Expressive arts are front-and-center at the Martha Pace Swift Gallery and Expressive Arts Institute at 2820 Roosevelt Rd. in an exhibition entitled Recovering the Artist – A Show About Art/Not Illness. The exhibition opens with a reception and poetry reading Friday, Nov. 4 5-8 p.m.
Art is often inspired by an individual’s desire to express something. The product of this expression can be perceived as important as the work of Jackson Pollock, Edvard Munch or Van Gogh; or as negligible as the output of someone in therapy, although the root drive and the resulting art might be one and the same.
In popular media, people with mental illness are crazed killers or savants possessed of extraordinary genius. “But”, according to the Expressive Arts Institute “real life is rarely like a movie. Going to work; going to school; raising a family; making friends; even in the face of harsh symptoms and profound stigma, life goals are still pursued. Like Vincent Van Gogh, a percentage of those who recover from mental illness make wonderful art.”
I’m no expert but, historically, I imagine the label “mental illness” might have been applied to an array of different symptoms; to anyone who saw things differently and for different motives.
In celebration of the 8th annual Expressive Arts Month The Expressive Arts Institute, Creative Arts Consortium and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) San Diego presents this juried exhibition of art, featuring works by San Diego County artists living with and recovering from mental illness.
This exhibit features eye-popping works in intricate pen and ink; oil on canvas; drawing, abstracts; three dimensional constructions; fabric arts; geometrics and more. This art responds to the full range of human experience. It may express the challenges of illness and stigma; the journey of recovery or the ordinary hopes and ambitions of human life; even the enduring beauty of the world. Isn’t that worth looking at?
Recovering the Artist – A Show About Art/Not Illness runs Nov. 4 through Jan. 7, 2012. For more information go to arts4change.com.
