Citation

Wexler A. Art Educ. 2004; 57(1): 21.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2004, National Art Education Association)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

Since opening in 1999, the art studio at the Northeast Center for Special Care (NCSC) serves as a reprieve from the tragedy of loss that pervades every corner of the facility. Working for over two decades with people who have a wide range of disabilities, artist Bill Richards creates a charmed space in the NCSC studio. The neighbors, as they are called here, sit, lie, or position themselves in whatever way they can so that they may paint, often with focused intensity. Although groans will be heard--the frustrated beating on a table, a scuffle with aides restraining a convulsing neighbor--no one is stopped from the concentration of his or her work. And the neighbors' works are maps of their evolution--not always a continuous movement upward, but a diagram of dips and detours as well as ascents--diagrams of their struggle to proceed in spite of the inevitable regression back to confusion and disorientation. Their artworks are pictures of people reclaiming their lives. This is a story about the experiences of university undergraduate students at the State University of New York New Paltz, their internship at NCSC, and their involvement in "The Art of Necessity," an approach developed by Bill Richards and the course that this author co-teaches with him. This article examines the primary question of this course: How do the inherent healing properties of painting help to transform lives interrupted by injury? (Contains 5 figures and 6 notes.)

Language: en