Blog 17…January 2013

"What's art got to do with it?"  Isabel Fryszberg has been asking throughout her career as an occupational therapist, musician and film maker.  Since Isabel started the Creative Works Studio in the late 90"s and in many conversations we've had over the years before and since, we've both clung to the notion that art has a lot to do with everything, especially with making life better for people with mental health issues. We share many things, Isabel and I... we're neighbours, fellow occupational therapists and have both made films on subjects dear to our hearts.  Isabel has tackled two of her passions with a film featuring some of the artists who create in the Studio and to post a blog on her work is both inevitable and a pleasure for me.

From the opening shot of a Toronto streetcar to its finale at the Toronto Outdoor Art Exhibit, this film (called What’s Art Got to do With It, btw) is a delightful way to meet and gain a bit of insight into the lives of  individuals with mental illness. 

There are some common themes that emerge: the studio is described by everyone as a safe place to put aside the pain and anxiety that usually haunts their lives and to feel understood by the other artists who form a welcoming community. They feel it helps them take over the illness rather than the illness being in charge. It gives then a reason to get up in the morning, there’s a sense of freedom to express feelings as well as creativity and maybe most important of all…they have fun.

Courtney feels he can express his inner self through his art, not just the bad parts, the good parts as well… Linda finds that her photography links her to her surroundings and the reactions of people to the beauty of her photos has turned her life around… Melanie lost custody of her children during an episode of illness and the sculptured angels that she makes (and sells in the gift shop of St Michael’s Hospital) represent for her the unconditional love for those children and help her bear the pain of their absence… Peace and tranquility are what John loves… Thomas says that “even the worst day here is better than I felt before.” …Inna’s work with ceramics helped her re start her life and Yury feels that the creative work done by the artists changes the public’s view of people with mental illness and can do a great deal to reduce stigma.

Throughout the film, there are shots of the artists collaborating with Isabel, students and staff members writing and performing a catchy song that’s been bouncing around my head all week.

I go to a lot of films and I‘ve noticed in the past year or so an evolving approach to the portrayal of people with disabilities of some sort.  I’m thinking of The Intouchables, Amour, The Sessions, and Silver Lining Playbook.  The individuals involved in these works come across as having pretty much the same hopes and dreams we all do… in other words, they’re pretty much like the rest of us. This does as much or more to combat stigma (as Yury says in What’s Art Got To Do With It?)  as many of the public awareness media campaigns.  Isabel’s film is right up there, she’s planning to submit it to Hot Docs where it would have a huge audience, let’s hope it’s accepted.

Blog 16… December, 2012

Remembrance Day passed a while ago and I was struck by several pieces in newspapers referring to the art of war, also by Pat Barker describing her latest novel Toby’s Room, about an art instructor at the Slade School in London who aids in reconstructing the faces of injured soldiers during and after WW1.  More about that in a future blog, but it set me to thinking more about remembering and memorialising events and people through art – there was a bit about it in my blog on tattoos,  here’s more.  

In 1999, ten years after 14 young female engineering students at L’Ecole Polytechnique were gunned down on December 6^th in what’s become known as the Montreal Massacre, my friend BA and I were invited to be part of an event at Massey Hall called Fourteen Remembered 

            Genevieve Bergeron ….. Helene Colgan….. Nathalie Croteau….. Barbara Daigneault

           Anne- Marie Edward….. Maud Havernick….. Barbara Maria Klucznick…..
      Maryse Laganiere....  Maryse Leclair… Anne- Marie Lemay

                    Sonia Pelletier….. Michelle Richard….. Annie St Arnaud….. Annie Turcotte

   

                        

Created by dancer and choreographer Peggy Baker and her husband, the late composer Ahmed Hassan, it was a performance of sorrow and joy, incorporating an original composition for each of the women. There were solemn processions of women and children (that’s where BA and I came in) individual dance performances and  rituals of mourning and honouring the dead from different cultures. A  number of moving texts about the lives of courageous women past and present  inspired us in the face of the sadness of remembering. The theme throughout was to hold the women’s names in our hearts as they were chanted over and over in a mesmerizing way as background to the music, the dance and the spoken words, imprinting the names in our minds in the process of remembering.

