Art, A Good Prescription for Sanity: And Insanity
It’s almost been another year, my last post was March 2021. This is February 2022, but the past year has been different, still hard, but different. Probably, most of us could say that. Where 2020 was the year of “Doldrums”, read my last post HERE, in 2021 many things were accomplished or at least almost accomplished in the span of those 12 months. Taking care of an elderly parent that has slipped deeper into the fog of dementia still is an overwhelming constant, but I am choosing to focus on what has been done-what has been accomplished-what has been good, at least in this introduction to how Art is often connected to insanity.
In the rest of 2021, I did manage to do a lot of the “just drawing” I recommended in my last installment as the way to find the Muse again. I actually found time to sketch while “Just traveling”, another great way to get out of the “Doldrums”.
Trips to Santa Fe, did follow Zion NP and St. George, Utah where I sketched Brigham Young’s winter house garden…
Then Great Smoky Mountains NP and on to the East Coast to drop off a kiddo at university, Santa Fe again, Carmel California and Santa Fe again… there are many unfinished sketches in my bag right now, basically made my own coloring book, will post here as I get them done, and on Instagram/ Twitter/Facebook - all @moonflowermuse. I rarely finish a sketch out in the field, but with reference photos on my phone, it is very therapeutic to work on them, thus why there are so many adult coloring books in shops now. Don’t get me started on markers….
Yum!….
I think I have mentioned that in college I was actually headed to a career in Art Therapy, before I met a boy and everything went south. Through the years I have been able to facilitate Art for therapy’s sake often, working with severally autistic students and teaching Art to rural ranch and Native American kids…
where often the kindergarteners were more enthralled painting the paint sticks, cups and cardboard boxes than in the “project”. What did I do? Let them paint what they wanted until all the colors had turned to mud from their investigations. That’s not a waste at all, I used the sticks and cardboard for a later project and the enthrallment of the swirling paint and the brush actually has a name…
Process art is an artistic movement where the end product of art and craft, the objet d’art (work of art/found object), is not the principal focus; the process of its making is one of the most relevant aspects if not the most important one
From wikipedia.com
Art for Art’s sake is good for everyone’s soul. Knitting, crocheting, needlepoint from patterns, gardening even cooking-are acts that can give other parts of the brain a rest or what I call “getting in the groove”, but what is known as “flow”
… flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting transformation in one's sense of time.
from Wikipedia Article
AND… The power of Art, the making of Art, not the end results is backed up by science because wonderful things happen in the brain when the “right brain” is exercised in a creative way-lowering stress, releasing happy neurotransmitters and the list goes on… NPR article HERE
There is a reason Art has been used in mental health facilities for decades as an attempt to find more humane ways to deal with the inner struggles that once were perceived as spiritually dark places and the only option was isolation…
Vincent van Gogh, struggling with mental health all his life and after a downward spiral that started with him cutting his ear off spent a year in the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole psychiatric hospital in Saint-Rémy, more detail HERE, painted some of his most beautiful works there…
Strides have slowly been made in the care of “special populations”, but in the 1950s things were not much better when Joyce Scott’s twin sister, Judith with undiagnosed deafness and Downs syndrome, was whisked off in the night to be committed to a facility at age 7 , more detail HERE. When she could, as an adult, Joyce took on the care of her sister, moved her to California and enrolled her in Creative Growth, an art center that works with developmental disabled artists…
Is it the end result, the creation that Judith Scott was working towards, or was it the magic of the process?
The art, process or not, of people on the fringe of society also has a name-
Art Brut- or in America - Outsider Art, though now both have been claimed by those more mainstream to seem like they are not- but,
Art Brut was a label created in the 1940s by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture. Dubuffet focused particularly on art by those on the outside of the established art scene, using as examples psychiatric hospital patients, hermits, and spiritualists.
From wikipedia.com
Another aspect of Art Brut or Outsider Art is it has an edgy or raw component to it, like the art of James Castle (1899-1977)
James Castle was also deaf, in a time when not much effort was taken to figure out the reason a child was struggling. But, unlike Judith Scott, he had a supportive family who allowed him to be home where he developed his own unique way of communication and art, collecting discarded pieces of trash, like used match boxes and drawing on them with ash from the wood stove bound by his own spit.
picture from HERE
picture from HERE
Another on the fringe, self-taught artist that struggled with disabilities and prejudice was Canadian Maude Lewis, though her art, which eventually covered her entire little cottage in Canada that now reside inside the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia, is too delightful to call it “edgy or raw”.
