Inside speaking out
An exhibit of the collaborative works by artists and people with mental disabilities shares an American vision with Japan.
By LENNIE BENNETT, Times Art Critic
Published July 12, 2007
ST. PETERSBURG - The revelation is far less dramatic, as is the art, but walking into the "Artlink Japan 2007" show at Florida Craftsmen recalled my first look at the Gee's Bend quilts several years ago. That was the wildly successful exhibition of quilts by self-taught, rural Alabama women at New York's Whitney Museum that had art critics falling all over themselves in ecstatic praise. New York Times art critic Michael Kimmelman described them as "miraculous works of modern art."
Artlink is far more modest but can produce the same kind of goose bumps.
The exhibition is one of several programs supported by Florida Craftsmen in its new commitment to involving art and artists more closely with the community. This one comes from Creative Clay Cultural Arts Center, an agency that provides art programs to people with developmental disabilities or mental health challenges. Grace-Anne Alfiero, its executive director, started Artlink in 1999, connecting professional artists with Creative Clay clients for collaborative projects.
This show has the added boost of including works from Japanese programs based on Creative Clay's model.
What gives me goose bumps is not the quality of the art.
Viewers will be tempted to categorize it as outsider or folk art. It isn't, though it has a kinship with those styles.
The difference is that outsider art is created by people who have had little or no exposure to conventional art, who typically live, because of social and financial issues, in an insulated community as have the women of Gee's Bend. They use found and scavenged materials. Lots of examples of self-taught folk artists were recently at the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg.
The Artlink artists have been purposefully exposed to myriad experiences, a form of mainstreaming. They were given opportunities to use nonfolk art mediums such as photography and computers. And the participants had assistance from professionals, though the pros seem to have tread gently, encouraging their partners' imagination and talent with as little intervention as possible.
So Robert B. (last names aren't given to protect their privacy) fixates on the urban wonder of helicopters. From the parking lot of Creative Clay's studio, he watches the Bayflite copters on their daily missions to and from Bayfront Medical Center and has created an elaborate scenario with drawings, sculpture and a book in collaboration with Marlene Glickman. His helicopters are red, his favorite color, drawn with fine dash and elegant simplicity. He names them Dexter and DeeDee and invests them with an anthropomorphic life of friends: some fellow helicopters, some human, some changing from one to the other.
Working with Alicia Loomis, Lawrence J., one of the most innately talented painters in the show, also loves flying machines, in his case zeppelins, and he, too, invents a fantasy world for them to inhabit. His paintings are charming narratives in which the dirigibles are cared for by "elves," larger-than-life women who keep them free of germs. (We know this because he writes dire warnings to the germs on the paintings.)
Kotaro Itami of Okayama, Japan, with Koichi Manabe, became his art, with an anime character translated into a costume he donned to walk around the city and interact with strangers (accompanied at all times, of course). The journey was documented with photographs. His was performance art minus the self-consciousness and contrivance of that form.
Photography was a gratifying vehicle for several artists' self-expression. Gina K. zeroed in on details: a padlock on a badly painted door, a bike seat decorated with a large heart. Albert C. takes us on a journey around the downtown, often aiming his camera up from his wheelchair for dramatic perspectives. A blow-up of a flowering tree against a blue sky is lovely.
We aren't given much information about the individuals, but we learn that Frank A., diagnosed bipolar and schizophrenic, has been displaced throughout his life, including a forced evacuation from New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. He bears disfiguring and disabling wounds from saving a child in a fire. He and Sarah Ellen Smith collaged digital photographs in which images are superimposed over snippets of his essays, also collected into a small book. Among the gems in it: "True our tedious life, fool of Yellow Pages. . . . The opportunity, dedication, attitude to write our story. Each day a new page of our book." I think he probably meant "full" instead of "fool" but it's the kind of double entendre famous writers would love to have written.
Allen Loyd, who collaborated with Michael R., alludes in the catalog to the challenges the teams faced, coming from such different points of view: "Michael is not very verbal and I often had trouble gauging whether he was really interested in painting any particular subject, other than words - he loves to write words." Still, Michael produced some beautiful images of nature in the sumi-e style of ink brushed on paper.
What I find wondrous about this art is its immediacy and freedom from the filters most of us have developed in the way we think, see and create. They teach us that, unfettered, our imagination can lead us anywhere.
Lennie Bennett can be reached at (727) 893-8293 or lennie@sptimes.com.
If you go
Artlink Japan 2007
The exhibit is at Florida Craftsmen Gallery, 501 Central Ave., through July 31. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Monday through Saturday. (727) 821-7391.