In the early part of this century, my mental illness became so severe that I could no longer work. I was approved for Social Security Disability, which thankfully covers my lengthy stays at hospitals and the enormous cost of medications that I have to take daily. I became increasingly isolated, as the usual interactions of my job and my after-work bar days ended. This year, I have started to return to work in a very limited capacity. I work for myself part-time and only when I am stable, which my client Zoe understands.(see One Of The Gifts Of My Mental Illness 6/7/08).

Two weeks ago, I was invited to participate in a class being held at Oasis. The class is being taught by local artist Deborah Caiola, who is basing the outline of the class on her 2006 show at the Bridgette Mayer Gallery, "Portrait of a Generation". The show was portraits of women who were in their sixties. They were from different cultures, creeds, races and socio-economic status. She interviewed each of them for many hours, and at the show you could listen to ten minutes of the interview over headsets that were next to each portrait.

Our class is composed of roughly ten students. We all have issues with mental health challenges. We will each be interviewed about our art and if we care to, we will talk about how our mental health has affected our lives. I did the first interview, as I am not shy and am quite comfortable talking about myself! We each will portray one other student, do a self-portrait and do some smaller auxiliary pieces to go with each.

It has been a wonderful experience for me to go twice a week to be with this group. I am meeting new people and it is great to be with others who have similar experience. Everyone has different levels of communication, but we all work toward making each person feel included, safe and part of the project. I spend a lot of time in my head and with my best friend Cricket.

Oasis is waiting for their new space to be completed, so we are in a temporary place right now. A lovely woman called Beth Feldman Brandt from the Bartol Foundation came by to see what was going on at Oasis. Why did she care? Well, it turns out that the Bartol Foundation, along with LINC Philadelphia are the people who were gracious enough to get us the space. So, from me to you, a great big THANK YOU! I'd never heard of them, but I love 'em lots now.

Oh, and if you're an area artist, I highly recommend that you check these places out. They're all about helping artists out and creating links.....in a moment of serendipity, I just found out how to enable post links, so I'll be going back and fixing the old posts. (It only took two months!) A link monster is born!