Maude’s tenacity was highlighted in a Biopic in 2016 starring Sally Hawkins and Ethan Hawke
Like many artists, I have my own experience of “being on the fringe”. I can still remember, vividly, standing in the halls of Lincoln Elementary and my mother, going to a conference, informing me I would be spending part of my day in the Special Ed classroom. Why? Starting at the wrong side of the paper, I wrote every letter backwards, except for mom, because you can’t. On top of that, I messed up speaking—calling English Muffins-Mexican Buns, Horses-Donkeys, etc.- didn’t know right from left, couldn’t tie my shoes, wore my clothes backwards almost every day, wrong shoe on wrong foot. I was always at the bottom of the reading levels which were usually colored brown, where the higher levels were colors like fuchsia and baby blue. I was a mess. Growing up in the late 70s and early 80s- everyone who struggled with learning were lumped together, and the prevailing theory was it had something to do with balance and the inner ear? Days were spent walking a balance beam, but I had a smart Special Ed teacher who had me make bulletin boards.
I thought she was lazy- and taking advantage of me. But I designed her bulletin boards, and she would write out the sentences for them- I would make and cut out bubble letter and then staple the letter on the board. She would come over and without rebuke- a word I will talk about later-take off all the letter that were the wrong direction and I would try again and again and again.
Eventually I figured it out, and I do mean I. Other kind and patient teachers gave me the space to do it, sometime even protecting me as much as they could from the mean and bad teachers. By High School, I could read and write at or above grade level, though my spelling and grammar were atrocious. How did I just write the previous sentence?- Word Processors-baby- which were “invented” my first year of college.
So, in 1986 everything changed for me. Always intending to go to college for Art, the one subject that never failed me and I couldn’t do wrong- I took the ACT. The last semester of my last year of public school, after thirteen years of trauma and isolation, I was called to the counselor’s office to go over the results. I sat down on the other side of his desk and he unfolded the paper and, looking sort of dumbfounded, he told me I was in the 9oth percentile across All the subjects. Having been “evaluated” A LOT over the years in the bad way and trying to remember which directions “percentiles” went, I didn’t understand what he was saying.
He leaned over his desk at me and with his pencil circled where I was at on the graph, in comparison to all the other Seniors across the country, who had taken the ACT that year. Then tapped his pencil and said,“ you're smarter than 90 percent of all other students”. Huh? To say I had flown under the radar of the “gifted and talented” students in that school district would be an understatement. Except for Art and Theater-which is where all the kids on the fringe seem to end up.
With in a week, heads of college departments were asking me to come and join their programs-the school I did enroll in, Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colorado, automatically enrolled me in their honors program where I filled all my general requirements with the same twenty students in honor classes taught in classrooms, at professor’s homes, on trips to their family homesteads for weekends of philosophy, discussions and beating drums- it was northern New Mexico- and under a starry night.
Yeah, I had whiplash. But then I had always known most people saw me as something, someone I was not.
The mid 80s were the beginning of “Mainstreaming” bringing special populations into the schools and the classroom, instead of isolating them in their own schools- and in the halls of the Art Dept., on a bulletin board covered with flyers I discovered Art Therapy. Another new idea, along with play and music therapy, to work with children in need or special populations. Wanting to do more than be an Art Teacher- and not sure if I could pass the assessment test which was heavy in math and spelling, I took the classes need to go on and get my masters in Art Therapy. Now, dividing my time between the art department and the psychology, I basically diagnosed myself.
Actually, in the library, not writing my paper, I read a People Magazine on Tom Cruise and how he had dyslexia. Since I was in a college library, I researched the idea more and when convinced that was what I had-the writing letters backwards, struggles with reading, not knowing right from left, mixing up words and phrases- I confidently went to the educational psychology professor to confirm my finding-he told me dyslexia was ONLY struggling with reading. He was wrong.
James Redford, the son of Robert Redford, made a film, The Big Picture: Rethinking Dyslexia in 2012. Scientist, surgeon, investment brokers, entrepreneurs and entertainers, along with artists and writers have similar stories to mine. Being labeled as something “less” and then through grit and determination discovering they are “more”.
Do you want to stop and think of all those, who because of true mental illness, or undiagnosed neurological differences, or treatable ailments have stayed in the dark depths of isolation and loneliness either making their own way or institutionalized? Of course, Art is not the end all answer-medicine, therapy, support systems, good doctors and counselors, or teachers-all play a part that for most will be a life long balancing act.
