Good-bye, trendiness. Hello, integrity and passion.
Every now and then we come across a rare breed of exhibition that reminds us of how art is really a gift. A gift to those who make it, and a gift to those who view it.
Subconscious Spirits at Ybor's Hillsborough Community College Art Gallery, curated by gallery director Carolyn Kossar, is that type of refreshing exhibition. Partly sophisticated, partly naive, these 27 art works derive from a wellspring beyond what most of us will ever experience. The 15 artists in the exhibition have varying degrees of mental illness and are members of Project Return, Tampa's unique nonprofit social, educational and vocational program for adults with mental illness.
Defining the essence of their work is challenging.
On the other hand, art history has its share of artists famed for translating personal emotion and turmoil into idiosyncratic visual vocabularies. At the top of everyone's list is Vincent Van Gogh, who willed us animated brush strokes imbued with inner vitality and brooding darkness. Lesser-known players include outsider Adolph Wolfli, who packed his compositions with symbols and signs and lived out his life in a Swiss mental institution. There's also influential artist/writer Yayoi Kusama, who calls herself "obsessional" and has spent decades in a Japanese institution. Only in recent years has this enormously interesting artist gained the widespread fame that was deservedly hers. In 1999, her Museum of Modern Art retrospective presented the elegant, wonderfully obsessive and repetitious art that she initiated long before the art world caught on. Now her style and innovation is revered and mimicked.
This brings us to the Subconscious Spirits artists, each of whom present his or her own consistent and recognizable signature element, whether it be symbolic scrawls, subject matter or expressionistic brushwork. As we walk the perimeter of the small gallery, we are drawn to art plucked from the dark wondrous recesses of the mind. It's as if these artists chart new territory on a map of the human condition, a map sometimes riddled with distortions, but then so was the art of Picasso, Klee and deKooning.
Welcome to the age of pluralism.
It's not surprising that figurative work dominates as this cast of characters escorts us on mysterious journeys that also leave us far behind. It's easy to be captivated by Rudolf's figures with appendages and sleeves but no hands, by Ron's graceful nude with illogical legs, by Eve's mixed-media totemic-like creature with dark penetrating eyes, and tellingly, a hole cut where the heart would be. Daniel's small monsters sporting molar-like legs equally fascinate us, as does Wiley's gentle dog-faced girl with clenched teeth. (We are using only the artists' first names to protect their privacy and that of their families.)
Tommy's dynamic acrylic painting, "The Visit of Wise Men," is a gripping Biblical narrative with turbaned magi and a fanciful flying camel. Curious caricatured beak-like faces appear throughout his body of work. When I ask the artist about their origins, he answers, "I drew all my life. But the way I draw my faces now — I like it. So I stuck with it."
Not all the art reflects internal turmoil, though it's never totally absent. Luzaldo's mixed media "Tampa City," a small pedestaled mixed-media installation, features city streets, people, trees and minuscule plants. In this meticulously prepared and compulsively ordered miniature world, it's hard to ignore that Luzaldo has placed St. Joseph's Hospital at dead center.
I was also struck by Frank's ambitious composition brimming with sharp-edged symbolic meanderings and a predilection for intricate Cubist-like imagery. His border design elements recall, albeit distantly, Jackson Pollock's pre-drip paintings marked with Jungian symbolism. Frank, an instructor's assistant in this remarkable art program, has had college level art training. It's evident in his work.
On a recent morning I visited Project Return's newly refurbished member center. Soft music played as clients worked on computers in small rooms off the main congregating area. Members participating in art classes were seated at round tables that automatically encourage camaraderie, where each is encouraged to follow his or her own artistic muse. New member Darby is quietly applying purple, green and blue watercolor to her paper, content to create in the calming ambiance of this welcoming haven. Others engage a variety of materials, including oil pastels and acrylics.
Though the Center also includes computer and other educational classes, art is everywhere.
Many works draw from nature. A painted wall mural reveals the signature painted hands of visiting artist/collaborator Josette Urso, and equally recognizable markings of other member artists. Around the walls are sweet pastorals, fierce gestural markings on paper and charming pear-bodied creatures. On a stunning cobalt blue background, a rhythmic collage with anthropomorphic fish topped by beautiful female faces. Staring eyes interrupt a simple floral landscape reminiscent of James Rosenquist's floral images with hidden eyes peering through palm slivers.
If you've been noticing more Project Return exhibitions during the last five months, it's due to the impassioned efforts of art instructor Angela Dickerson, whose gentle nature is tailor-made for guiding special individuals toward actualizing their talents. In March, she secured space for the exhibition Inner Realities at the at the Advocacy Center for Persons with Disabilities, Inc., at downtown Tampa's St. Petersburg Times Building. In May, Project Return member works were featured in Synaesthesia's Muse, at TECO Plaza Public Art Gallery. All of the works are for sale and profits are split between the artist and Project Return.
Dickerson, an active community artist currently creating monotypes, is exhibiting two of her older art works at the HCC Gallery. These charming mixed-media sculptural pieces demonstrate her eye for whimsy.
Project Return is the brainchild of Rhoda Zusman, who founded the first center in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1971 and in Los Angeles in the mid-1970s. Subsequently, the model for this voluntary drop-in center has been replicated in Belgium and Japan. In addition to individualized vocational training, clients are assisted in locating supportive housing. For her innovative design, Zusman received the Outstanding Alumni of the Year in 2001 award from the Graduate School of Education, State University of New York, at Buffalo.
In myriad ways, Project Return artists touch us. Dickerson speaks of their gains in "self esteem," their "renewed sense of purpose" and a "passion for creating." They also gift us by sharing extraordinary emotional lives coupled with the wonders of authentic aesthetic experience.
Adrienne M. Golub can be reached by email at randagolub@aol.com
This article appears in Jul 31 – Aug 6, 2003.