The Arts of Recovery

Creating Art, Combating Discrimination.

The Arts of Recovery 2007 Opens at Snug Harbor

The fifth annual Arts of Recovery exhibition opened at Snug Harbor Cultural Center on Staten Island on September 9. Featuring collaborations between Tattfoo Tan, Avani Patel and artists living with mental illnesses, the exhibition is accompanied by video and photographs documenting the creative process.

Working with Tattfoo, participants created a summer scene, Grass, butterflies, flag, using material which we as a society overlook or discard every day.

Ken Byalin, Tattfoo, and Janice Jones

at the opening. Photo by Enze. In Avani's workshop, participants worked on Myalr with paint, ink, and conte to explore the landscape of family connections in varied cultures.

Presented by The Verrazano Foundation in conjunction with Snug Harbor Cultural Center, South Beach Psychiatric Center, and the Art Lab, the exhibition, located in the Visitors Center at Snug Harbor will continue through October 20.

The Arts of Recovery 2006 is made possible in part by an Encore Grant from the Council on the Arts & Humanities for Staten Island, with public funding from the New York State Council on the Arts. Additional support is provided by the Staten Island Foundation, Independence Community Foundation, Richmond County Savings Foundation, Verizon Foundation, and Councilman Michael McMahon.

Poets in Recovery Slam "Mental Illness"!

Carl Blumenthal reading.
Carl Blumethal reading.

Hi, I’m Carl and I’m in recovery from mental illness. My life took a leap forward at the Sacred Poetry Slam, January 8. Now, I’m trying to catch up with this review:

A slam is usually violent. So you might think a Sacred Slam is a contradiction in terms. But insert the word “poetry” and you have “Sacred Poetry Slam.” Poetry can unleash the sacred and absorb the pain of a slam. The result is creative energy.

That creative energy electrified the SRO crowd at Sufi Books in Manhattan on Saturday, January 8. Two groups, Sacred Slam and The Verrazano Foundation, brought together the “chronically normal” and the “acutely crazy” for a stigma-busting evening of poetry that made everyone present walking contradictions in terms.

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Off the Walls

Photo: Marty Cohen

In this, the premier presentation of Off the Walls, we are featuring images from the Arts of Recovery 2004, collaborations in ink, paint and mixed media between artists living with mental illness and prominent contemporary artists, Louise Fishman, Barbara Bash, and Darrell Wilson. Images 1 to 5 are from Barbara Bash's workshop, Brush Spirit. Two people at a time came up to the stations while the rest witnessed. Bowing to each other, they picked up the large horsehair brushes, dipped them in ink and made a stroke, put the brushes down, bowing again to each. Images 6 to 9 are from Louise Fishman's Exquisite Corpse workshop. In exhibition, these and other collaborations were combined to create three large constructions. Images 10 to 12 are from Darrell Wilson's workshop, Masks, in which cast plaster impressions of their own faces and embellished them with painted colors, collage, adornments and sculptural extensions.
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About the Arts of Recovery
The Verrazano Foundation is committed to combating stigma and discrimination against persons living with mental illness by providing opportunities for people in recovery, individually and collectively, to make positive, visible contributions to the community. While this can be done in many ways, we believe that the arts provide a uniquely effective way of communicating the possibilities and the richness of recovery.

We welcome news of artistic achievements by and about artists in recovery. We will utilize the online gallery, Off the Walls, as other programmatic opportunities to present this work.