Art all their own

Special school encourages drawing outside the lines

By ERIC BARTELS

The Portland Tribune, Apr 10, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (1 Reader comment)

L.E. Baskow / P0RTLAND TRIBUNE

David West and Anissa Cohen examine a piece they worked on at Gately Academy, a private middle school associated with Providence Portland Medical Center. Directed by artist Sue Lau and inspired by the works of Georgia O’Keeffe, students created panels that became the mural — each panel is a flower, every flower as individual as the middle-schooler who made it.

Kids at the Gately Academy in Northeast Portland are expected to buy into their class work, but there’s one thing they’re asked to believe in above all else.

Themselves.

The academy, a private middle school, was designed to help youngsters navigate the often choppy waters of adolescence despite the learning disabilities that landed them there, and to send them away with a renewed sense of themselves.

And art teacher Abby Houston has a lot to do with that.

All students at Gately, created through the nearby Providence Portland Medical Center, take art class twice a week. Houston, an art therapist by training, says that’s where a sizable brushstroke of self-discovery takes place.

“Typical school art curriculum is focused on skill-based learning. You have to learn how to draw a three-dimensional box,” Houston says. “I teach through a material-centered approach, the way the kids process using those materials. The kids here haven’t been successful using a by-the-book approach.”

The 45 students at Gately have conditions such as anxiety issues, dyslexia, attention deficit disorder, and Asperger’s syndrome and other mild forms of autism.

“Most of the students came to us with a learning difference that has impeded their growth,” says the school’s director, David Ball. And most are not far away from a return to the educational mainstream for high school.

By providing a safe environment, a sense of community and some adaptive skills, Gately – and its art program – teaches kids that their “differences” can be managed in a conventional school setting.

The school’s halls are filled with examples of student work, some of which was on display last month in a show at Providence Hospital.

In the lobby is a large mural consisting of dozens of panels created by students under the tutelage of Portland artist Sue Lau and inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe. Each is a flower, although the styles and colors used vary dramatically.

“She said draw a flower, but it can be whatever you feel like making,” says eighth-grader Anissa Cohen, 13. “I decided I didn’t want to make it look like a normal flower.”

“I just wanted to do something weird,” says David West, an 11-year-old from Lake Oswego. “At my old school, it wasn’t like this kind of art.”

“There is no right way and wrong way to do art,” Houston says. “We don’t have kids looking at one another and comparing themselves to one another, because the kids are coming up with something that’s completely their own.

“They don’t have the pressure of making something look exactly one way. They have something that is cool-looking but is unique to them. It builds frustration tolerance.”

Houston adds that ADD and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, cause impulsivity: “They haven’t had a lot of success in finishing things. He struggles academically. A kid like that, he’ll have these interesting ideas. He comes into art, and it’s almost like he comes into his own. He finds some control within that artistic process.”

Peers build a community

Teachers and administrators at the school say the process-oriented approach to art is part of a larger philosophy at Gately, one that begins with encouraging kids to take full ownership of themselves and their disorders.

“They’re not savvy enough to say, ‘I have some issues I’m struggling with.’” says Ball, an educator for 31 years. “They’re middle school kids. They’re not adults. We help them strategize this process. We say, ‘This is who you are, this is how you move forward in the real world.’ ”

“A lot of these kids come having been misunderstood by their community,” Houston says. “Because of that, they’ve been wounded. The most important thing is helping them understand that they belong here. They’ve been told they’re not good enough. They come here and we tell them not only are you good enough, you can be better.”

Apart from their classes, students have something called Challenge at the end of each day.

“Challenge is activities that help us work together,” says Anissa, the eighth-grader. “If something’s really hard, you can try to figure out a way to work as a team. It’s a way to communicate with each other without getting angry and to listen to each other’s ideas.”

Ball says: “We want them to be creative, but they have to be able to say, ‘We have to do a project together as a group.’ ”

‘Everyone understands’

To observe the students interacting is to see a population of adolescents engaged in some decidedly unadolescent behavior. Seated around a table to show off individual projects recently, the kids were unfailingly patient with one another.

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