Shama House's art therapy project on display for Artwalk!

By Chip Dombrowski, Entertainment Editor

NORTH BEND - When 20 people get together to make a piece of art, they need to find some common ground.

Some art forms - symphonies or most movies, for example - require the participation of a large group of people. Others, like paintings and sculptures, are usually done by individuals and seen as an expression of one person's viewpoint.

For those who aren't artists, working on a group project can be less intimidating than creating something by yourself. But group art also raises the challenge of how to represent the different members of the group in a way all of them can identify with.

For members of the Shama House in North Bend, a clubhouse for people with mental illness, the search for a unifying image led to a pretty broad piece of common ground: the world.

Through a grant from the Coos Bay Area Zonta Club, members of the house were invited to participate in an art therapy workshop called Growing Through It, led by Coos Bay artist Bittin Foster Duggan. Duggan has held the workshop more than 50 times in 11 states since 1993, but always with a more narrowly defined group of people: those suffering from traumatic brain injuries.

Duggan developed the workshop to help her through her own brain injury, but after working to help others going through the same thing for so many years, she wanted to take it to a broader audience. The Shama project was the first test of applying Growing Through It to another population.

“The difference in working with adults with ‘mental illness' - it seems to be a larger diversity of life experience,” Duggan said. “They had me draw the world to symbolize a place where they're trying to live together and journey on their own paths, a place where everyone could be themselves.”

After making brainstorm lists of words for feelings and deciding on the theme “Honoring Our Lives,” drawing the world was the first step toward turning ideas into something concrete.

What they ended up with is a 4-by-4-foot, three-dimensional acrylic collage on a hardboard canvas with papier-mâché over balloons forming a globe. The surface was later adorned with figurines made of Sculpey clay.

In the early stages, members of the group wrote stories about their experiences, which were incorporated into the piece - literally. Photocopies of the stories were cut up and pasted on the surface of the piece before it was painted, and depending on the color, some of the words show through the paint.

The piece is accompanied by a book containing all of the stories and details about the workshop process.

It took eight Fridays to get from start to last week's finish, and the result will be on display at Unity by the Bay in North Bend during this month's Artwalk! on Thursday. Artwalk! is from 5 to 8 p.m. on the second Thursday of every month.

One Friday in March, five members of the group worked on painting the surface of the planet. Dennis Long painted green mountains while Cassidy Clore painted an orange desert. Then Theresa Williams took a turn while Jeffrey Short eyed up another section waiting to be painted.

“Is that going to be the grassy knoll?” he asked.

As the project developed, the 20 participants drifted in and out from week to week, some contributing stories, others joining at the painting phase. Pamela Rangel, a staff member at the house as well as a member, was one of the most enthusiastic about the project, attending every session.

“This is another part of my recovery,” Rangel said, explaining she suffers from anxiety disorder. “I'm not a creative person, but Bittin is very patient. Š I feel my confidence growing.”

The artists invested a lot of symbolism in “Honoring Our Lives.” Quadrants of the globe are divided by deep crevasses that meet in a pit of lava at the center, where there is a plastic ladder.

“The orange figure has a choice to fall into the pit of pity or swim to the ladder and climb out and live life,” Duggan said.

Though the Shama House has already had two more weeks than the typical Growing Through It workshop, Duggan said she will be going back to work with members interested in doing individual projects. She said the house also will be the site of one of three workshops she plans to do in the next year with a grant from the Coos County Cultural Coalition. Others will be at South Coast Hospice and the Harding Learning Center.

Duggan said she hoped the artwork would serve as a community education piece about the experiences of mental illness and Shama's programs, which include helping members find jobs and learn to live independently.

“I've learned a lot from working with this group,” she said. “It was a vulnerable place to support people and a very educational place to learn about their reality.”