               Genevieve Bergeron ….. Helene Colgan….. Nathalie Croteau….. Barbara Daigneault

           Anne- Marie Edward….. Maud Havernick….. Barbara Maria Klucznick…..
      Maryse Laganiere....  Maryse Leclair… Anne- Marie Lemay

                    Sonia Pelletier….. Michelle Richard….. Annie St Arnaud….. Annie Turcotte

             

The event came and went too quickly, but I have a CD of the sound of Fourteen Remembered and as I listen to it each year on December 6^th  I can recreate some sense of what the day looked and felt like.  This is in memory of the 14 women killed in Montreal 23 years ago and also of Ahmed Hassan, who composed and performed much of the music and whose voice brought us the names of the women.

Blog 15…November 2012.

Used to be that if you saw a guy with tattoos (and it was pretty much always a guy) you could be almost sure he was a sailor, a biker or just out of the slammer. Today tattoos are ubiquitous (you see them everywhere as well) and have become more or less a fashion statement – a recent New Yorker cover showed Mitt Romney getting his changed to reflect his flip – flopping policies. Tattoo parlours used to be sort of sleazy places, now one of several in my neighbourhood looks like a chic hair salon .

Tattoos have been around for at least 5000 years but they were first spotted in modern times by Captain Cook on one of his voyages amongst the people of the Pacific Islands. I get a bird’s eye view in the changing room where I swim and have to keep from staring at the array of images and the imaginative way they adorn female anatomy.  In the warm weather the horizon widens and I can feast my eyes on body art on the street, the bus, even, I hear, the office.

In primitive societies, tattoos denoted social status, family rank or tribal affiliations. My not so extensive research (n= 10 or so) has revealed many reasons for people to ornament themselves, using their own skins as a canvas to memorialize friends and family members who’ve died or pledging love forever like a valentine. They can be a reminder of a personal mantra “There’s nothing wrong here” or as one person told me, marking the spot of a painfully memorable injection.  There are a growing number of young descendants of holocaust survivor s honouring the suffering and survival of their ancestors with their concentration camp numbers tattooed on their arms…an indelible act of remembrance.

In psychological terms, tattoos can disguise a shameful body or take possession and control of a body that feels overwhelmed. A body that’s hated can be changed and lovingly decorated. Getting a tattoo can be a rite of passage or an act of empowerment or rebellion, a protest against authority or a badge of belonging to a group (more likely Hell’s Angels than the YMCA). It can be a mark of courage or a creative act to customize a body to reflect who inhabits it

There’s also the issue of how visible the tattoos are. A friend of mine has a discreet small yoga sign on her shoulder that peeks out from under a sundress strap.  My cousin got a tiny astrological glyph on her cheek (the facial one). Some are even more subtle with the deliciously titillating thought that they are only seen in intimate moments.  Or there’s the all - over look, back front, arms, legs, even faces.

Whether modifying the body is rooted in some psychological place or done in a more playful way with a sense of personal adornment, tattoos seem to be here to stay, in more ways than one.  Alessandra Lemma’s book Under the Skin is a very good read if you’re interested in exploring the topic further.

Blog 14…October 2012

You know how you never go to see the attractions in your own city until someone visits… well, this summer I had a houseguest from Bangkok and we explored a couple of Toronto's little treasures together.  First, the Bata Shoe Museum where we took  a look at the glamorous shoes that Roger Vivier created for Christian Dior. On the floor below, we saw how the footwear of indigenous people reflected and accommodated their environment.  

