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Home > Blogs > Things to do in Butler County > Archives > 2009 > June > 18 > Entry
Liberty Center uses A.R.T. to create art
Somewhere around 1993, New Jersey artist Tim Lefens was showing slides of his work to a school group, but he was distracted by something he’d seen before going on.
The school was the Matheny School, a New Jersey residential facility for children with disabilities, many of them quadriplegic, and as Lefens made his presentation, talking about the joy of creating art, he wondered how people like those children, unable to move and in many cases unable to speak, could experience that kind of joy.
So he started doing his research. He found that most of the time, so-called “art therapy” would have a staff person or volunteer clasp their hands around the hands of a client who would be holding a pen or crayon.
“But who’s really making the art?” he wondered.
Lefens volunteered to teach at the school and developed what he calls “Artistic Realization Technologies,” as system that still uses a staff person or volunteer to assist the client, but allows the client to make all of the artistic decisions.
“In other situations, they were never even asked what size a canvas they wanted, or what colors they want to use,” he said. “A.R.T. was designed to empower people who are quadriplegic and in many cases non-verbal to take control of the artistic system.”
With grants from the New York Community Trust and the Christopher and Dana Reeves Foundation, Lefens has been traveling the country recently to train trackers in this system. On Wednesday and Thursday, June 17 and 18, he was at the Liberty Center, a Butler County MRDD facility in Liberty Township, where InsideOut Studio has already shown some success in dealing with developmentally disabled people.
Some of the artists use a laser pointer, attached to either their head or their hands depending on their levels of mobility. Others can simply respond to a series of “yes and no” questions posed to them by the tracker, the person who actually applies the paint to the canvas according to the instructions he or she receives.
“This has proven to be far more sophisticated than art therapy,” he said. “They really become artists. They go home thinking about this and start planning their next work. I’ve seen some deep changes come over people, but no one else is doing this because this is about trust. Art is a little too freaky for some of them.”
Permalink | Comments (1) | Post your comment | Categories: Arts & Crafts, Creative People, Cultural
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By Shenelle
July 22, 2009 6:33 AM | Link to this
Hey all you beautiful people. I’m hoping to meet new friends here so drop me a note when you get a chance. I hope to make some quality posts soon but first I have to look around the forum and familiarize myself with everyone. Bye for now. lol