselling center), then at Modern Times Bookstore (http://www.mtbs.com/) which has been collectively owned since 1971 and still remains vibrant and vital. My new friend Sascha Alman Dubrul wrote this fantastic post about the event: http://theicarusproject.net/firewalkers-in-the-bay (while you are at the Icarus site, be sure to poke around. They are forerunners in the mad pride movement and this site is packed with great info and an excellent forum)

It has been an enormous blessing for me to connect with people locally and nationally who are thinking about what it means to be "mentally ill", how to treat those who struggle and where we would like to go from here. San Fransisco has its own flavor - thoughtful and progressive among other things. I was happy to bring my bumpkin vibe and feel the love!

Some street images from the Mission where I am staying with friends:

Girlie Girl Army invites me into the glamorous world

http://girliegirlarmy.com/blog/20100221/firewalkers-radically-rethinking-mental-illness/#comment-5503

Well, well, did I write a guest blog about Firewalkers? I did, I did!

And I'm grateful for anyone who visits to leave a comment.

Art group

I've been meaning to take some pictures of our art group in the beautiful space at McGuffey. It has been open to anyone interested, but every week its all women. Sometimes we talk about dark things, some times we giggle, sometimes it is silent. It is all allowed.

Here are some camera phone shots from last Saturday.

Dexter

I watched a documentary called "Two Headed Cow" that my father taped and brought along on a visit from Detroit. It is about Dexter Romweber of The Flat Duo Jets, a band that I adored for their zeal and "spinning out of control and looking bad-ass while doing it" style. In all honesty, I ran away from home at 16 and moved to Athens, GA thinking maybe we could be best friends. It didn't pan out. When we did meet and I told him this anecdote he told me, "Well girly, sometimes shit don't turn out like you plan." Then he downed his whiskey and got on stage.

Now he is calmed way down and medicated. He is medicated because it hurt to be so loose and open. But gone too is that hot spark that drove the people wild.

It has been asked, "If Van Gogh was medicated, would he have painted Sunflowers?" And of course the answer is, probably not. And he may not have cut off his ear either.

I guess it just brought up a lot of emotion in me, knowing that wave that is incredible and creative and destructive and painful all at once. And you know, what do you do with that? We each choose. And I recognized that I liked him better wild because it saves me the trouble of living it myself. I want to watch and be inspired, but I'm not the one cutting myself open wide on stage. Ya know what I mean?

Say what you will

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Interesting blog post

Why do some people get PTSD and some don't?

It is thought that between 40-70% of Americans have experienced traumatic events yet only about 8% go on to develop post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) over the course of their lifetimes. Researchers from Yale University studied 1,252 people aged from 17 to 79 who had experienced adversity in their childhood and/or as an adult. People who had experienced adverse events in both adulthood and childhood were much more likely (29%) to develop PTSD than people who had 'only' experienced adversity in one part of their life (9.9%). A gene called 5-HTTLPR was also found to influence whether people developed PTSD or not but it was only found to increase in people who had had a double dose (in childhood and as an adult) of trauma.


http://mentalhealthupdate.blogspot.com/2009/11/why-some-people-get-ptsd-and-others.html

Henry Darger, custodian, artist

Henry Darger was a reclusive American writer and artist who worked as a custodian in Chicago Illinois. He has become famous for his posthumously discovered 15,145-page, single-spaced fantasy manuscript called The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion, along with several hundred drawings and watercolor paintings illustrating the story. Darger’s work has become one of the most celebrated examples of Outsider art.

Darger had troubles from the start with adults and children. He was diagnosed as being feeble minded at a young age and taken from his home and institutionalized. He himself felt that much of his problem was being able to see through adult lies and becoming a smart alec as a result, which often left him beaten by nuns. He also went through a lengthy phase of feeling compelled to make strange noises (akin to Tourette Syndrome), which irritated others. The Lincoln asylum’s practices included forced labor and severe punishments, which Darger seems to have worked into In the Realms of the Unreal. He later said that, to be fair, there were also good times there, he enjoyed some of the work, and he had friends as well as enemies.

The Godmother of Creative Journaling

http://www.healthy.net/CreativeJournal/

Meet Dr. Lucia Capaccione, author of "Creative Journaling". This is a great site for very simple exercises that involve dialogue with your pictures, inner child work and more. Some people will find her far out, but for others this will be good medicine.

Here is a sample from her web page:
Close your eyes and ask yourself:

What does the word creative mean to me personally? How does the creative spirit live in me? How do I express my creativity in my everyday life, activities, relationships?

Meditate upon your creative self.

Draw your creative self in any graphic style that feels right for you: symbols, abstract design, doodles, cartoon, picture, etc.

Look at what you've drawn and write down your reactions. Then let your creative self speak to you (in the first person, singular), e.g. "I am your creative self . . ." and write it out in your journal. Have a conversation with your creative self, if you wish, asking questions and responding to what it says to you.

Uses: This exercise can help you explore and expand your definition of creativity and to actively experience and express this innate human characteristic. By recognizing and cherishing the creativity you already use without perhaps being consciously aware of it, you can tap hidden potential. This exercise helps you to affirm yourself as you are now and to build inner strength and self-esteem for taking on new challenges.

Back from the city of New Orleans

I've sweated out my demons in New Orleans for a very full week. Now I'm back in the groove. Please come to McGuffey Art Center in Charlottesville this Saturday at 11:30 for our art making support group. malainajean@gmail.com for more info.

Changing the face of mental illness with one super sweet 'stache!

http://www.crayonmustache.com/

The incredibly awesome, good and generous Jason made this site. Then he listed a bunch of cool vintage toys (and other wonderful items) on Ebay and is giving all of the money to charity.

http://myworld.ebay.com/crayonmustache/

My book and poems are available for anyone to read and pass out for free, I hope they will help somebody. I am working on new written works and I would like for this website to showcase works of art, written or otherwise, by others in the mental health community. Thank You and Enjoy! -Jason