"DRAWN TOGETHER" | Healing Arts Project

In March & April 2008, while I was a patient at Laguna Honda Hospital & Rehabilitation Center (LHH), I participated in a Healing Arts Print-Making Workshop, entitled "DRAWN TOGETHER" and organized by an LHH Visiting Artist: Helena Keeffe, under the auspices of the dedicated volunteer organization for the hospital (i.e., Laguna Honda Volunteers, Inc.). Mrs. Keeffe single-handedly organized the entire project, applying & receiving grant monies, supervising budgets, purchasing materials & tools, recruiting participants, and facilitating the twice-weekly workshops. The project began with yarn & cloth block print portraits created with photographic portraits of the participants as templates. Then the participants began sketching landscape & foliage designs from photographs taken from off the LHH campus to prepare for the design of rubber block stamps & printing.

Because, the majority of the participants were elderly and infirm, many had trouble grappling with the delicate tools for carving the rubber block. To my amazement though, some very striking stamp images were designed by the more senile of patients. It was an interesting experience for me as an observer, as I discovered the innate artistic talent of some of the least obviously in-tuned participants.

Personally, for myself, I drew four sketches of foliage & flowers from the photographs provided and developed two of the images into floral print rubber stamps. I then printed the stamps in repetitive circular patterns and dual tones of color, creating an assortment of striking, original designs for stationery (See images below). Various original prints by the workshop participants (including my one of my floral prints) have been incorporated into two distinctive designs for hospital garments, to be sold to the Nursing Staff of Laguna Honda Hospital and distributed to numerous residents of the facility.

I left Laguna Honda Hospital to return home to my studio apartment yet was able to continue my association with the LHH Visiting Artist. Upon my bequest, Helena Keeffe agreed to collaborate with me on a Healing Arts Portrait Project, chronicling my physical transformations after my disfiguring facial injury and multiple reconstructions. Our work on this independent collaboration is scheduled to be exhibited in the foyer window kiosque of the Plug In | Institute of Contemporary Art (I.C.A.) in Winnipeg, Canada later this month. Helena also invited me to assist her in facilitating the summer session of the "DRAWN TOGETHER" Workshop at Laguna Honda Hospital.

Assisting in the facilitation of a Healing Arts Project offered me the opportunity to further discover the curious, innocent, selfless artistic talent of the aged and sickly participants. I was able to escape once in a while from my own anguish & suffering and to inhabit the guise of Teacher, leading workshop participants through the more complicated exercises of carving rubber block and print-making. I realized that I had long ago lost or forgotten my own profound passion for the fine arts. It was all-in-all a very rewarding experience: the workshop & the collaboration, alike. So much so, that I dearly hope that the collaboration continues past the terminal end of the Winnipeg exhibit and develops into a deeper, more intimate & challenging exploration of my artist talent in the midst of recovery from further reconstructions, as I acquire a new face.

For the Press Release, announcing the Final "DRAWN TOGETHER" Workshop Reception to be held on Saturday, January 24, 2008 from 2:00PM-4:00PM in the third floor Moran Hall of Laguna Honda Hospital, Helena requested that I write a personal response to my experience for her to cite in conversational text snippets. The following text is my extended citation, written on December 8, 2008, in response to my experiences with the "DRAWN TOGETHER" Healing Arts Project at Laguna Honda Honda Hospital & Rehabilitation Center:

« Helena Keeffe brought to the residents of Laguna Honda Hospital more than just the gift of artistic expression; she brought inspiration, escape, quietude and discovery! The "DRAWN TOGETHER" experience was for her an enunciation of humanity and grace. For the workshop participants (including for myself), the experience was a blessing! To be drawn together out of the humdrum sterility and monotony of clinical rehabilitation and into a brief but engaging creative withdrawal—where art is used as another more potent mechanism for healing—engenders a renewed sense of youthful exuberance and strength in the minds and hearts of the elderly and infirm.

« The joy and spiritual fulfillment of those patients that were drawn together by this project was profound! LHH residents were challenged and inspired to practice a little bit of spontaneous, liberated self-expression—corralled around crayons, cutting boards and blank blocks of rubber that were begging to be sketched on, scraped at, sculpted and stylized into timeless works of art. And what a gift we now have for the nursing staff that is so selflessly dedicated to our care! Mrs. Keeffe and her students have proudly fashioned an artistic legacy that is meant to be shared with and admired by the entire LHH community. I hope each and every member of the LHH nursing staff will wear with equal pride the gorgeous garments we have had printed for them in limited edition, with our original facial and floral designs. Much tremendous gratitude goes to Mrs. Keeffe for her creativity, generosity, ingenuity and initiative. Thank you, Helena! »

— Matthew Blanchard
Former LHH Patient & Resident
"DRAWN TOGETHER" Participant
(December 8, 2008).

I appended my personal response with remarks about my "pedantic verbosity" and "crippling, adolescent perfectionism," hoping that Helena would be able to find some phrase or words from this text suitable for the Press Release. To my chagrin, Mrs. Keeffe simplified my words into quotidian, uninspired statements to better conform to the conversational tone of her Press Release. In return for losing my integrity of authorship, I proposed that I could read my personal response in its entirety as a prologue or prelude to the Final Workshop Reception, figuring that it would be a fitting, powerful introduction in words to the "DRAWN TOGETHER" experience for the LHH community to hear. We'll see if this is the format she'll decide to take for the program.

I only hope that she was fully able to appreciate the honesty and depth of my remarks, all of which "were meant from the heart—from my uplifted, inspired poetic soul!" I am eternally indebted to Helena Keeffe for all the wonderful experiences she has brought into my life. She has been a saving grace for me this past year, fostering my altruism, creativity and artistic talent in everything we do together.
I hope she knows that!