A downtown Phoenix gallery serves as an avenue for artists faced with behavioral-health challenges to express themselves while they work toward recovery.
The Public Service Action Art Awakenings gallery, on Second Street just south of Roosevelt Street, works with artists who suffer from behavioral-health problems such as schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder and substance abuse.
PSA Art Awakenings is a product of the Public Service Action Behavioral Health Agency, a Phoenix-area nonprofit.
The gallery, open to the public Monday through Saturday, uses art as a tool of healing, David Reno said, marketing and community-relations manager. He added that this perspective distinguishes the PSA Art Awakenings gallery from others in the Phoenix area.
Karen Puthoff, the program’s president, echoed the sentiment.
“We use art to help people explore their feelings, process their feelings and ultimately learn how to manage their illness,” Puthoff said.
PSA Art Awakenings launched in 2000 with only a handful of artists, and it has evolved into a rehabilitation program with a mission of promoting empowerment and recovery through creative expression. Today, there are 10 studios and five galleries in Arizona, with two downtown Phoenix locations catering to adult and teenage artists.
Each year, PSA Art Awakenings works with roughly 1,000 artists at all of its locations. There is no specific timetable for how long an artist remains in the program, but some have stayed for as long as two years.
While each artist’s experience with art therapy is unique, Puthoff said there are common threads that the artists benefit from, such as fostering connections with others and understanding how to cope with behavioral-health challenges.
For some artists, it is their first time learning how to integrate into a community, and some have struggled because of public stigma of behavioral disorders, Puthoff said.
After learning life skills and developing confidence through the program, many of the artists move on to get jobs, attend school or work for PSA Art Awakenings. Some move on to Warehouse 1005, the second downtown location on First and Roosevelt Streets, which is considered a “graduate program” for artists who aspire to turn their work into a career.
Artwork from PSA Art Awakenings can be viewed on First and Third Friday artwalks and includes paintings, pottery, jewelry, sculpture, creative writing and live music. Artists price their own work and receive 80 percent of the proceeds, while the rest is filtered back through PSA Art Awakenings to pay for materials.
The ASU 411 Gallery will hold an art reception at the Downtown campus’ University Center today from 6 to 8 p.m. Themed “Inclusive Communities,” the event will feature creative writing by artists from PSA Art Awakening as well as art from other community organizations. PSA Art Awakenings has partnered with ASU for nearly five years, exhibiting artists’ work in the 411 Gallery.
Contact the reporter at leandra.huffer@asu.edu
