Painter of the Month

Amber, San Diego California A.R.T.

Surfs up everyone!

Just back from California where we raised our first west coast program! It was very cool and very moving. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation flew us out to their Community Health Leadership Conference on Coronado Island.  Since we had the flights paid for we thought, "Why not see if we can find a good organization in San Diego, come out a few days early and pull off one of our intensive start-up trainings?”

At the ARC of San Diego, the studio jam session in full swing, our Tracker bumped into a staff person in a back hallway.  She was weeping.  Weeping for what it's not my place to say.  But weeping after she saw what a brand new A.R.T. artist had done.  Perhaps more about what he had said than what he had painted, because she told our Tracker this artist didn't talk. Doesn't this seem like a miracle, like from the bible or something?  The mute person suddenly able to speak?  Witnesses to the miracle weeping? But it's not right to indulge any feeling of this being a miracle, no matter how much it really does appear like one. The guy we're talking about is Mark.  He could always talk but chose not to.  Frustrated out of his gourd to be trapped in a world without control or meaningful choices he simply stopped talking.  What was the point?  Mark is an intense man, hunkering down inside himself, not seeing any hope he will ever be seen as the sophisticated human being he is.  Enter A.R.T.  and Mark begins to speak with us in this unique, very quiet but clear, intense voice.  He fires quick directives to our Tracker Roz, canvas cut to the size he wants, paint blended to the colors he wants, exact brush type and size selected, the painting begins to appear.From no control, he has control.  From no means of sophisticated self-expression he has unlimited subtlety of self-expression. From nowheresville to the open field of control and freedom, just like that.  This is why he's talking with us, his voice clear and intense, the Artist's eyes bright with new fire. His painting, his very first, is full of thought, evocative, emblematic, and lyrical.

The next new painter was Amber.  While she guides her colors over the fresh canvas with the laser, I tell the staff we need more artists brought to the studio, so they can watch the process before they get their shot at using it.  I ask them, "Where are the artists?" Amber's voice calls over to me. "Where are the artists?" she asks. "The Artist, is here." Oh man that cracked us up.  Amber is one of the reasons I love A.R.T. so much.  When I got out of art school I wanted to stay in touch with those painters who had the fire.  Most all of the painters I knew in art school no longer paint.  This leaves me feeling a bit isolated from that updraft of being around a painter who is deep into the power, the act of painting. With A.R.T. I discovered this whole new world of painters, real painters.  Painters whose paintings have the deeper, wordless meaning real paintings have.  So our trips around the country  to start up new programs is not some mission to help the less fortunate, but an exciting chance to get with the real thing, to see the real power bloom afresh before us.    Amber is an absolutely natural painter, fully able to give herself over to the true power of painting.  She let herself give herself up to it, maybe like a seal diving from a rock to rocket gracefully under water, in the new world of the water, the land left behind.Slowly she moved the laser, so slowly moved the brush, so smoothly, slowly her chosen colors blended.  The room was full of trainees and other staff observing.  You could here a pin drop.  They weren't bored in this quiet, quiet room, the brush slowly, smoothly drawing the color, they were hypnotized.  Amber had them under her spell. What a nice moment that was in San Diego. Later, after having finished four paintings, someone suggested to Amber her paintings could surely sell in a gallery. "You want to buy a painting?" the artist asks. "How much?" the staff asks. In this humorous voice Amber declares, "Five dollah?" Everyone laughs then suggest the painting is worth much more, Amber calls out, "Okay.  Eight dollah."We let her know someday she might be able to add a couple zeros to that five or that eight.  And indeed, her paintings, when properly stretched and framed, will be very good, featured on the gallery wall, basking in the incandescent wash of the track-lights, and then later in someone's home.  Rich painting.  Real painting. One day Amber lives with no means of creating anything the world would really want.  And the next, with A.R.T., her innate talent blooms effortlessly.

And now that we're talking about overleaping limits in a single bound?  The A.R.T. Flying Eye photography system flew this week at Princeton University via Orlando Florida. This is so great! Years of cobbling together remote photo systems those with serious mobility limitations can use, and finally we have the real deal.  Our early prototypes worked, but not like the current incarnation. 

Part of the joy is those who stepped forward to make the real thing happen.  They included Lee, our dynamite thirteen year old painter at our Princeton University studio program, Darren, our Top Tracker who knows how to get things done and how to do them right...our sent from heaven IT guy Ray D’Andrade who in spite of his growing family and burgeoning business, took the time to pull the Flying Eye ALL together for its true flight.  Ray is the best, he made the vision reality.  And Princeton University’s Rick Pilaro, who on his day off, came to the Princeton University A.R.T. studio to play the most critical role in interfacing with Ray, who was down at Disney World.

Lee waited with me as the tech guys in NJ and FL spoke over cell phones, watching the 30" computer monitor Rick brought us.  Darren pulls up with Lee and me "It sounds like Apollo 13 he whispers, and it did. The two IT guys were speaking code, the image coming up then crashing.  Ray is in Disney World with a special camera linked to the monitor in Princeton.  Lee is studying the directives menu board: pan right, pan left, zoom in, zoom out, keep walking, stop, angle down, angle up.

And then, when the system seemed to need more help, up comes the image, Lee powers her wheelchair to the screen, ready to drive the camera and the camera person.

It was so cool.  She shot the Disney Castle and all that stuff, but in ultimate abstract painter fashion she signaled she was interested in the carpet in the hotel room.  Yes.  It was wacky and futuristic. She directed the camera to avoid any wall molding or furniture. Lee is very exacting. She saw the magic castle but now she was after an abstract painting.  Is this too much or what?

All the images Lee selected to shoot were saved to highest resolution stills which can be blown up and shown at a future photo show.

This isn't some system where you take physically challenged kids to some place you decide they're going to go, place a camera on their wheelchair laptop tray and push the shutter button for them or rig a way for them to struggle to push the button.  No, this was freedom. This was serious control.  This was real photography.

And who else is behind this breakthrough in exploration and limitless control of the individual creative process?  The Kessler Foundation, The Bunbury Foundation, The Christopher and Dana Reeve Foundation and The Hyde and Watson Foundation.

Thanks to them we are on a new frontier for this population we love, this population who have SO SO much inside them.