Dublin Arts Council
For ages, artists have been speaking about the healing power of their work, the ways in which it touches the spirit.
“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life,” Pablo Picasso famously said. Georgia O’Keeffe praised the brave creatives who exposed their inner demons by simply saying, “To create one’s own world takes courage.” Vincent Van Gogh, who lived with mental illness, said, “The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech.”
The Dublin Arts Council, too, recognizes the positive effects art can have on those who are part of it, be they creators, subjects or simply patrons. It’s incorporating those effects as it moves forward with 2015 programs and exhibitions.
David Guion, Dublin Arts Council executive director, says it all started with Shifting Perspectives, a British photography exhibition that focused on the beauty of the lives of people with Down syndrome, rather than the struggles they face.
The exhibition, featuring more than 80 photographs, made its American debut in Dublin in 2011. In 2012 and 2013, the council helped coordinate exhibitions incorporating local people with Down syndrome as subjects and photographers.
The exhibitions were equally impactful for those who knew someone with Down syndrome and those who did not, Guion says.
“There were people with tears in their eyes, looking at people with the condition and seeing them, for the first time, in a fun, loving way,” he says. “They’re just living their lives like anyone else. It’s been really moving for the entire community.”
Individuals who have Down syndrome got a sense of camaraderie from the photos, says Guion.
“They were all coming together and sort of celebrating each other,” he says. “I think they were able to look at themselves differently, and look at the world differently through photography.”
The effect Shifting Perspectives had on the community opened a whole new world for the council.
Recovery Art: A Group Exhibition of Local Artists in Recovery – in partnership with the Alcohol, Drug and Mental Health Board of Franklin County (ADAMH) – was held last October. The exhibition featured about 30 works from 15 central Ohio artists who live with mental illness or addiction.
Artistic media represented ranged from photography and painting to 3-D rendering and mixed media. Information on mental illness and addiction was on display, too.
“It was awareness-building, which I think was really effective,” Guion says. “It was the first time we had worked with that particular population. Since Shifting Perspectives, we’ve been trying to do an awareness-building campaign and use art as a vehicle for change.”
To build on that vision, the council has two exhibitions slated for later this year that will show a slightly different side of art as therapy.
From May 25 to Sept. 11, a collection of rarely viewed photographs from Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Eddie Adams, titled simply Vietnam, will be exhibited. Adams is best known for his photo of General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan executing Nguyễn Văn Lém, a Viet Cong prisoner, in Saigon in 1968.
In conjunction with Vietnam, the council will work with veterans’ groups to raise awareness of the backlash many Vietnam veterans still face. At a 2014 meeting of the American Psychological Association, it was reported that 11 percent of Vietnam veterans still suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.
ADAMH will assist with some of the programming, Guion says.
From Sept. 22 to Dec. 18, the sculptures and maquettes of Alfred Tibor will be on display in Hatred Doesn’t Work. Tibor, a Holocaust survivor and former Russian prisoner of war, coped with the horrors he experienced by drawing portraits of his captors.
Where some art shows the pain of mental illness or addiction, Adams’ and Tibor’s show a different kind of struggle: the struggle of war, genocide and loss.
“Art is a means of expression, of course,” Guion says. “I think that’s the key to any healing process. Art can be a real vehicle and outlet for people.”
Hannah Bealer is an assistant editor. Feedback welcome at hbealer@cityscenecolumbus.com.
