With guidance from the national Innovators Combating Substance Abuse program at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, a group of friends formed Rumination Productions, Inc, a non-profit organization, to promote the use of art in understanding, preventing and treating addiction. The group then invited local artists to submit art and received paintings, sculptures, and mixed media works with powerful messages they feel confirm the creativity-recovery connection. Those works will be on display in Freedom From Bondage: An Exhibition of Addiction and Recovery in Art.
The three-day art show, which will include artists Michaela Kyle, Meryl Joan Lammers, Andrew Swan (breyhs), Agata Ren and Christopher Bull (whose “Starfish Boy” is shown above). In his statement about “Starfish,” Bull reveals, “This painting comes from a dream I had about a little boy who lives on the beach and eats starfish. He is by himself, but self-sufficient and content. It is a self portrait of a sort. I hate the term ‘inner child,’ but indeed there is a small child inside me. The painting represents the innermost me, a core untainted by addiction and abuse. At least this is my understanding of an image that came to me as a gift in a dream.”
Gillian Smith’s work, “The Experience” (also pictured here) evolved from the frustration she felt over the first woman she ever tried to help get into recovery. “She was an experience, and it’s the only way to describe her,” Smith said in a statement about her work. “It is hard watching someone go through the pain of addiction. I learned so much from that heartbreaking experience. She shaped the way I help woman today. She passed away this year (2010), and it just reminds me of why I keep working hard for others and myself.”
The exhibition kicks of 7-10 p.m. Friday, and will continue 7-10 p.m. Saturday and noon to 4 p.m. Sunday for a picnic with live art, music and food (bring a dish) at Veterans Park Recreation Center, 802 N.E. First Street in Delray Beach. For information on Rumination Productions, call Lynne Larson, 561-573-0777 or e-mail .ruminationproductions@gmail.com.
