Prejudice by Trinaty Lopez-Wakefield from ‘Crazy Art’
A reader emailed us information about a new documentary titled “Crazy Art” that was recently featured at the 2010 Santa Barbara Film Festival. The film follows three people with schizophrenia and their struggle with mental illness.
While the three artists have been plagued by schizophrenia from a young age and have experienced life from unique perspectives, all of them find comfort through creating art. While I haven’t seen the movie yet, it looks very interesting. Below are some videos, including the trailer, an interview, a synopsis, and the original press release.
‘Crazy Art’ Trailer
‘Crazy Art’ Synopsis
The documentary, Crazy Art, explores how art can be used by someone experiencing psychotic, depressive and manic symptoms to reduce and manage those symptoms. It also explores how, in the history of art, as with van Gogh, creativity can reach brilliant heights when psychiatric symptoms are peaking, and how that same creativity, when intensified, can itself increase madness.. The role of art as a form of distraction or meditation to tame the savagery of mental illness is discussed by the three featured artists. The “identity journey” — from madman to Artist— forms a focus in seeing how recovery can be constructed bit by bit.
‘Crazy Art’ Interview
‘Crazy Art’ Press Release
‘Crazy Art’ tells the story of three schizophrenic artists from Santa Barbara, California. The film follows their lifelong struggle with mental illness and examines their search for identity, acceptance and recovery through their unique and thought provoking art.
Their normal childhoods were soon shattered with the onset of schizophrenia. Not understanding the delusions and seemingly constant bombardment of negative voices in their heads, they turned to drugs and alcohol in an attempt to find inner peace through self destructive behavior and suicide attempts.
Each of them has taken a different path to get to where they are today. However they all share the common bond of finding their only solace by creating art. ‘Without art, I wouldn’t be alive,’ is voiced by all three. Art provides them with the satisfaction of creation, the ability to ‘push the voices aside,’ and the chance to have an identity previously stolen by their illness.
But art isn’t the panacea. It is not the cure. All three artists continue their battle with schizophrenia. They still hear voices and ‘channel messages from a higher power.’ They need strong medication. They still battle addictive tendencies. They still have manic and psychotic episodes. The support of their friends, families and admirers make up the crucial network of relationships that together, with their art, provide the only hope of recovery.
JUSTIN ROWE, filmmaker states, “This is not an educational film but it will give outsiders an inside view of the disease these people have to deal with daily. Currently, all three are doing okay – on medical regimes and doing the best they’ve ever done but they also know it’s not over… this is a constant battle.”
Filming began in April and just wrapped.. Rowe’s last SBIFF entry was in 2004 on “The Aphrodite Project,” as co-director/co-producer. Rowe has his own production company, based in Carpinteria, called 10 Toes Over.
JT TURNER, Executive Director of Phoenix, Santa Barbara who wanted to do more for the people he serves and so was the impetus for the film being done states:: “The message of this film is that individuals with severe conditions like schizophrenia can be compellingly creative, using their struggles, as van Gogh did, to produce art that reaches all of us at a deep level.
You’ll be captivated by their story as the three artists in the movie describe how they do alchemy with the voices they hear and the terror they feel, turning their psychiatric experiences into transcendent art that speaks to us and touches us in a unique way. The movie was made possible by individual contributions and by a matching grant from Jon and Lillian Lovelace.”
Additional Resources:
Noozhawk Talks: J.T. Turner Rolls Out New Film About Art, Mental Illness
I love your blog! Thank you!
Art, the creative force of expression, the only that allows anyone to express what they feel, think, experience, contend with, are irritated by, love, hate, make a social comment not allowed any other way. Complete freedom to be yourself, or not, no police of any kind and no right or wrong and no can or can’t, no should or shouldn’t, will or won’t, just as much freedom as one will allow for one’s self to experience. There is no sanity without art, no art without feeling and no freedom without getting the demons out.
Lawrence,
How well I know!
This is something that fascinates me. Drawing, painting, composing music, poetry and writing of all kinds were my “safe place” growing up. I know what it is to fall into art and not feel a part of the world for a while.
There were times when I questioned the validity of “just” doing art. Not anymore. At a certain age I believe we gain some perspective on what is important and real and what is just for show. Things done for me are real. Things done for someone else are not, in my opinion. Amazingly, the things I do for me seem to receive the most interest from others. People know when something is real, from the heart, and they are naturally drawn to those little pieces of what I think of as “the infinite truth.”
Now, I often think it is people without art in their lives who are the crazy ones.
I would love to watch this documentary. Art,indeed is the lifeline of such sensitive people . Medicine can just control their external symptoms but creative arts sustain them and inject meaning into their otherwise ‘lost’ lives.It is their haven and they have every right to feel secure there and the world must respect them, understand them and support them.Needless to sat that the Expression of such artists is sacrosanct and pure art
I am an art studio coordinator for a mental health facility in San Pedro, Ca called Harborview House. We are a board and care facility for people who suffer from schizophenia and bi polar disease. I run an amazing art program with very talented artists. We produce many outside art show as well as art shows here at our own gallery. Please contact me for more information regarding our program. Thank you.
Alisa Stein
Looks like a really interesting documentary, will have to watch it.
As a ‘Schizophrenic’ myself however, it is not a disease or condition. Look at the symbology in just one of these paintings, the pills in the stomach and hypnotised eyes. Then go and research pharmaceutical companies, marijuana and other natural medicinal benefits from nature and research Monsanto and GMO’s.
We’re not the deluded ones, society is 🙂
Check out the film “Shadows and Illuminations” it is part of a series of ethnographic films on severe mental illness in Indonesia. The film focuses on Nyoman Kereta, a rural Balinese man in his late sixties, who suffers from a psychotic-like illness. The film explores Kereta’s personal history of trauma, loss, and environmental illness, all of which may have contributed to his illness experience.
Shadows and Illuminations explores how non-normative mental events and behavior, including auditory and visual hallucinations, can be understood or interpreted in multiple ways outside the confines of western psychiatric diagnostics.
I have a friend that is Schizophrenic and with art, she can really blow peoples minds. She is a very creative and colorful person. I admir her creative and unique ways.
This sounds super interesting. I am a 4th year honours student in Scotland. I am going to work with a Art Project for people with mental health problems. I am basing my dissertation on the effects of Art on mental well being and I was wondering how I could get a copy of the film! Thanks
As a Fellow Schizophrenic Artist. I can say first hand. Art therapy is a Positive in my life. I can express the thing’s I see, hear and feel. It’s one of my Positive Coping Skills. I’m afraid without Art. I would be deeper in my Illness then I am now. Though, I’m in Medication Management & getting treatment. I still have my bad Day’s, just not as frequently as I was before Medication.