Enabling Creativity through Art - Chevy Chaser 2005

The Chevy Chaser
June 2005
Enabling Creativity through Art
By Lisa Davidson
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Soft, melodic tones set the mood while the artists at Latitude put down their pens, markers, and paintbrushes, move to an open area, and prepare for their weekly yoga session. The lights are lowered and the soft voice of Latitude staffer and yoga instructor Teresa Thompson gently coaxes each body into a relaxed state through stretching and breathing exercises. One young woman is almost is bent almost completely to the floor while Teresa helps others with a compassionate hand. “Now stretch your arms way up,” she instructs. “Arthur, go up as far as you can.” The young man reaches for the sky, though his arms barely leave the armrests of his wheelchair.
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Slowly poses are broken, lights are restored, the soft sounds are replaced by the upbeat tempo of The Rolling Stones. It’s now time for lunch then creative free time begins again.
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For these people it’s another good day filled with art, music, yoga, and friends. Labeled as having developmental disabilities (both mental and physical), the adults at Latitude, as day arts program designed to give its participants meaningful community opportunities as well as a creative outlet, overcome many obstacles from day to day. For some it is simply getting dressed in the morning, for others it’s raising your arms “to the sky” during Wednesday yoga, yet despite these challenges each student arrives energized and excited for the day ahead within the bright, creative walls of 167 Saunier Street.
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Latitude, a Medicaid Certified of Supported Community Living (SCL) services, is the four-year-old brainchild of longtime friends and co-workers Bruce Burris and Crystal Bader. “We really wanted to be situated downtown,” said Burris. “We’re a for-profit, not a non-profit, because we want people to understand that what people here are giving to the community is more than what they receive.”
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The program is open to anyone in the community, mentally challenged or not. Participating artists can also pay for services privately, if Medicaid funding is not available.
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Inside the doors of this hip, downtown, two-story loft, you can find all sorts of amazing talent, from the much-publicized Jessie Dunahoo and his plastic bag sculptures to Charlie Clayton and his compelling volume of skeleton cartoons- he can kick out 100 and hour.
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“Charlie is a very talented artist who has exhibited in a number of group shows. Most significantly Charlie worked as an artist-in- residence at Transylvania University,” said Bader. “Jessie Dunahoo is an artist who creates outdoor environments, using recycled materials- plastic bags, fabrics, etc. Jessie grew up in rural Kentucky blind and deaf and made use of the materials available to him to construct these functional outdoor shelters. His tent, for example, has a built in sleeping bag.”
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Another well-known Latitude artist is Beverly Baker, who has displayed her ballpoint pen and marker drawings in many group exhibits and in two solo shows. Her work is in many collections.
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“Beverly is the only artist who attends Latitude five days a week, using Latitude as a studio,” said Bader. “Her drawings began on found paper before she was recognized as an artist and offered a wider range of media. Her markings are sharp, deliberate, emotional, and full of movement. She has exhibited nationwide, including a recent solo exhibit at the Carnegie Center.” -----
“Her paperwork from the state says says she suffers from sever mental retardation,” said Burris. “I really don’t agree with the labels-instead we really try to connect in a humane way. We are all individuals and we have to make sure that we always have expectations, that we always see the potential in people. This isn’t the Ritz-but there isn’t the moaning and screaming people normally associates with mental disability facilities.”
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Both Burris and Bader have a lot of experience working with different disability programs, including the Arc of the Bluegrass’ Minds Wide Open art center, which Burris founded in 1998.
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“I started Minds Wide Open as a community program because many of the state social service programs ran like hospitals,” said Burris. “I modeled Minds Wide Open after one I worked with in Oakland, Calif., Creative Growth, which was the first community based art center for adults with disabilities, created in 1972 by Dr. Elias Katz. I wasn’t planning on staying when I originally came here, but I did want to introduce a similar program to show people there was potential here.”
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While at Minds Wide Open, Burris met Bader. “I began my career at an adult day program in Lexington where I experienced very little support. Plus there was a lack of meaningful activities available for people thought to have disabilities,’ said Bader, who is therapeutic recreation specialist. “My firs encounter with Minds Wide Open occurred when I accompanied a group from the adult day program to experience the only creative opportunities in the week. I was excited by the energy of the program (and the director, Bruce) and hopeful that, yes, there were better options for Kentucky’s disability community. My schooling promised me an array of supportive community opportunities that simply do not exist in Kentucky. I recognized MWO as the exception and pursued a part-time position, which became full time. In 2001, Bruce and I started our own program, Latitude.”
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There are different choices for people with developmental disabilities including programs like the Adult Day Center of Lexington, Cardinal hill Health Adult Day Health, Connections and the Stewart Home, but unfortunately there aren’t a lot of day programs that specifically focus on the arts.
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“The arts challenge us to continually think outside the box,” said Bader. ‘They provide our community with a shared interest and bring important issues to life, People with disabilities are innovative thinkers, too. They have a place in our community and the arts a door to their community.”
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Unfortunately the gap between mainstream culture and that of the mentally challenged is still a wide one. Unless you work with someone who has a mental disability, chances are you aren’t exposed to this part of the community. This mentality is exactly why, when we do get a chance to interact with the mentally challenged in a proactive environment, we are so overwhelmed and disconcerted-its like entering a secret chamber-at least that’s how I felt when I first walked through the doors at Latitude.
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To see this group of 10-12 individuals leafing through classic and picture books alike, painting multi-hued, abstract self-portraits, composing poetry, and participating in weekly yoga ns dance sessions are sights and sounds I will always remember. The warmth and caring that goes into these daily teachings is visibly heartfelt and easily reciprocated.
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The participants at Latitude divide their time between structure classes such as dance and yoga, and free time. “People have their own niche,” said Thompson. “We like to give them space to create what they want.”
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“I started volunteering, then when an opening came up, I took it,” said Thompson. “The opportunity to work with Bruce and Crystal and the love I developed for these artists, it was too good to be true. I’ve become so attached to everyone- my students are so warm and caring. Working to integrate then into the community and raising awareness about our program is so fulfilling.”
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Arts-only programs have sprouted throughout the Bluegrass over the past decade, but compared to other states, Kentucky lags behind when it comes updating older programs and implementing newer ones that benefit both the developmentally disabled and the communities in which they live.
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“Kentucky has yet to reach out statewide to embrace the trends in art and disability. With a little travel time and research, the state of Kentucky could benefit from the knowledge and expertise of innovative art programs in states such as Ohio and California.” Said Bader. “What can be done to secure these programs? Kentucky’s Division of Mental Health and Retardation and University Educational Institutions should encourage and financially support a dialog and reach out for input beyond themselves, making it a broader statewide conversation. As it stands, Kentucky’s disability support systems are stagnant.”
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Because the SCL Waiver, designed to introduce or keep people with developmental disabilities in the community, is still new in Kentucky, there are thousands still waiting to get into these programs, but the wheels are in motion to ensure this process is as efficient as possible.
----“While Latitude is giving the people we serve a purpose in life, I am reaping the very same benefit,” said Bader. “I feel that my work is enabling community connections, individual growth, and the opportunity to choose a meaningful life. The most rewarding aspect of my job is that I own a business that makes the world a better place. How many business owners can say that?”

