Leisa A. Hammett

Creative Arts Therapies Workshop, This Thurs., 5/23, Please Come!

It was 1998 and we were a year into autism early intervention. What you did or didn't do beyond the standard speech/language, occupational and educational therapies was controversial. I found it all grueling. The rigor. The constancy. Where, I asked, was the childhood pleasure of creating art, the joy of music and the ecstasy of dance? My daughter needed help to attend the arts classes my friends' typically developing children attended. I kept on with the rigors of early intervention, but I ventured toward a very unconventional route, beating the bushes to find in Middle Tennessee dance/movement, music and art therapists.

What our family discovered was that our preschooler had perfect pitch and perfect rhythm. To this day she loves to cut a rug. Wildly so. But visual art? I remember the look of excitement and wonder after the first session with our first art therapist. We got it then that our daughter had an affinity for color and composition. She had a gift that she would demonstrate again and again over the next 15 years. An ability that was often years beyond her chronological age.

The creative branch of our journey all began with an exploration for wonder lost in the deluge of teaching her the basics she didn't possess--much of them still does not. I first heard Temple Grandin speak around that time. She told parents that when our children turned 14, to zone in on what interested them for it would be their future social group and career paths. We found ours 10 years before that. We found it at four.

While I attended a portfolio-based arts high school in South Carolina and gravitated to art all my life, I never did much overtly with it come college. I allow my family's taboo attitudes toward art to chain me for many years if not still now. But, in the work of my daughter, I knew what to look for and what I was seeing and I knew, because it has been my career--30 years in communications--how to package and market like hell. I also began reporting on art here in Nashville nearly a decade ago via magazines, newspapers and my blog.

The deal is that my daughter is not that unique. Well, she is and she isn't. We are all unique. True. But I just knew what to look for and how to help her. There are other artists (with autism and other disAbilities)  like her world-wide. Just not that many here. We are in a city of art but a state that does not value education and the education of art. Nor the education of students with disAbilities. Many parents, many people, everywhere, do not understand art. They do not realize there are legions of artists who paint abstractions for thousands of dollars and more. So, I've watched other classmates of Grace who I knew had talent go undiscovered by their teachers, the system, their incredulous parents, even when told them their children had ability. I cannot fault them. The world, especially our culture, does not get art. It is underfunded, underappreciated, misunderstood, devalued. Match that with a severe disAbility and it gets buried more times than not.

It's time to change that. We must change it. We must change it for those growing up behind us. We must change it for those who are already grown up. And, sadly, it is often only then that we do discover their talent for visual art and even begin to give chances for adults with disAbilities to express their often innate ability. Lost potential. Lost pleasure. Lost profit.

Let's go back to the beginning. The beginning of making art for the fun of it. And then see where it can take us. Let's go for the wonder and surprise.

Come this Thursday, May, 23, and learn about Art, Dance/Movement and Music therapies. I'll be there sharing my journey into these Creative Expressive Therapies. Location: Room 241, Vanderbilt Kennedy Center. Hosted by the Autism Society of Middle Tennessee. Today is the deadline for free childcare during the workshop.

The video above launched the beginning of Honestly Autism Day in Baltimore. We'll be sharing this and other videos on music and dance/movement before our presentations start. We'll be explaining why having someone educated in developmental disAbilities plus a creative art is often the strongest link for reaching a person with disAbilities' maximum abilities. Please share this post with others so that they will know. Everyone deserves the joys of creative arts. Everyone deserves a chance to explore whatever their potential. And, everyone has some sort of potential be it art or otherwise.

The Little Drummer that Graduated

About to turn 19, this girl/woman ~

graduated Metro Nashville Public School system yesterday. And she did so to the beat of a different drummer. The same drum beat into which she entered this world. A very different, odd, quirky, funky beat.

And, in Classic Grace....Well, let me back back up a bit....The Valedictorian and Salutatorian of Hillsboro High School, together, gave a very different kind of speech. One unlike I'd ever heard delivered by a school's highest-achieving scholars. In cahoots with the speakers, the beloved teaching faculty stood up on cue and threw, first: candy; then party hats, (which some soon-to-be graduates donned and proceeded to wear through the ceremony atop their mortar boards,) and then...beach balls.

