Painter of the Month

Chip McCarthy

Chip rocks.  Among the most physically challenged of all those artists we work with, he did the A.R.T. breakout the first five minutes he gained access to our techniques. 

Chip uses a fairly horizontal wheelchair, a bit like a mini-bed.  We created a super-custom headmount for the laser, which allows it to be adjusted on a tiny pivot ball, the way a tripod mount works.  So Chip, from this unusual angle, can get full control to move the laser over his canvases.

Like I said, from Day 1 Chip moved with power into his work, no coaching, no art lessons, no art history.  All our friends who saw Chip’s new paintings, without knowing Chip, without exception, spoke of the depth, strength, and emotion held tempered in his paintings.  This is the real Chip.  Chip isn’t his body.  Chip is what’s inside him.  Strong and deep.  Tempered and sure.

At each of the many exhibitions he’s been in, his work always sells.  In fact, there was a virtual tug-of-war over one of his pieces.  Both a Manhattan business guy and the former governor of New Jersey wanted to buy this particular painting of Chip’s at the gala opening reception.   The business guy fired up when he was told Christie Todd Whitman had gotten to it first.  He kept asking about this painting of Chip’s, asking if there was any more of Chip’s work like the  masterpiece that had eluded him.  So in the studio I spoke with the artist, describing the situation, saying, “You’re the artist.  You might not be interested in this, but I think if you made another painting close to the one Christie bought, this guy would buy it.”

With a wry, warm, calm smile Chip nodded.  The second painting, based on the first, executed and sold…Chip’s savings account growing, the artist moving on to his next  new canvas.

At our fantastic opening at the Princeton University Art Museum, the former governor and serious A.R.T. booster, Christie Todd Whitman, asked for Chip by name.  It was strange that he wasn’t around; the rest of the Woodbridge painters were in the gallery.  Christie Todd was on her way out, but decided to hunt for Chip, finding him stuck in the elevator, his unique wheelchair seeming too big to make it.  With her normal oomph Christie Todd got him in, then up to the floor of the gallery where they had a chat, Chip hearing about how his famous piece was in her home, how she seriously valued it as high art.  Another of Chip’s pieces hangs at the current NJ governor’s mansion in Princeton.  So.  If you saw Chip rolled down a sidewalk, would you consider he could blow you away when it came to the formal powers and discipline of fine art and self-expression?

So, the issue isn’t at all the limits of the people A.R.T. works with.  The issue, the challenge, is getting the ‘able-bodied’ world to see that what we say is true.  These people have full power.  They have extra power.  Extra because it’s trapped, stored up, inside. This is a tall order to sell. If our breakthrough were believed, facilities all over the country would be knocking down our door in order to get their own A.R.T. program.    Many in the disabilities field don’t believe our claims.  How do I know this?  They’ve told me. Once they have seen, in person, what A.R.T. can do, they have taken me aside to confess how firmly they didn’t believe our claims, in fact found them suspect.  And in this, they tended to deem A.R.T. as a sham or a scam.  It doesn’t matter that we are backed robustly by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Princeton University, The Kessler Foundation or that tons of major national media has vetted us before running their stories.  None of this seems to affect them in our favor.  Why?  One would have to suppose it is that they work in an environment that doesn’t see the bombshell of inner power their clients have.

In this environment, having come from an education system that sets the bar far, far below what A.R.T. has proven is possible, there is a settling in, to see the severely challenged as wanting comfort, set scheduled routines.  This isn’t meant to be a criticism.  If everyone you worked with saw things the same way, naturally you will be drawn into this way of seeing as well.

It’s like this:  When a new staff person meets a kid who doesn’t open their eyes very often, who lists in their wheelchair, who does not speak and shows little interest in engaging the activities of the facility, and the other staff have accepted this as the way the kid is, it would surely be a leap to believe this same kid had the full power to overleap every one of the staff when it came to making art – art that could show in fine art museums, sell for thousands.  You see how this could be asking a lot from a staff person.  I guess it could be as odd and maybe even as suspect as me saying, “Look.  If I put on this hat I can jump over a house.”

“What?” perhaps they think. “That’s ridiculous.  That’s impossible.  You’re so full of it this has to be a money-making scam.”   Hahahahahaha.  A.R.T. make money?  None of us has ever had a single bennie of any kind, no paid vacation, no one ever netting more than 28K a year. 

I thought the way to blaze through this wall of resistance was to go on the offensive, hair on fire, like some mad prophet calling down fire and brimstone.  I mean, you can’t really blame me, when I see the speech pathologists at a major residential facility teaching the kids only to smile.  No signal for yes.  No signal for no.  Can you imagine this, not being able to say no to anything?  I’ll go no further, because I’ve come to a critical change in my life; now I see the resistance to our perfectly effective, massively vetted program isn’t malevolent.  I’ve surrendered to the fact that big media will not change the gate-keepers’ minds.  I surrender to the fact that the population for which we designed A.R.T. are seen in a very set, very limiting way.  No one’s to blame. I’m sure everyone’s doing their best the way they know how.  It’s just that A.R.T. is so awesome, it’s hard for many to get their heads around.

The answer is not to get angry or frustrated, but to start new A.R.T. programs so more people can see it in person.  Seeing is believing.  Let me zip in a quick insert.  A reporter came to the wonderful Lakeview School A.R.T. program to observe for a story.  You can understand; if you thought these kids incapable of sophisticated self-determination, and saw the Tracker applying the paint, you might decide the Tracker was making the painting.  The reporter was watching the artist Lee.  Lee was using the point system to locate the form she was drawing on her canvas.  The Tracker asked, “Is this exactly right?  No?  Up or down?  Back up?  Okay.  Let me know when the straight edge hits the point you’re after.  This it?  No?  Up?  Down?  Down, okay.  Is this exactly right?  No?”

So on and so forth, moving the straight edge a tiny bit up, a tiny bit down, until it gained the absolute exact location the artist had in mind.

“This exactly right?” the Tracker asked.  “Yes?  Exactly?”

Big yes signal from the artist.  This nailed the reporter.  She saw the true power of A.R.T.

We are currently in negotiations with the highly respected Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the Rehab Institute of Chicago, and United Cerebral Palsy in Washington, D.C., and we will be doing a training at Williams College. So we’re on the move. 

But we need many more new sites to have us come help them start their own programs.  Can any of you reading this help us raise a new program?  The cost is only 10K.  Every 10K we raise empowers us to grant a deserving, qualified facility with our program start-up training.  If you know anyone or any company or foundation that has the means, can you invite them to underwrite a program start-up?  How cool would that be if you helped start a new A.R.T. program?

Thanks!