But Art is a non-verbal language and expression, and I’d say it reaches deeper into us than language can, I’ve used it to communicate with severe non-verbal autistic children. But Kindness reaches the deepest.
Which brings me back to words like rebuke and mean and impatient and judgement, which I felt plenty of growing up. Add to that list -feeling invisible and labeled.
Stigma is usually defined as… (all from wikipedia.com)
the disapproval of a person based on physical or behavioral characteristics that distinguish them from others- A badge of shame, or stigma, an insignia, badge, brand, or designator of infamy or disgrace
All the definitions of “Stigma” have one idea in common-you can’t get rid of it.
I can write this -- because I am using Chromes spell and grammar check right now. I can read, though I prefer to listen to books. Furthermore, I still do not know left from right, can barely get a card in an atm machine the right direction. If stressed, can not remember a series of numbers-password, phone numbers I have had for years and pause often when I talk and mess up my words. Sadly, for a lot of people in my life, I have not shaken the “Stigma” of being “slow” or “odd”, never graduating to the “adult table” and perpetually staying at the “kid’s table. Of course, now in my 50s, it’s getting to the point of the ridicules.
Recently, I went back to the Midwest for a family funeral- and sitting around the farm, took out my sketch bag and drew my aunt’s corn crib- to the amazement of several of my distant cousins-who had no idea I was an artist-had gone to art school-where the accomplishments of my siblings are continually talked about and praised. I know this, because I have traveled hundreds of miles to be told of the accomplishments of my siblings and cousins countless times, with there being no expectation I have any myself to talk about.
Because I am like Bruno…
Not saying I’m Bruno, saying I’m like Bruno-the odd one out, not like the other-the black sheep. Being the middle of six granddaughters, sandwiched between the only two grandsons and born only a year after a beloved uncle was killed in Vietnam-plus divorce and being raised in a very matriarchal large family were other factors, but having undiagnosed dyslexia and being very dramatic and artsy in a family that leaned more head than heart-sealed my fate.
Apparently there is some merit to the family dynamics of ENCANTO, for now the movie is being analyzed online -relationships I know too well, though Shakespeare should get the credit-
“All the world's a stage and all the men and women merely players.”
The Golden Child, the Peacemaker, the Lost Child, the Black Sheep, the Escape Goat all can be roles in a family, but often during or after trauma, anything that threatens the “perceived identity” or does not fit into it, is cast to the side, i.e. a magic house that bestows gifts and protects and provides for a village but is crumbling from the insides.
No real hope of establishing myself in my family was a big motivator for me to find my own way. I am one of a few, in a very large family who moved away, and now I sit on my new couch, looking west into the canyons of Colorado towards Utah, where there is a chicken fight out on my deck, and after I write this sentence, I’m going to go shoo them away, I’m back…
None of my immediate family live on the westside of the Continental Divide. I have no friends here, who remember my awkward childhood, but I haven’t escaped the stigma altogether, I’m still dyslexic and an artist, was a stay at home mom, and I’m married to an attorney, so on occasion I still feel the sting of people not taking me seriously or thinking me weird when I do something they didn’t expect-remember special class, clothes on backwards and then the 90th percentile on the ACT?
There are still people in my family who don’t think I am a professional artist - I’m not sharing this to get accolades- if you want to give those to me, I’d rather them be for this…
or this…
Or for teaching rural ranch and Native American kids, many with their own stigmas and learning disabilities -Art…
I’m sharing this as an ending to the series-Art, A Good Prescription of Sanity because after the last two years of the collective crazy plus more personal loss and struggles than I desire to highlight, I want to share my Voice, my experience with the hopes that someone reading this will have hope for their future, be determined to give grace and kindness to those in their life on the fringe with mental health issues, gain some understanding of neurodiversity
Romans Chapter 14- should be a deterrent of judgement for all of us…
Who are you to judge someone else’s servant? To their own master, servants stand or fall. And they will stand, for the Lord is able to make them stand…It is written:
‘As surely as I live,’ says the Lord, every knee will bow before me; every tongue will acknowledge God.So then, each of us will give an account of ourselves to God.
Therefore let us stop passing judgment on one another. Instead, make up your mind not to put any stumbling block or obstacle in the way of a brother or sister.
Here Paul is talking about those who eat meat from pagan temples- but the jest is there-have compassion and show kindness to all because everyone is a child of God. And what a gift from God Art is. It saved me- kind of like the gifts given in ENCANTO. Take the time to see the gift in others and in yourself-you might be surprised!
