It isn’t pretty. It’s art.

According to the National Institute of Health, 26% of the population of the US has a diagnosed mental illness. That doesn’t count the people who have a mental illness but haven’t been diagnosed. It took 35 years for me to have an accurate diagnosis. I am bipolar. I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t bipolar. 

I have a fascination with the Buffalo Psychiatric Center. This grand, old building is a monument to a time when mental illness was properly treated and a monument to the hell that mental institutions had become by the 1960’s. 

The original building had a main building in the center and a wing with five sections on each side. One side was for women, the other side for men. The sections farthest from the main building were the smallest sections and were for the most violent patients. The theory was that mental illness could be cured by treating mentally ill people humanely. Work was considered a part of treatment. Men worked the gardens and in the wood shop. Women worked at fiber art. The hallways were wide with high ceilings and huge windows. Benches were placed in the hallways because it was thought, correctly, that isolation was harmful and that interaction with the other patients would be healthy. There was a library. There were lovely grounds with both flower and vegetable gardens. Sunlight was considered healthy and the huge windows let in as much sunlight as possible. Patients would gradually, as they became healthier, work their way towards the main building. The idea was to heal patients and then release them. 

By the 1960s, the Psych Center had become the hell we think of when we think of mental institutions. Overcrowded to the point where patients were tied to beds in the hallways. Patients were over medicated and treated like something awful to be hidden away. When I lived a couple blocks from the Psych Center in the 1970’s, we had to go into the Psych Center to vote. Someone’s idea of a weird joke. God forgive me, I was reluctant and scared to enter the Psych Center. I had been taught, as had everyone else, that mental illness was evil, scary, and mentally ill people had to be locked away. I was taught that mental illness was a character flaw. My grandmother insisted that people could snap themselves out of depression and that seeing a psychiatrist was shameful and to be avoided no matter how ill a person was. She was horrified when I sought mental health treatment. She had been dead for 17 years by the time I was finally, accurately diagnosed. Probably a good thing. My diagnosis would have killed her if she had known I was mentally ill. 

I think about how, if I had parents who actually cared, I would have been a patient in the Psych Center. Then I think about how, if I had parents who actually cared, I wouldn’t need mental health treatment. 

In August 2018, I photographed the Psych Center. Attitudes, beliefs, and empathy flooded my thoughts. Part of the men’s wing had been demolished in the 1960s to make room for a “modern” hospital. It’s an ugly, square, lifeless brick building. There’s a high chain link fence surrounding the basketball court adjacent to the ugly building. A man, just one man, was on the court taking shots at the basket. I didn’t photograph him. He was entitled to privacy and to be treated like a human being rather than a freak in a zoo. 

Lately, I’ve been going through my photographs and picking out shots to be manipulated and turned into fabric designs. I played with some of the Psych Center shots this morning. 

Meandering Through Madness. The title reflects my personal journey through the mental health care system and my own mental illness.

I won’t be selling this design. It’s too personal. It’s too much of a gut punch. It’s too much my life. Eventually, I’ll have it printed on fabric and turn it into a quilted wall hanging which likely will never be hung. My emotional art isn’t pretty. It’s raw. It’s painful. It’s something no one in their right mind wants to look at. It’s also something that I have to make and something people should look at. Something people should feel. Something people should talk about. 

You want pretty? Go to Walmart and buy a bad reproduction of an insipid painting that nicely matches the sofa. 

You want art? Be prepared to be kicked in the stomach. That’s what art is supposed to do at least some of the time. 

I’m linking with Nina Marie http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com Stop by and see what other artists are doing.

Please stop by my store, Deb Thuman Art http://www.DebThumanArt.com.

My Spoonflower store is here: https://www.spoonflower.com/profiles/deb_thuman.