As any creative knows, it’s not easy to share your art with others, especially works in progress. Putting yourself out there can be nerve-racking and stressful. However, the artists at Project Onward have found that making art in a community has benefits. In fact, the opportunity to work in a community is among the biggest benefits of working with the gallery.
When you enter Project Onward at the Bridgeport Art Center, it is buzzing with energy.
“You can actually feel the creativity in the air,” says Nancy Gomez, Project Onward’s executive director. “People tell me this all the time.”
The nonprofit serves more than 50 adult artists with developmental disabilities and mental illnesses, providing them with studio space, supplies and facilitators who give them advice and professional guidance — all for free.
Relationships among the artists give them confidence to try new things and experiment without the fear of rejection.
“Everything is so flexible here,” explains John Behnke, who joined the program in 2009. “It never feels like you can’t do something. You always feel like you have options.”
Behnke says the environment opens endless possibilities, and that having a safe and encouraging space in which to experiment has proved incredibly valuable. With the guidance and encouragement of his peers, his practice has recently changed drastically.
Where before he primarily worked in painting, he’s switched successfully to mixed media, recently completing a new body of work with his new method, featured in his solo exhibition “The Glass Carnival” — on display until mid-September — which “merges reality and fantasy, creating vibrant landscapes with moving lore.”
The artists’ experiences with art range from the self-taught to a master’s in fine art, and they work in media across the spectrum, from painting to ceramics and sculpture. Dispelling the myth of the Artist as Lone Genius, the gallery intentionally creates a space where these artists can experiment and create together, share ideas and skills and provide each other with critical feedback. The community becomes a support system and lifeline that shapes their art.
Artist NoonSlaps, who creates vibrant abstract paintings, explains that the other artists “really do change your life. We’re like a big family.”
Making art with others opens one up to a vulnerability through which a deep trust is forged.
“Being an artist with a disability, you often feel alone and misunderstood and out of place,” NoonSlaps says, “but when you’re here and when you’re with all the other artists, you don’t feel that way.”
Here, artists find a place that allows them to be comfortable being who they are, and not only in the art world.
Artist Louis DeMarco has been with Project Onward for 18 years, almost since its inception in 2004, and takes more than inspiration from the community of artists who have become his friends. People at the gallery often make an appearance in his series “Toasters,” a collection of drawings and animations based on various sitcoms that DeMarco has repopulated with his own characters: Donna Quarters (the waitress); Nate Patterson (the party dude); Darla Tortellini (the clean machine); and other eccentric personalities based on his fellow artists.
Beyond art-making, the gallery also helps the artists spend time together outside the studio, facilitating activities like White Sox games, visits to the Museum of Contemporary Art, and karaoke. DeMarco loves these activities (particularly the karaoke), and he and a couple of his fellow artists formed a band called Lightning Speed in which he plays bass and sings. Spending time together has helped these types of creative collaborations to happen organically.
Project Onward aims to connect its artists with others in the local art community, such as collectors and other art supporters. The gallery hosts events like exhibition openings to provide exposure and give the artists a chance to learn professional skills that go along with being an artist. Works for sale by Project Onward artists are listed on its website, alongside prices and artist profiles. Gomez explains that selling the artists’ work is an important aspect of its mission, and the proceeds are split 50-50. Exhibition openings typically happen on the third Friday of the month.
Artists at Project Onward make it clear how deeply valuable this intentional community-building has been for them as artists and as individuals fighting against the isolation that folks with disabilities experience in a world that often fails to accommodate — or acknowledge —their needs and challenges.
Project Onward supplies artistic resources for adults with disabilities, but it provides more than that: It’s a true family of individuals who have bonded through their creativity and the sharing of ideas, whose community and collaboration could offer a lesson to everyone engaged in artistic pursuits.