Blind Ambition 'W' Weekly August 2, 2007

W Weekly

Blind Ambition
Without sight or sound, Jessie Dunahoo manifests his own reality
By Robbie Clark

Its hard to imagine what goes through Jessie Dunahoo’s mind as he laboriously weaves hundreds of recycled plastic grocery bags together with impeccably straight seams as he renders his 3-D spacial installations. It’s hard to imagine if he’s pleased with the finished product as its strangely draped across a spider web network of ropes, strings and wires. He’s never seen a finished product. Jessie Dunahoo is blind, deaf and has a developmental disability.

Regardless of his disability, Jessie works with vigor and tenacity of a young farm hand trying to finish his daily chores before the sun goes down, pulling threads and needles from his denim overhauls while he uses his legs to pull the material taught as he sews. He communicates using erratic sign language while others draw patterns in his hand. He isn’t distracted, and his sense of touch becomes his eyes as he feels the fringes looking for the next step in his process. “A whole lot of what he is doing is controlling the very little space he actually has control over,” said Bruce Burris, the co-owner of Latitude Artist Community, an arts program geared to meet the needs of artists who have disabilities where Jessie has created for over eight years. “I think, though it’s sure as hell not fair to say these things because I really don’t know, that it’s about having some control over the very little space he owns. He works by feel; I can’t add anything to it. I can’t even tell you where he gets his needles. They materialize. I don’t know where he gets them from.”

