Documentary filmmaker Jessica Yu first came to widespread attention with the poised and witty speech she made at the 1997 Academy Awards ceremony when she accepted the honor for best documentary short subject for Breathing Lessons: The Life and Work of Mark O’Brien, a portrait of a poet who has lived for four decades with polio-related paralysis in an iron lung. In her most recent film, Yu again takes an intimate look at the artistic work of outsiders, the art of the mentally ill. She will introduce and answer questions at a screening of The Living Museum on Tuesday, November 21 at 5 p.m. in the UCSB Isla Vista Theater. Admission is free and the public is encouraged to attend.

Yu takes her camera inside Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens, New York to document the astonishing accomplishments of artists working in The Living Museum, a 20,000-square-foot studio located on the institution’s grounds. Creedmoor is the only medical facility in the United States devoted to the treatment of mental illness through art. The brain-child of Dr. Janusz Marton and the late avant-garde artist Bolek Greczynski, The Living Museum is a nurturing space founded in the 1980s where patients “blessed with creative potential,” according to Marton, are celebrated as gifted individuals.

A moving portrait of Marton and several of the artists/patients—many living with severe depression, schizophrenia or psychosis—the film illustrates how the inner world of art can be a transforming bridge to the wider world.

Few of the artists make art about their own illnesses. They address instead history and sociocultural issues, the search for spiritual enlightenment and celebrations of erotic bliss with media and materials as diverse as the artists themselves. Throughout the film, artists are preparing for an opening to which the public, as well as the artists’ family members and hospital staff, are invited.

Featured artists include David Waldorf who explores his obsession with Beethoven’s deaf period with haunting abstract pencil on paper landscapes. John Tursi, a charming garrulous character, explains his witty assemblage pieces and “sexual abstracts.” “If I can’t do it, at least I can draw it,” he says. Painter and sculptor Issa Ibrahim has two spaces in the exhibit, one devoted to photo-realist takes on pop culture that depict Dorothy being ogled by the Tin Man, the Cowardly Lion and Scarecrow, and Superman drinking a beer and watching television. His other installation is a wall-to-wall montage of black iconography—Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King, Jr., Richard Roundtree, and the bloody glove found at O.J. Simpson’s Rockingham estate. Helen Sadowski, who received artistic training at the Philadelphia College of Art, makes dizzying crisscrossed pastel lines on black paper that she explains are inspired by Zen Buddhism’s search for enlightenment and freedom from suffering. Eileen, who hears voices and screams incessantly on the hospital ward, is able to create complex allegorical drawings which she sees as a form of prayer. John C. Mapp, who believes he is a great Hollywood director, makes elaborate storyboards of autobiographical films about his experiences at Creedmoor and then videotapes the drawings with voice-over narration.

In a Los Angeles Times Calendar section article, Yu describes the film as being about “the healing power of art” and says it is “not a film about mental illness per se, but about finding unexpected meaning, even beauty, in each artists’ individual struggle.”

Based in Los Angeles with a degree from Yale University, Yu’s other films include Better Late, about romance in old age that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 1997 and won first prize for short drama at the New York Festival; Men of Reenaction, a documentary about Civil War buffs who reenact the conflict; the popular black and white short Sour Death Balls which documents adults and children as they chew the world’s most sour candy; The Conductor, a musical comedy short featuring Yu’s husband, Mark Salzman, author of Iron and Silk; and Home Base: A Chinatown Called Heinlenville, which traces the development of San Jose’s Chinese community.

This event is presented as part of the Art Symposium by UCSB Arts & Lectures, College of Creative Studies, Department of Art Studio and Women’s Center.

For more information,
call UCSB Arts & Lectures at (805) 893-3535.

Editor: For photos, please call
Roman Baratiak at (805) 893-2080.