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Recovery in the News
Students use exhibit to erase stigma from the world of addiction
Caroline Dipping
Union-Tribune
June 1, 2008
Project Partners: A New PATH, The Drug Policy Alliance, UCSD's Sixth College, San Diego City College, Prop 36 Alumni Association, Alliance Healthcare Foundation, The California Endowment, San Diego Art Institute.
Andrea Singer, an art instructor at San Diego City College and UCSD's Sixth College, has long taught her students that art is not just for art's sake. Rather, it can be created for the purpose of social change.
Last year, Singer and her husband, City College philosophy instructor William Stewart, linked their artistic and philosophical ideals to offer students a particularly intense course they hoped would effect such a social change. They partnered their students with recovering drug addicts with the hope of breaking the stigma of addiction.
The term assignment? Interview those in recovery, then craft a poem and conceptual art piece based on the talks. These oral histories-turned-art were exhibited last year at the San Diego Institute of Art in Balboa Park.
“It was originally Andrea's idea to offer a studio practices course, where our students would go out into the community and use their artistic skills to make a positive difference, and in the process to learn about themselves and the value of community service,” said Stewart, who teaches Perspectives on Human Nature and Society – Philosophy at San Diego City College. “By combining our courses, our students have the opportunity to reflect on philosophies held by various indigenous traditions as well as perspectives from Buddhism, Christianity, Islamism, Judaism, as well as the writings of Plato, Marx, Buber, Rand and many others.”
Among the poignant and hopeful works exhibited last year was a tree with tags hanging from the branches that had excerpts from the interview on the front and fingerprints on the back. Another interpretation was a series of sepia-toned canvases connected with a blackened root system that provided a surrealistic, collage-like look at addiction and recovery.
Singer and Stewart have reprised their course this year for 30 San Diego City College and UCSD Sixth College students (twice the number of the original class). They included a weekend retreat at Deer Park Monastery in Escondido.
The artistic fruits of the semester will be showcased in a free exhibit titled “An Inch From the Heart” Saturday at the San Diego Art Institute in Balboa Park.
“What happened for the students is that many times they would have an epiphany,” Singer said. “They would realize the tremendous stigmatism we still have with drug addiction.
“It is in everybody's backyard, everybody's family. We choose to look at it or we don't.”
Monica Raymond, a 28-year-old graphic arts student at City College, signed up unhesitatingly for Singer's art-philosophy course without knowing exactly what it would entail. Although her Wisconsin upbringing did not expose her to addiction, Raymond was excited to embrace the project designed to help bust the pervasive social perception that all drug addicts are homeless, lazy or brought their predicament upon themselves.
She was assigned to interview Lisa Overton, a mother of two and a heroin addict who has been working on her recovery for 20 years. Immediately, the stereotypes came crashing down.
“When I was partnered with Lisa, my first thought was 'Lisa? She's a woman,” Raymond said. “That is not my stereotype of a heroin addict. I was expecting to get someone named Rocco or Vinnie.”
Raymond and Overton first met on the back porch of Overton's home in Spring Valley. Although a lot of class time had been devoted to interviewing techniques, Raymond was nervous and grateful that Overton was so at ease with telling her story, including – seven minutes into their first meeting – how her house burned down when she was 14 and both her parents were killed.
“I had no idea the project was going to be so emotional,” Raymond said. “It was like being hit with a ton of bricks.”
Through the process, Raymond broke some conventional interviewing rules and bonded. Because she now knew some of Overton's deepest secrets, she felt she could share with Overton some of her own back story.
“I brought in old photographs and my high school diploma and some art work and told Lisa, 'Let me tell you a little bit about myself,' ” Raymond said.
Overton's story of the fire inspired Raymond's piece, a plexiglass box filled with ashes – ashes from burned pieces of paper with powerful words on them – and a plant rising from the ashes in the box.
“I don't know if I will ever digest all of it,” Raymond said. “To have someone you don't know open up to you that way. This woman has had 50 lives, she is incredibly lucky to be alive.”
For Lisa Overton's part, meeting Monica Raymond was an equally eye-opening experience. Overton, 48, was in the Navy and is attending Alvarado Parkway Institute to get her credential to be a drug and alcohol counselor. Meeting someone who never had a substance abuse problem has been a revelation.
“It was really cool because she comes from a normal, middle-America family, whatever normal is, and not from a dysfunctional family like I came from,” said Overton, who began drinking at 11 and was smoking marijuana by 12 before moving on to her favorite drug cocktail of heroin and cocaine. “It was heartwarming to meet this young, artistic, wholesome girl. Her youth and open mindedness was so joyful to me.”
Singer paired Raymond with Overton through the nonprofit volunteer group A New PATH (Parents for Addiction Treatment and Healing). Most of the recovery advocates who participated in Singer's program came from A New PATH, which advocates treatment and better understanding of the illness.
Proposition 36 graduates also participated. Passed in 2000, Proposition 36 changed state law to allow first-and second-time nonviolent, simple drug possession offenders the opportunity to receive substance abuse treatment instead of incarceration. Proposition 36 went into effect on July 1, 2001.
Singer hopes her art-philosophy program will not only educate the community but ultimately bring about more change in the legislature to opt for treatment instead of incarceration.
“We are all addicted to something,” Raymond said. “I think that is part of what is important about this exhibit.
“People will realize, 'I'm addicted to food,' or 'I'm addicted to cigarettes,' or 'I'm addicted to my relationship.' Even if it is not this all-consuming devastation in your life, you can relate. We are all a lot more alike than we are different.”
© 2008 Union-Tribune