It’s hard to tell Jessie’s story, as he can’t tell it himself. For a few years, he did attend the Kentucky School for the Blind, but he was mostly left to his own devices while he was raised on a farm through the ‘30s and ‘40s, when he began his unique manipulation ans assemblage of outdoor spaces which have proliferated into his golden years.

Now Jessie lives in a group home and spends about eight hours a day, three days a week at Latitude with other artists.

“Jessie inspires all of us in an incredible way as role model for other artists here,” Burris said, “Outside of Latitude, he functions, as they say in the business, at a pretty high level. He does need certain supports to help him, but truly he’s incredibly self-sufficient, and what he gets out of his work, primarily, is self-satisfaction. He’s really pleased when other people enjoy it, but he’s seems to be making this work for his own very personal reasons, as a way, I think, to alter and control his environment.”

Jessie’s work has been recognized outside of Latitude, and he’s exhibited at the University of Kentucky Rasdall Gallery and The Transylvania University Shearer Gallery. He was the featured artist in 2003 for the Successful Aging for People with Disabilities Conference and the Sanders Brown Conference on Aging, both at UK.

On August 6, Jessie will turn 75 years old, and in a striking coincidence, will have his work on exhibition at three different places throughout the month of August.

“The kind of thing he makes, it’s ungainly,” Burris said. “They are mostly three dimensional and they are difficult to place in homes and sometimes even in galleries. Just trying to enlighten people about them is excruciating. Lexington just doesn’t have the type of space we need show his work off well.”

Given Jessie uses recycled plastic bags in his creations; an installation was an obvious choice for the Lexington Art League’s current exhibit Recycled Matter(S). Later in the month, the Lexington Art League has invited Jessie to present an installation at the Woodland Art Fair, where it can be hung the way it was intended outside. On Saturday, Aug. 4, Jessie and five other Latitude artists will open their exhibit at Jones Gallery on Maxwell Street.

It’s and impressive showing for an individual who might not even consider his creation art. “I don’t think he sees it as art, so it’s kind of unfair to call it art, but that’s how we promote it,” Burris said. “Its an amazing thing; it’s a combining of many different components which lead eventually to this thing we recognize as an accomplished art object. All we do is take what he is already doing and providing enough support to say, ‘Hey, this is important work, it’s of value. You should consider it, and perhaps through it get some small understand of the man who created it.”

This is also another function Latitude hopes to perform, giving exposure to artists while downplaying their disabilities.

“As much as possible we try to minimize even bringing up disabilities,” Burris said. It’s impossible not to, because when artists are exhibiting at a gallery, beyond the art itself there is also a natural interest in the life of the artist.”

Unique to Latitude, which Burris and Crystal Bader opened seven years ago, is its community and social advocacy capacities toward enriching downtown Lexington. Burris want to empower artists and give them a voice by enabling them to make contributions, not arbitrary contributions, but meaningful contributions to the community.

One of the most important contributions came form the artist Belinda Sellers, who, because of the problems associated with accessibility she encountered in her wheelchair downtown, started Project Easy Access Lexington, which has brought attention to the inadequacies of downtown in terms of transportation and sidewalks. The group has hosted two public rallies at Triangle Park, where they took people on the an In- Accessibility tour, a four block jaunt that highlighted the very basic problems on the street level, such as curb inclines and gaping holes in the sidewalk. To supplement this group, Sellers started the Brick Squad, where she, Burris and other artists tote bricks and sand with them on daily outings from Latitude and repair pieces of damaged sidewalk themselves, one brick at a time.


Sellers and Burris also pitched the idea to Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government to from a commission on disability, which will meet for the first time on Aug. 30. Both were asked to serve on the commission.

“Here’s a woman in a wheelchair with no formal education, is considered to have a developmental disability and absolutely no voice in the world… And she has totally gone from a person who was marginalized to a person who is a player, a key part of what occurs. To us, this is the most significant part of our program.”