Well, Grace never met a ball she did not like and then subsequently destroy. (Basketballs are the only variety I have known her autism-bionic strength not able to destroy. I'm serious. Trust me.) Luckily, she didn't pop, bite and subsequently deflate any beach balls. Instead, just as she was to stand with her row, she spotted a tiny piece of candy beneath the chair before her. (Grace also never met any variety of food--excepting eggs--she did not immediately consume regardless of where it was found.) To the rescue, her ever-extraordinary teacher, sitting one seat, an aisle away, quickly redirected her, got her to rise and follow her seatmate in the march toward the stage. But, as fate would have it (pardon the cliches but this is cliche of Grace,) just 500 yards before the stage she reached down, ever possessing a set of eagle eyes, and voila! A lusted-after beach ball! (We'd seen her long for one when they were thrown out to her classmates lucky enough to catch one.) So, that lone ball was claimed immediately by our girl, it sides slapped loudly as she tossed it up and down between her hands.

No big deal. Just Classic Grace.

At least it was no big deal to all 22 Hammett and Goad family members--parents, grandparent, spouses, aunts, uncles, first and second cousins, stretched along a section's worth of front row seats. Her family, who traveled from different towns, different regions of Tennessee and two other states--proceeded amongst themselves to guffaw and quietly cheer their only only child, only grandchild, last grandchild, youngest cousin. That? That. Was our girl.

That? That. Was Graduation Grace-style. 

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Stayed tuned. As this tired momma aims to get her groove back on with "The Journey with Grace," the blog, and this week, the book. I really do miss writing substance here. Swollen with pride but relieved this week, this month, this spring is about to be over. Details on the future, Grace-style, coming soon. Don't forget to check out all new GraceArt at TPAC Polk Theater lobby through mid-August. Namaste.

About the photo: this very poor phone picture--doctored in Instagram, as I am currently too tired and dread downloading the 3.75 million pictures I took with my clunky Canon--illustrates well, Graduation Grace-style...facing, during much of the ceremony, anywhere but where she "should" be. The last cue, given by the graduation speakers was some funky music, to which Grace--the girl who also never met a tune to which she didn't break out into a wild dance--proceeded to go behind the chairs, her back facing her classmates and dance toward the onlooking guests. Oy. Teacher, again, to the rescue. Poor Grace, she never understands why we must kill her joy like that. ;)

Post Pomp ;)

Pomp, Circumstance and Class of 2013

Another Reason to *heart* NASHVILLE! "Everybody has a Story"

The email account I forget to check? Last night it had an invite to this release party scheduled for this afternoon. No can do. Boo hoo! I'd already decided to post this today anyway. So, WATCH THIS! You'll be glad you did. But first: grab a hankee!

 

Unfulfilled Mothers' Day Wish

A longer version of this ad ran in yesterday's Tennessean:

Here's the link:

http://data.tennessean.com/~adservices/ads/gunad.pdf

Social Entrepreneurialship

Scene: Wednesday after school, Grace delivered freshly assembled GraceArt Notecard II Sets to Tennessee Art League on Nashville's gallery row, Fifth Avenue of the Arts next to The Arts Company. Today, she's off to Disney World with her Dad. I'm traveling to North Carolina to pick up the remains of her solo show there. Hanging two shows this coming week. Details here. Graduation is one week away.

This. Is Happening: More GraceArt Notecards II, Hot-Off-The-Press

Grace has six more days of traditional public school left. That's minus two for a long weekend trip to Disney World with her Dad. Graduation is May 18. Today, I'll be working with a young adult woman with autism to prepare 450 plus packets of GraceArt Notecards (Series II...not yet shown on her website, but coming soon). The 50-packet stash (10 cards and envelopes, five designs, two each,) above, (Untitled. Pink Pastel, not shown,)  was fresh from the printer and taken to her solo show at The Artery Gallery Greensboro, NC, which comes down tomorrow after an extended stay. I'll be making the approximate 1,200-mile trip to pick up GraceArt this weekend. Some of it will be hung at perl Cafe & Market in the Nashville suburb of Bellevue. I decided to give the extra wall space we were offered to Suha Khalil, a young adult woman with Down syndrome who lives in Sudan and whose work is represented here by my friend Massood Taj. Suha's beautiful paintings already hang with GraceArt in Nashville at the offices of psychologist Charles Ihrig, Ph.D. More about them on GraceArt's Facebook page, Grace Goad | Autism Art.Wednesday of next week, I'll be hanging all new works of GraceArt, (produced during her senior year at the superior art program of Hillsboro High School,) in the lobby of the Tennessee Performing Arts Center's Polk Theater. Sponsored by VSA Tennessee, they will remain there for three months.

