Facing Forward

Facing Forward: An Artist, A Community, And Stories Of Resilience by Colleen Kassner and Rachel Forman, published by Grand Avenue Club on May 23, 2013, 118 pages.

The Grand Avenue Club seeks to “provide adults who have experienced mental illness with opportunities that will assist them to experience recovery and to integrate into society so that their lives are productive and satisfying.” Many who have endured “the despair beyond despair’ (William Styron) are now offered paid employment and schooling that changes their lives.

Colleen Kassner, who initially “confronted and met the challenges of mental illness, alcohol abuse, long hospitalizations, and careless psychiatric care leading to excessive medications” turned her life around and recovered, due to active engagement with the GAC community, her love of creating artwork (which began as art therapy) and the strong support of her husband Philip ‘Philo’ Kassner, a poet and photographer. She now encourages club members to show and sell their artwork at Gallery Grand, often to collectors, and Facing Forward contains the portraits of 51 members (plus group portraits).

Rachel Forman, Executive Director of the Grand Avenue Club and a member of the Advisory Council of Clubhouse International, interviewed all 51 members and edited their stories for this book. Rachel notes that GAC members think of GAC “as a home, a place to come to, a place in which they are accepted and can contribute something to others, a place where mental illness is not the primary focus and a place to which they may return after any length of time. Some members have stopped being hospitalized since they joined this community.

Colleen tells us that having experienced mental illness “was no one’s fault. It’s just a fact of my life.” Because of her bipolar disorder, Colleen would often “work myself into states of total exhaustion , then crash into clinical depression.” But Colleen received a grant to paint the portraits of GAC members after she became their Artist In Residence. Among the members Colleen saw “resilience. I saw perseverance. I saw relationships that sustained people. I saw true friendship.”

Facing Forward contains vibrant and animated portraits of GAC participants who are “warm, intelligent and eager to contribute: Sometimes sad, sometimes glad.” Michael Bivens tells the story of how “My mother left me when I was 19 years old on a city street corner,” and after that he had to survive, stealing and going to the House of Corrections for loitering and roaming. Brian Gumma served as a placement manager at Clubhouse International, “meaning that I have helped other employed members and do absentee coverage.” Greg John worked in the Human Resources Department at Marshall & Illsley Bank but later became homeless and thought that “constant sadness and anger were what everyone else experienced too.” Janet McCray says, “When I was growing up, I always felt that something was wrong with me,” and Trixie Morse says that her first experience in a foster home, when they said she stole a cookie, was that “a woman put my hands on the hot stove and said, ‘That’s what happens to thieves.’” Dano Peterson tells us that “I didn’t know I had a mental illness until I was an adult.”

Children of broken homes and divorce, the abused, the cared-for, those whose family lives were stable, some with auditory hallucinations (Gerald Lloyd’s interview states that “It was like having a radio station in your head and not being able to turn it off”) and/or visual ones, those who turned to substance abuse to try to self-medicate, the rich, the poor, white, black and of all races, the young and the old and believers in all religions and the non-religious: mental illness does not discriminate in terms of whom it will strike. As Colleen writes, “Mental illness is a life-altering experience…. The stigma of mental illness, often augmented by negative images in the media, can evoke shame and fear resulting in withdrawal from friends, work, family and society” and “Every person in this book has the same desires for acceptance for who they are and their unique talents.” At the Grand Avenue Club companionship and a sense of community have actually helped dispel fear and the feeling of being an outsider.

Facing Forward: An Artist, A Community, And Stories Of Resilience is an important and unusual book, one that underscores how necessary it is to be part of a societal whole. By showing us the images and stories of 51 individuals who have experienced mental illness, Colleen Kassner and Rachel Forman have also shown us humanistic reflections of ourselves, we who are all yearning for peace and independence, and sometimes achieving it by helping each other.

Reviewed By Christina Zawadiwsky

Christina Zawadiwsky is Ukrainian-American, born in New York City, has a degree in Fine Arts, and is a poet, artist, journalist, critic and TV producer. She has received a National Endowment For The Arts award, two Wisconsin Arts Board awards, a Co-Ordinating Council Of Literary Magazines Award and an Art Futures Award, among other honors. She was the originator and producer of Where The Waters Meet, a local TV series created to facilitate the voices of artists of all genres in the media, for which she won two national and twenty local awards and a Commitment To Community Television Award. She is also a contributing editor to the annual Pushcart Prize Anthology (and has received one herself), the recipient of an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association, has published books of poetry and has had poetry and fiction in hundreds of literary periodicals. She has reviewed music for Music Room Reviews, films for Movie Room Reviews, Movie Scribes, and FilmSay, and is currently reviewing books and films online for Book Room Reviews at www.bookroomreviews.com while also showing artwork professionally.

“Sometimes things happen so fast you don’t get a chance to say what’s really important” says Lucky’s (Sihle Dlamini’s) mother Singile (Jabu Tshabalala) in a tape she’s left her son when she’s dying of AIDS (in the DVD release of the movie Lucky by Film Movement on June 4, 2013). Lucky himself is a young boy in a Zulu village in South Africa who sets off for the city of Durban to find his uncle (James Ngcobo), to whom Singile has entrusted money for his care and schooling.

