"Bridging Life's Gaps: ArtBridge Houston"
artshouston September 2002
The bright lavender kitchen is tiny. In fact there's just enough squeeze-in room for the five children and five women who are sitting around the Formica-topped table in the corner. But the tight accommodations don't seem to bother anybody at the moment, as they are all busy with the task at hand. Spread across the table are jumbled piles of popsicle sticks, bottles of white school glue, colored markers, paper towels, and a ton of eager energy coming from every child working on a popsicle box. And every woman is watching the serious construction going on with intense concentration.
This keen interest is a large part of what's made ArtBridge Houston so successful. Since April of 2000, the non-profit, volunteer-based organization has been busy providing "expressive art experiences" to countless numbers of homeless children who have been shuttled in and out of Houston area shelters over the past two years. And one visit to an ArtBridge "class" makes it utterly clear that dedicated interest is what keeps ArtBridge founds, Trish Robbins and Jo Ann Williams, coming back to the shelters day after day.
Four days a week they load up their cars with huge orange coolers full of crayons and paper and finger paint and pencils and lots of other kid friendly art supplies, before heading out to shelters filled with some of Houston's neediest children. Once there, Robbins, Williams and a handful of volunteers gather up every eager child and set them smack dab in the middle of the delightful mess of making art.
What's perhaps most surprising and impressive about ArtBridge's founders is that each woman has had big successes in the art world, long before they created their organization. not only are both women certified art-therapists and counselors, but Robbins is also a signature member of the National Collage Society. She shows at the Harris Gallery here in Houston among others across the nation and has work in Bruce Moon's book Working With Images: The Art of Art Therapists. Jo Ann Williams is a jeweler whose work can be found at High Gloss Gallery and Sloan/Hall here in Houston, as well as in shops in New York, San Francisco and Japan. So what motivates these two successful artists to keep coming back to the shelters day after day?
"We just love it!" exclaims Robbins, with her lovely aqua-colored eyes getting big and round and very merry. Clearly Robbins is the cheerleader of the organization. She's the one with all the pamphlets and handouts and info. Williams, her partner, is more sedate. But she nods her head and smiles with each excited utterance that flies from Trish Robbins' mouth. "We have the same brain," says Robbins. "no seriously, we do," she counters to my skeptical look. Strange as it might sound, the two women do tend to finish each other's sentences and provide a perfect balance of energies for an organization like ArtBridge.
It all started with Trish's sister Pamm Wonsettler read about a San Francisco organization called DrawBridge in Family Circle Magazine. Wonsettler knew her sister Trish was not fulfilled with her job at West Oaks Hospital where she and Joan Ann Williams were therapists in the psychiatric ward. It wasn't long before Robbins and Williams were in San Francisco training to do what the folks at DrawBridge have been doing for fourteen years, giving children in desperate need the time, the materials and most all their encouragement every child deserves to make art.
After getting a bit of seed money, ArtBridge was born. Working through the Jung Center, Robbins and Williams have got a beautiful thing going (to put it in the 60s jargon that made Carl Jung a household name). They hold at least eight sessions a week that serve children in shelters all over the city. This past year Williams, Robbins and the kids they serve painted a cow for the Cow Parade. They make cards, will soon be producing a calendar, and plan to have a car in the Art Car Parade next year. The future seems bright. One day the women hope to have a permanent space, but in the meantime, you can find them running from shelter to shelter, art supplies piled high in the back seat.
On the day I meet them it's very hot. Just outside the door of the shelter several squad cars have converged on a corner where there seems to be some sort of big arrest going on. Trash is piled up in the yards of the ramshackle houses down the block. And it's apparently not safe to park your car on the street - I am chided into parking "in the lot in the back." But none of the chaos outside seems to matter right now. In this tiny purple room five children, laughing children, are clearly lost in the joy of their creativity. |