Back to the cards, these will be sold at Tennessee Art League's gift shop now on Nashville's 5th Avenue of the Arts (Gallery Row) downtown, next to The Arts Company. We're delivering them this afternoon. More will be delivered soon to Shimai Pottery & Gifts at the Shops at the Loveless. I also carry a stash around in the back of the car. (Wink.)

Am I nuts? ..."Keep Calm & Carry On." The timing just happened this way. Keeping up with recent demand and even asking venues to wait a couple of weeks as new inventory is framed, picked up and delivered. It's a nice "problem" to have.

ONE (Part 2)

Two months ago I shared on "The Journey with Grace" that my artist friend Pam Jolly Haile was collecting 3,000 thumbprints to create a mandala for a project called "One." This, below, my friends, is the result of her work:

Stunning, huh?

Here's what the artist writes about the piece:

"One [...] incorporates approximately 3000 individual thumbprints collected by [more than] 30 collaborators [me, Leisa, included]. The [thumb]prints represent the beautiful diversity that makes up our world: children, 90-somethings, men, women, LGBT, various ethnicities, spirtualities and religions, people with autism and other disAbilities. The intention is to make a statement that although individusals, we are all ONE."

Before I decided to post this today, I had talked earlier to my shaman friend who is writing a book about radical spirituality. I called him and asked him to read to me again one of the summary points of his book in progress. Here is how he summed the point and related it to artist Haile's work:

"Each individual thumbprint is each individual's universe of experience. However, when we put them all together, which the artist did, they become a picture of the Unity of One."

Thank you, Pam, for your artist labor of creativity, which reminds us in a world hell-bent on creating separateness, that though we may each be unique in our experiences, we are all one in our humanity. We need that message right now more than ever. Bless the artist messengers.

GraceArt Coast to Coast & Home, Here in Nashville (The Art of Autism, VKC)

Right now GraceArt is showing coast to coast: From Seattle (HeART of the Spectrum) to the Massachusetts' Berkshires to solo in North Carolina (The Artery Gallery, Greensboro, extended through May 9,) to down home here in Nashville. Both the shows at the Good Purpose Gallery in Massachusetts and here at the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center are the products of Debra Hosseini's The Art of Autism.

California based, Hosseini is a mother, like me, of a young adult with autism who is also an artist. She is the author of two books in a series also entitled The Art of Autism. Grace is featured in the 2012 edition. In both the aforementioned shows and other shows nationwide, The Art of Autism brings together artists on the spectrum across the world to showcase their work.

Here, above, The Art of Autism has teamed with the Vanderbilt Kennedy Center, in Nashville, to feature several Southeast regional artists with ASD. Grace's painting (is it another horse?) is the purple tones on top. (The purple frame is a graphic design effect created by Vanderbilt for the flyer.)

Hosseini knows, as many of us parents of older youth do, that entrepreneurship is a key path for many of our adults on the spectrum. Stay tuned to "The Journey with Grace" as I and others envision ways to collectively and locally integrate artists with disAbilities and those without, in ways to create, show and sell their works. I'm currently fleshing out the vision and looking for ways to grow its arms and legs. The encouraging factor? No one has to reinvent the wheel. All over the country, parents are getting smart to the fact that we must use our own elbow grease and elevate the gifts of our differently abled offspring.

So here's to the visionary mothers, such as Hosseini who carry torches for their own offspring and light the way for others as well. Kudos, thanks & hats off girlfriends (and Dads, too).

GraceArt ongoing and in the works: GraceArt notecard series II is available in halfsets at Shimai Pottery & Gifts at the Loveless Cafe and target date, next week, at the Tennessee Art League on Nashville's 5th Avenue of the Arts (gallery row). Beginning May 15, for three months, she will have a solo show (new work and award winning), in the Polk Theater lobby of the Tennessee Performing Arts Center, sponsored by VSA Tennessee. Also targeted for a couple of weeks will be art, also all for sale, at the new, acclaimed Perl Cafe & Market in Nashville's Bellevue region. Talks are underway for more shows as well. You'll find it all here and on Facebook at Grace Goad | Autism Art and (intended) GraceGoad.com.