Expressions of Recovery showcases artwork of Lake County residents with health issues

It’s like a big filing cabinet filled with drawers that all of a sudden open up and send papers everywhere.

That is how Barbara Rekus describes the thoughts in her head.

Rekus suffers with a mental disability. She is bipolar with deficit hyperactive disorder and sees her thoughts as sheets of paper that she tries to file but can’t do it fast enough.

She says painting is her way of trying to cope when she gets overwhelmed and her metaphoric filing cabinet spills papers everywhere.

“I may have a stack of papers there and I may grab 10 at a time instead of looking at that whole stack,” Rekus said. “I can just look at five or 10 papers and when I start feeling overwhelmed I go back to the painting,”

When she is painting she is able to talk herself through the situation.

“It’s OK,” “it will be all right,” “we can do this” and “we are back in this world” are phrases she says to herself while working on art projects and trying to wrangle her thoughts back into order.

Rekus said after talking herself through it while painting she suddenly finds that she can go back to the paper stack and grab five more pieces of papers or even 10.

“The painting is what keeps me down where I can handle that and not be overwhelmed,” she said.

According to Rekus if she get overwhelmed or over stressed her brain fires too many times resulting in black-out periods where she doesn’t remember things.

“So before that happens I find either my space, my box, or painting to calm me down,” she said. “I have my meds, yes, but also I have to be able to calm myself down. Some people can count from 10 to 1 and calm themselves down but not when I’m hyper deficit I can’t.”

Painting helps her escape into another world.

“It’s very therapeutic, when I start getting upset or stressing out or getting overwhelmed with everyday life sometimes I will just close my eyes and I will get a vision because on my father’s side there is Native American,” she said. “So I just close my eyes and get a vision. I don’t know if it’s a gift or what.

Rekus describes being able to take the picture from her vision into her hands and visualize it three-dimensionally before she draws it.

She has never taken an art class and attributes her artistic ability to a gift handed down through the generations in her family.

Rekus was in a counseling session when her counselor informed her of the Expressions of Recovery Show held at Great Lakes Mall throughout the month of May.

“When I first came into her office, I was showing her the pictures I was doing and painting because it just lets me release myself, and she said there was going to be an art show at the mall and she thought that would be great for me to bring in a few of my paintings for it,” Rekus said.

“I was shock ... you don’t think of your art being good enough — nobody ever does.”

She has entered one of her painting in the exhibit hoping that somebody else enjoys the artwork, and it takes them to another world as well. According to Greg Markell of the Lake County ADAMHS Board, a mental illness or substance abuse disorder can have profound impact on someone’s life.

“When the creative process is used to help someone define, cope with and recover from such conditions the results can be visually interesting,” Markell said in a news release.

The Expression of Recovery showcases the work created by local artists who have mental health/brain disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, or clinical depression among other mental illness and/or a substance use disorder.

The artworks will be on display throughout the entire month of May in the Dillard’s South Concourse at the Mentor mall, 7850 Mentor Ave.

The event opens with an artists’ reception from 5 to 6 p.m. April 30.

This is the 27th year for the show, which is free and open to the public. Many of the artworks included in the exhibit sponsored by the ADAMHS Board are offered for sale and the proceeds go directly to the artist.

Ally McCarley is an art therapist with Crossroads, an agency that focuses on the children, teenagers and families. She said the Expression of Recovery show offers a unique perspective on the nature of brain disorders.

“Art therapy can be an important part of someone’s recovery on a number of different levels,” she said in the news release. “Many use their art to express their feelings about their illness, or make their illness more tangible. For others the creative process itself provides some very therapeutic relief from the symptoms of the illness.”

McCarley describes the artwork in the exhibit as ranging from fun to silly, touching, even disquieting, but overall as a collective body of work that will open people eyes.

The show is held in May to coincide with Mental Health Month, Lake County ADAMHS Executive Director Kim Fraser said while noting that it’s an appropriate time to celebrate art therapy and the benefits of it while reminding people of the important work taking place everyday within the ADAMHS network.

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