Art Class Helps Emotionally Fragile Kids

Another great local story - kids with emotional and behavior problems find solace and inspiration in art. The picture above is my favorite. So sublime.

Kyle, at 16 a friendly kid with a beard who towers over his peers, shows a visitor around his art class in an office building on Madison's east side. "We make a lot of good stuff here," he says, pulling out a collection of miniatures he fashioned from clay. "This is a dead leg," he says. "Here's a squid, a tree, and an overflowing toilet. A dead beached whale. A dog cleaning itself."

He points to a splat of clay. "This is road kill." Kyle once stitched together a carcass of a run-over rabbit and propped it up in his bedroom until his mother made him throw it away. "And this is my favorite: Mr. Brontosaurus on the toilet," he says, handing over, sure enough, a tiny dinosaur reading a tiny newspaper on a tiny toilet.

When Kyle opens his backpack to reveal a stuffed girl vampire he has created from scraps of material and yarn, the other children in the class stare with admiration. "Can I hold it?" begs Ashton, 8. Kyle hesitates. He rarely lets anyone look at his creatures, much less touch them. "Okay, but be careful," he finally says. Ashton grins and gently cradles the figure before Kyle returns her to his backpack, smoothing her clothes in place. Later that night, he will rip her apart and sew her back together again. "She is very precious to me," he confides. "But I'm having trouble with her. She keeps coming undone. She is very fragile."

Kyle and Ashton are fragile, too. So are the other two dozen kids or so who have attended this unusual art program this year. They all suffer from serious emotional and behavioral problems. Some of those mental health problems are the result of abuse and neglect or chaotic home lives. Others are simply the result of being dealt a lousy genetic hand. Kyle, a high school freshman in Sun Prairie, has Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism. He has been hospitalized for depression and suicide attempts. Ashton recently was suspended for attacking a schoolmate at his Madison elementary school, where he is in second grade. His official diagnoses include Oppositional Defiant Disorder and bipolar depression.

Twenty years ago, many of these troubled youngsters might have been in institutions. Today the goal is to treat them in the community. Kyle and Ashton's art group, ArtSpeak, is part of an array of "wraparound" services offered by Madison's Children Come First program, which tailors services to individual children and their families and guardians. Administered by Community Partnerships Inc., a nonprofit organization funded by county mental health and Medicaid dollars, the program currently manages the cases of about 165 at-risk kids. ArtSpeak is a refuge, one of the few places where these children say they feel accepted and celebrated in spite of their challenges. An exhibit of the children's work now on display through the middle of this month at Hilldale Shopping Center reveals unique visions and voices desperate to be heard. "These kids are really talented," says their proud teacher, Kay DeWaide, a family advocate with CCF.

> Read the full story and see more pictures at the Wisconsin State Journal