Piecing it all together: Medium Gallery show celebrates collaboration with Ukiah Recovery Center residents
By Carole Brodsky, for the Ukiah Daily Journal
Lillian Rubie, executive director of the Deep Valley Arts Collective’s Medium Gallery, is proud to announce a novel and very fruitful partnership with the Ukiah Recovery Center (URC), resulting in the upcoming art show, titled “Pieced Together: Recovery Through Art,” opening on this month’s First Friday, May 3.
The show is located at the gallery’s new home, 518 E. Perkins St., just two doors west from their previous location in the Pear Tree Shopping Center.
The project was realized because of the coming together of two events. The first was the resourcefulness of Derick Almena, a substance abuse counselor at URC, who had been bringing URC clients to the gallery as a way to blend a weekly walk with a healthy dose of creative inspiration. An artist himself, Almena became acquainted with gallery staff and board members through these ongoing URC field trips.
The second factor was the announcement of a grant opportunity from the Upstate California Creative Corps.
“This was a pilot program through the Arts Council of California to fund projects and programs benefiting marginalized and underserved communities through the arts,” says Rubie. “We all have our own stories about how we’ve been affected directly or indirectly by substance use, but when we began looking at the Healthy Places Index for our area, we were really struck by how hard-hit Mendocino County is. We thought about Derick and his clients, and asked to have a meeting with him. He was excited about the idea of creating a weekly collage workshop for the residents of the treatment program,” she continues. “We were honored to be selected for funding.”
“We came to the idea of collage because of its accessibility. People don’t feel as intimidated working in the collage medium. Everyone can create collages with very little artistic experience. The themes that the residents worked on were recovery-based, metaphorical pieces – art that cut from something else as the artists began to piece together their lives, which created the title for the show.”
The grant period began in June of 2023. “For the past 10 months we’ve been holding weekly ‘private’ workshops with the residents of URC, and also holding public collage workshops on the third Thursday of every month,” Rubie notes. A staggering amount of artwork was created during that time period.
“Between the weekly URC workshops and the public collage workshops, over 552 visits to the gallery took place. Some of those visits represent repeat workshop attendees. Those visits resulted in the creation of about 200 pieces of art that are being curated down to what we can fit on our walls,” Rubie continues. “We’ve scanned the artwork and will be putting the entirety of the work into a ‘zine’ or a book. Proceeds from that book will be used to appropriately benefit a selected sober living graduate in the next steps of their recovery process.”
The process, according to Almena, has been nothing short of “amazing.”
“I have seen these people explore uncharted realms where they are unearthing undiscovered worlds through art,” he explains, noting that he has kept the overarching requirements for the collage work loose, for a reason.
“I don’t focus them on substance use, or anything. There’s been no theme, no direction. What I tell them is that we’re recovering our connection to ourselves. We’re recovering our playfulness, our creativity, our community and how we connect with each other, while spending time off the phone, off social media, not doing drugs and still being releasing positive dopamine. They’re ‘getting high’ in the most beautiful, natural way together, while exploring endless content,” Almena continues, referencing the magazines used to create the collages. “As they work, they read a few articles here and there, and gain a little knowledge about a subtropical worm or the history of our galaxy,” he smiles.
“As one of the program facilitators of the art group, what I notice is the outstanding benefits of consistency. This project has been something the clients look forward to, week after week. For many of the people involved, this may be the first creative, self-empowering situation they have ever been a part of. There’s been no expectation for them to complete a project by a certain deadline, so they’ve been able to take their time and layer in their creativity within the context of their overall recovery. Simply transporting the clients to the gallery environment has also been an extremely positive experience. It’s a space where they feel important and supported,” Almena concludes.
“Because the clients are in an active recovery situation, we were specifically hands-off in terms of directly interacting with them. Our job was to provide the space and materials,” says board Vice-President Chris Pugh. “We put on music, provided paper, glue, tons of magazines and beverages, and gave them an opportunity to creatively address issues surrounding addiction.”
“As we watched the attendees come in, you could clearly see that some were intimidated at the beginning,” says Rubie. “But as time went on, they learned to trust the environment and embrace coming here, and then began to embrace the actual collage process.”
As “clients” morphed into “art students,” they learned to utilize the primary techniques of collage, which comes from the French word meaning, “to stick together.” Though the history of collage can be traced back to Chinese paper works from around 2000 BC, collage became part of the modern art lexicon through the experimentation of artists such as Picasso. It was also used extensively – and more traditionally – by the Victorians.
Two elements – the technique of juxtaposing text onto images, which was an early element of collage, and later, photomontage, the art of blending together two or more photographic images – were used extensively by both the resident artists and the attendees of the public drop-in collage workshops. Particularly for the residents, cutting and pasting words onto their images provided a powerful way to express feelings, actions and aspirations.
“The pieces range from people actively exploring recovery, displaying repeating themes of alcohol, drugs, and pills combined with words of shame and forgiveness,” says Rubie. “At the other end, we see people creating escapist visions or visions of their future.”
“We believe this is an important show for everyone to see,” says Pugh. “Not necessarily because of the level of artistic excellence, because these people do not describe themselves as artists. It’s important because these are our neighbors, family and friends expressing very profound thoughts and feelings and doing it in a courageous way.”
“The show is hung anonymously to let the viewer feel each piece and let you feel the personal work that participants went through to bring their piece to completion,” says Rubie.
The likelihood that residents will be on hand for the opening is slim.
“Some are still in the program. Some people have graduated and aren’t from this area. Amazingly, we’ve had a couple of graduates return to the gallery with their family members to show them where they came to do art every week,” Rubie notes.
The grant period ends at the end of May, but the public collage workshops will continue.
“Our monthly community collage nights will continue with a more open-ended theme. It’s a drop-in collage session for anyone who wants to attend,” says Rubie. Supplies are provided, and donations to help cover supplies, rent and utility costs are accepted with gratitude. The sessions take place on the third Thursday of the month between 6-9 p.m. Rubie would like to thank Schat’s Bakery and Reyes Coca Cola Bottling of Ukiah for their much-appreciated snack support.
“It has been an honor to be a part of the recovery process with these individuals – helping to bring creativity into their lives during a very challenging time, and to work alongside an organization willing to help support an experience of art as part of their healing,” Rubie concludes.
The opening takes place from 5-8 p.m. Rubie would also like the public to know that Medium Gallery will be hosting events to commemorate World Collage Day on May 11. “We’ll have an open collage day and other special events to be announced.”
Medium Galley is open Tuesday-Saturday from noon-6 p.m. For more information, visit https://www.deepvalleyarts.org/medium.