But, as we all know, sometimes life doesn’t work out as planned. Lucky is eager to see the big city filled with cars, where he thinks that he will become a man (although he doesn’t really know what this will entail). But Lucky’s uncle squanders Lucky’s money on the proverbial wine, women and song lifestyle because he doesn’t really care about him.

Resourcefully Lucky turns to an elderly East Indian woman, Padma (Jayashree Basavaraj) whom he calls Granny and who lives in his uncle’s building. Lucky brings her fresh water and she lets him play the tape from his mother on her recorder, and despite being prejudiced against black-skinned people her heart reaches out to this poor orphan boy. She tries to adopt Lucky but is foiled by the uncle, and so she enlists the aid of a taxi driver Bongile (Mdo Duzi) and pays him to drive her and Lucky on a search for Lucky’s father. But Lucky runs away and tries to pretend he’s a typical student at a school, for one day playing soccer and learning about Nelson Mandela, before he’s thrown out by the principal (just like so many other boys who try this every month, the principal tells Lucky).

We learn that Padma has lost her own young son long ago (explaining why she goes to such extreme lengths to help Lucky). At first Lucky refuses to believe that his father is alive because his mother has told him that his father is dead, but he learns that even the best of adults lie sometimes, for their own reasons. The end of the story is not what we would expect.

There could be no better actor than Sihle Dlamini to play the part of a boy bereft of all the love he’s ever had who’s still young enough to think that he’ll find an adult substitute who will cherish him. Jayashree Basavaraj, well-known as an actress and singer in India, is absolutely believable as a lonely and aging woman who tries to help Lucky better himself and find his father. Shifting painfully through the many emotions she feels she remembers her own life and its greatest loss. That Lucky and Padma should form such a strong bond that must inevitably be broken is one of life’s cruel twists and turns. The topic of AIDS and its resultant orphans in great quantitude (and what it means to so many individuals) is strongly brought home to us.

Director Avie Luthra, who received many awards for his precedent short (also named Lucky) is British, but his film is very South African, mixing not only the cultures of the nationalities who live there but personifying the hope and blind faith of the young who must somehow survive (and pointing out how some choose looting and others strive to make a better life for themselves). Avie Luthra notes that at a funeral he saw “a small 10-year-old boy weeping into the grave of his recently buried mother. The moment was as casual as a child playing with a toy. It was nothing but a brief glimpse into his pain and then it was gone. But the future of that boy struck me deeply and made me wonder how he links into all the street children and homeless boys you see at traffic lights in South African cities.” I recommend this film highly, as it will bring your world consciousness (and conscience) into sharp focus.

Reviewed By Christina Zawadiwsky

Christina Zawadiwsky is Ukrainian-American, born in New York City, has a degree in Fine Arts, and is a poet, artist, journalist, critic and TV producer. She has received a National Endowment For The Arts award, two Wisconsin Arts Board awards, a Co-Ordinating Council Of Literary Magazines Award, and an Art Futures Award, among other honors. She was the originator and producer of Where The Waters Meet, a local TV series created to facilitate the voices of artists of all genres in the media, for which she won two national and twenty local awards and a Commitment To Community Television Award. She is also a contributing editor to the annual Pushcart Prize Anthology (and has received one herself), the recipient of an Outstanding Achievement Award from the Wisconsin Library Association, has published many books of poetry and has had poetry and fiction in hundreds of literary periodicals. She has reviewed music for Music Room Reviews, films for Movie Room Reviews, Movie Scribes, and FilmSay, and is currently reviewing books and films online for Book Room Reviews at www.bookroomreviews.com while also showing artwork professionally.

Do you ever get bored with your home decor or furnishings. We tend to constantly move furniture, look for new ways to position furniture and decor for a fresh look or try to come up with hand-crafted wall decorations.

We have an island in our kitchen that doubles as a dinner table. This works well for our family. If you have a more traditional kitchen with the dining room table, you might consider designing a kitchen breakfast bar, complete with breakfast bar stools.

One nice thing about designing your own kitchen breakfast bar is that you can customize it with the look that you want. You can get the right furniture, counter tops, dishes and cooking supplies to go along. Whether you like eggs, bacon and toast, fresh fruit, or cereal for breakfast, you will certainly get more enjoyment out of your early morning meal when the hard work is complete.

Depending on the counter tops, you can also set up a bar that is easy to clean and maintain. You can make the job even easier by positioning your breakfast set up close to your kitchen sink. Get the kids involved in helping to ash and put away the dishes for an even greater experience.

Disclosure: Consideration was received. All opinions are my own.

I think Cody doesn’t like his name.  You may want to have some earplugs ready before you view this hilarious video of Cody the screaming dog.

What do you think Funny or Disturbing?  Click the video below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feCXr86HzMk

Universal Pictures presents The Purge in theaters everywhere on June 7!

Enter to win a Purge Pack with a t-shirt and mask so you can #SurvivetheNight

About the movie

The Purge follows one family over the course of a single night… From sundown to sunrise, for 12 hours, all crime is legal. Four people will be tested to see how far they will go to protect themselves when the danger of the outside world invades their home.