After lunch, we searched out the Textile Museum of Canada (buried on Centre Street near the bus terminal).  There’s always something fascinating there - war rugs, prayer shawls or a range of costumes. This time it was Dreamland, a look at our Canadian landscape, with elements of thrift, beauty and utility from Quebec catalogne to Red River coats to the rugs of the Gagetown hookers. A particularly moving tableau showed two sisters embracing in the bareness of a Saskatchewan prairie.  Both of these small places are easily accessible, not expensive and definitely worth a visit, even without houseguests.

The tables were turned recently when I was in Helsinki and discovered a very special show in the City Hall lobby that I introduced to some local friends. It was also fun to talk to the staff there about our Toronto City Hall designed by Finnish architect Viljo Revell.  

The show features the work of Helja Liukko Sundstrom and celebrates her fifty years as ceramic artist with Arabia Pottery. As well as designing many of  Arabia’s signature pieces, she’s a wonderful story teller who has written and illustrated a dozen children’s books -  the stories reflecting  the joy and sorrow inherent in our lives as well as the uniqueness of Finland's history, landscape and culture. 

In the current show, she’s moved into adult material with a tribute to the role women played on the production line at Arabia.  In one series of ceramic panels, she’s rendered images of women leaving their children in dark early hours and arriving at the factory gates to work until the shrill of the 5 o’clock whistle when they head home, again in darkness, to cook dinner and prepare for the next day.

A second series of 20 panels - each one about a foot square - is a gesture of love and appreciation of  her grandmother’s life, from birth, through schooldays, marriage, childbirth - setting out charming domestic scenes throughout her life to the completion of the cycle with her aging and death, There is a particularly touching panel showing how a few Finnish soldiers disguised in white tablecloths and bedsheets halted the invasion of the huge and powerful Soviet Red army during the Winter War.

I enjoyed the show for the third time with my friend Jussi who enriched it even more for me by pointing out cultural references that had gone over my head. 

This blog is being written with with beautiful Muskoka colours outside the window and is dedicated to him.

Blog 13...September 2012

For me, jazz has always been associated with late nights in smoky bars, but on a warm sunny day this summer, in a beautiful rooftop garden with lush flowers and greenery in the foreground, skyscrapers and traffic in the background, I changed my mind.  Under a canopy of chainmail, surrounded by patients, visitors and staff at the Princess Margaret Hospital, a group of musicians blew, strummed and sang their hearts out for all of us.                                                                                                    

Jazz for the Soul is the brainchild of long time jazz fan Sharon Wright. who has been successful in finding and engaging an incredible range of musicians - duos, trios, quartets, sometimes just instrumentalists, sometimes a vocalist. Many people who participate have been touched in some way by cancer themselves and are generous with their time and talent. My first time there I met a bass player who had once accompanied Anita O’Day… how cool is that?

Princess Margaret Hospital is a diagnostic and treatment centre for people with cancer in downtown Toronto.  Jazz for the Soul is part of Healing Beyond the Body, a Cancer and the Arts Program in the Psychosocial Oncology Department and Palliative Care Department where Sharon works as EA to chief Gary Rodin.

We’re all moved by music, by our mother’s heartbeat, her lullabies, military, wedding and funeral marches and everything in between. Music touches our emotions, memory, intellect and mood like nothing else can. It can give pleasure, reduce pain and release sorrow - no wonder music has been in the air at PMH since Music in the Atrium began a decade ago. The experience was extended this year to include Jazz for the Soul, held every Friday at noon during the summer months in the Max Tannenbaum Garden on the 16^th floor.

Hospital staff have begun to notice that some out patients are scheduling their appointments in combination with the jazz sessions.  Family members and friends who accompany or visit patients appreciate the opportunity to engage in something normal, helping to turn what can be a tense situation into something to share…some pleasure, a distraction, maybe a chance to release sorrow.

Music crosses boundaries of age, language, background, class and physical and mental state.  Watch for Jazz and the Soul next summer, or for more info, contact Info@Jazz for the Soul.com.

                                  And, yup that’s me, wearing green and slumped beside Sharon.

