Xochitl "Gaby" Casillas. Yellow Calla. oil on canvas. Xochitl, or Gaby, along with her roomate at Lamp Village, Stephanie Walley, were critical in the formation of the art project as we now know it.
(See further comments on "The History of The Lamp Art Project", on this page, directly below the image of the Yellow Calla...)
NOTES ON THE HISTORY OF THE LAMP ART PROJECT :
Lamp, now called Lamp Community, has ALWAYS had art, excellent art, but desired a more fully dedicated art program.
Lamp Founder & CEO, Mollie Lowery, and Associate Director of Programs, Ray Alvarez, asked Rory White, when he was hired in 1998, to develop an art program, while simultaneously doing advocacy or case management work in the Lamp Village residential program. One of the very first clients, or new members of Lamp Village, assigned to Rory, was the, then, 20 year old Xochitl Casillas, who explained she loved art. Her "roomate", actually living in the small "cubicle", or tiny open air room next to Gaby in the women's dorm at Lamp Village, was Stephanie Walley, who had a background in singing, but was simply "open" to pursuing art, as part of her path of healing. Both Stephanie and Xochitl became 100% attenders of the first year of the fledgling Lamp Art Project at that time.
To fully comprehend the significance of Lamp's choice to initiate such a request, one must understand the tremendous demand on all resources, e.g., financial, staffing, and space, required by the more recognizable needs of providing food, housing and counseling. Critical, also, is "Advocacy" or "Case Management" to get clients hooked up with Psychiatric Services, Medications, Public Benefits, and Immigration and Naturalization Services.
Understandably, "Fine Art", to many, seems like a distant priority.
Thus, making the choice to initiate a larger art program, reflected Lamp's exceptional commitment to enhancing the entire self-actualization of it's members. Lamp believed that healing the scars of marginalization from society, the psychological effects of abandonment, and the ravages of the streets, along with the more primary, or neuro-physiological, effects of living with a mental illness, entailed working with the client as a whole person.
Stephanie Walley, 1998, shortly after she became a residential member of Lamp Community
Anthony Pentalion, Lamp Community member, contrasted against the skyline of downtown Los Angeles.
The psychological term "Self Actualization" refers to the highest level of human functioning, including the fulfillment of the human's creative needs.
Anthony Pentalion, at home now at Lamp Village.
Many agencies or institutions act, often by unconscious default, according to the principle that such "higher" functions, or dynamics of humanity, should come "down the line", or at "some other day in the future". The belief is that such loftier aspects of human existence, such as the creative arts, have no place, or very little place, in the early survival stages of social-therapeutic intervention. Thus, apart from "token" arts and crafts programs, artistic creativity, through painting or writing, or a more serious immersion into the ancient crafts of humanity, is not, functionally, regarded as relevant at the crisis stages of human existence. Granted, this may be true of a person needing the emergency room of a hospital, due to a medical, or even psychiatric medical emergency.
Nevertheless, approaching the full humanity and the highest levels of need and fulfilment, IS, critical, if the goal is making a LONG TERM difference in the life of a person whose predicament is homelessness and debilitating psychiatric diagnoses, such as Schizophrenia, or the complexities of alcohol or street-drug addiction, which have resulted from the client's previous attempts to "self-medicate".
Xochitl "Gaby" Casillas. 2000. Lamp Art Project
The beginning art sessions began in any available room, such as the conference room when staff meetings were not occupying the space. The very first activity was drawing from life, using still lifes, flowers in vases, or fruits "borrowed" from the cafeteria, set up with strong side lighting. The Calla Lily was a common beginning subject in the Art Project. Next we worked from Old Master or Modernist Artworks, such as Georgia O'keeffe's "Yellow Calla"
(for more on the early beginnings on the art project, including some interesting photos and images of Stephanie at work, click on the image-icon directly below)
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