Blog 12...August 2012


Of all the devastations of war, the one that strikes me most forcibly is its effect on children. Many are killed and/or left orphaned and those who survive face a lifetime filled with sorrows and losses that are impossible for us to imagine.

In 1998 I was in Sri Lanka just as the war there was beginning to escalate and move south.  Many children had already been traumatized and I was proud to hear about The Butterfly Garden, initiated by Canadian artist Paul Hogan and inspired by The Spiral Garden at The Ontario Crippled Children's Centre (now known as Holland Bloorview Kids Rehab). It was conceived as a garden of reconciliation and healing for war-affected children bringing various ethnic and religious groups together in an oasis of safety and imagination.  The use of creative activity to engage with people and with life continues to help the children of the area around Batticaloa to grow up with some sense of a positive future and their place in it.

Not thinking of something is the surest way to remain under its influence.  Two other projects involving art and children are more recent and have their roots in countries with ongoing violence and killing... Syria and Gaza. Their approach is to encourage children to draw their surroundings, capturing the horrors witnessed, helping them attempt to cope with their day-to-day situations.  While our children see bicycles, dolls and roller blades around them, children in war zones see bombs exploding, guns and torture.

Looking out at Passamaquoddy Bay on a sunny morning in early August, I’m thinking about how life forces us to deal with changes outside our control. What war-affected children must accept and integrate into their lives gives me a pretty humble perspective on my own.

Blog # 11, July 2012

People responded to the Port Stanley murals with a flood of nostalgia … for dancing to Big Bands on a summer night, for great ships on the Great Lakes, for freshwater fish by the shore and for the gentle life in smaller places back in the day.

And, at around the same time I picked up a new book that piqued my interest from many angles. In his introduction to The Age of Insight, Eric Kandel quotes his countryman Sigmund Freud, “nostalgia reflects strange and secret yearnings…for a life of quite another kind: wishes from late childhood never to be fulfilled and not adapted to reality.”   Anyone who watches Charlie Rose and loves his monthly Brain Series as I do will recognize psychiatrist and author Kandel who co-hosts the series.  Winner of a Nobel Prize in 2000 for his brilliant work on memory storage in the brain, he has an incredible knack for rendering complex concepts accessible - and  the world’s greatest laugh, erupting from somewhere behind his red bowtie. Although he was taken from his native city when he was a child, his soul remains connected to the culture and intellectual life in fin- de-siècle Vienna.  “My heart beats in ¾ time,” he says as he describes the rich and rewarding life and times he was forced to leave behind.

In Vienna in 1900, a group of leaders in science, medicine and art revolutionized the thinking of the time about the human mind and how it relates to art. Explorations were going on at the Vienna Medical School to discover the connection between art and science. Scientists and artists began to question together what we as viewers bring to a work of art, how we respond to it and what’s involved in creating a work of art.   The people involved in the dialogue included, as well as Freud, novelist Arthur Schnitzler and artists Gustav Klimt and Oscar Kokoschka. 

           Klimt's Anita Block-Bauer

One hundred years later, some enlightened medical schools are realizing the importance of including and integrating various art forms in the preparation of their students, broadening their training and deepening their capacity for empathy. Many of you are using art in your practice to help people heal and to explore, define and make sense of their lives. Although Eric Kandel may be leading the pack, many people out there are making the world of therapy a better place with art forms as the medium.

The Age of Insight reinvigorates the intellectual enquiry that began in Vienna in 1900 and provides a link between neuroscience and the humanities; a foundation for future work on their connection and relationship to each other. There’s often a need to explain, justify, and clarify why  creative activities are valuable,  usually coming from someone with a scientific (financial) agenda and probably part of a competition for $$$.  Being able to articulate the value of art, whether it’s reading or writing, dance, music, or visual art of any sort is an important part of keeping the ball rolling…this book will help to justify the value of your work, enhance your confidence and lift your spirits.    

And it’s just a few days until the start of the summer Olympic games; Priscila Uppal is on her way to cover it with poems.  We’ll be hearing from her soon.