Explosions of Brilliance

There was a time when doctors said Ray Mills would never speak his own name, when Tammy Brackens’ counselors saw no job future for the child who liked to draw. And a time when Milton Davis could not imagine that his constant doodles would wind up framed, on other people’s walls.

That time has passed. Ask any of these developmentally disabled adults what they do, or who they are, and they will answer: “Artist.”

Luckier in one way than so-called “normal” people, who never discover what they do best, the 102 adults at the Exceptional Children’s Foundation Art Center in Los Angeles have found their passion and their place in a world that used to feel very cruel.

“Imagine being out in society and being stared at, pointed at, made fun of every day of your life,” says Rohmi Reid, an art director at the center. “Then imagine finding a place like this, where you realize you’re really good at something that is valued. You have a talent that even the people who made fun of you don’t have.”

“Their story should be told--but they can never tell it,” says Richard Webb-Msemaji, a psychologist who heads the art center and is its very heart.

“Some are nonverbal; many who speak have trouble articulating their thoughts. And others have thought disorders” that preclude coherent conversation, he says. Many cannot count money, read books or live independent lives. Yet their work has been exhibited in group and individual shows, has sold to private and corporate collectors, has been commissioned for murals, textiles and greeting card designs.

In his 27 years of work at this place, an aged, two-story building on Martin Luther King Boulevard, Webb-Msemaji has welcomed all degrees and variations of talent, capability and skill. A few new arrivals seem to “explode with brilliance” the minute they take paintbrush or clay in hand. Many bloom slowly, with the aid of seven teachers who instruct in ceramics, weaving, printmaking, drawing, painting and photography. Still others are so disabled that they cannot easily progress. They are artists even so, he says, because they love making art enough to spend 6 1/2 hours a day, five days a week, doing it.

At 6:30 on a rainy morning last week, Webb-Msemaji was, as usual, two hours early for work. “I open the building and get set up. It gives me a chance to be in touch with the place.”

As usual, a few of his students are at the door. Eager to work, they ignore the mandated starting hour because they know the director will be there to let them in.

His job title and his doctoral degree say little about the world in which Webb-Msemaji chooses to live--as a kind of father / uncle / brother, vocational guide and mental health advocate for these adults in whom he sees so much value but whom society, he says, has all but thrown away.

Ray Mills, in his 50s, is one of the early birds. He proceeds wordlessly to his work space and assembles his paints, cardboard, needles and twine. Then he begins, with great vigor and precision, to paint, cut and stitch. He has already shaped a group of large, asymmetric pieces that he has slathered with layers of rich, dark, brooding color. This day, he will sew them together, adding a narrow strip colored an improbable heavenly pink.

“He is an artist in the true sense of the word,” Webb-Msemaji says. “He will stitch and restitch. He will layer piece over piece over piece. He will keep at it and at it until he gets exactly what he wants.”

Mills, who’s been coming to the center for 15 years, knows his constructions are sometimes purchased by richer people than he, and that they sometimes are displayed for others to admire. “Five dollars,” he says gruffly, when asked what he will charge for the current project. Then he laughs, points to the pieces lying on his table, and says “each.”

“That’s a man doctors said would never speak,” says the director. “They also said he’d never be able to travel on his own. But now he takes buses everywhere around town. He comes here by himself every day. He still has trouble with speech and conceptual stuff, but he is much more independent. He knows who he is and what he does. Can you imagine the impact of all this on his feelings of identity?”

To protect their dignity and privacy, the director will not discuss individual diagnoses of those at the center.

The term “developmental disability” is a catch-all phrase that encompasses mental retardation, Down syndrome, autism, cerebral palsy, epilepsy and spina bifida, among other disorders, he explains. Art center students, who range in age from 18 to 65, often have multiple combinations of those problems. Many have been turned away by other activity programs for being too difficult or too disturbed.

“Then they come here and we are amazed. For certain people, making art within the context of our program seems to alter the behaviors which caused their rejection elsewhere. For those people, it is clear they have found the right place. Look around you,” he says, pointing to the people hunched over various works in progress. “Many of these people have been assessed as having very short and limited attention spans. Yet they have been absorbed, working diligently and energetically, for more than an hour. This is what artists do.”

Of course, there is always the odd outburst, the agitation that may persist from an earlier problem at home or on the bus or because a colleague in the center has acted in an uncollegial way. On this day, for example, one artist has stolen the lollipop of another during break time. A second is feeling depressed. A third repeatedly asks very personal and inappropriate questions in a very loud voice. “It’s always something,” says the slim and self-effacing Webb-Msemaji. “‘But it’s never anything we can’t handle.”

Thomasina Curry, a new weaving instructor at the center, is working at the loom with Judy Nelson, 35. Nelson is making her first portrait in tapestry after 10 years at the center, where she has excelled at printmaking and weaving rugs.

Curry, who taught previously in New Jersey, says arriving at the ECF center has been “like coming into heaven. I have never seen a place quite like this, where the students truly love what they do, and the staff truly loves the students.”

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Milton Davis needs no assistance. Like many in the center, his art comes from somewhere deep within. He does not ask or tell. He just draws. Hour after hour, in black ink on white paper, creating often-elegant, stylized people in simple settings such as gardens or stairs. “He used to work with colors, and do animals and other things. His work has evolved into this,” Webb-Msemaji says.

Tammy Brackens, whose art is strikingly complex, is working on a small rendering of the large painting she plans to do next. Using the same symbols she has employed for the past few years--a baby’s face and feet, a maternal duck and a telephone--Bracken has shifted from simple, highly emotional images executed in flat, pale watercolors to a happier, brighter, more complicated style.

Webb-Msemaji points to seven framed paintings by Brackens hanging in a row on the wall. They were purchased by the center for $2,000, he says, as soon as he realized it was a significant series that should be kept together. In his opinion, the work chronicles the growth and development of Brackens as a person and an artist.

The first is murky and abstract, with a baby’s face barely visible in one corner and other symbols scattered about. The second, which caused the staff to gasp, he says, was of the baby’s face enlarged, filling the entire bowl of a toilet.

“The baby is the toilet, the ultimate discarded waste,” Webb-Msemaji says. “Unfortunately, that picture was purchased by actress Bonnie Franklin soon after it was painted, and it hangs in her New York apartment. We begged to buy it back when we realized it was part of something bigger. She allowed a photographer to come take a picture of it, which we use. But she wants to keep that piece for herself.”

Subsequent paintings show the baby being extruded from the toilet; then sitting in a sink, and then in a tub, “obviously getting clean and feeling better about herself,” Webb-Msemaji says. Then a relapse, where the tub is shattered, the baby looks tragic, the duck is shedding tears. The final work shows a chubby, contented child embracing what now looks like a benevolent and loving mother duck.

Brackens, now 33, says she has been coming to the center “since Oct. 21, 1985.” She uses “all kinds of paints and pencils” and gets her ideas “from my own imagination.” Although her paintings can sell for many hundreds of dollars each, money does not seem to interest her. She comes to work by bus each day from the home she shares with her parents. Do they have lots of her beautiful paintings on their walls? “No,” she answers, “they never asked for any.”

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The ECF program began 50 years ago as a facility for children and has since expanded to include adults. The arts portion is designated as a day activity center by the California Department of Developmental Services, which funds it with $30 per day, per student. This is not enough to pay staff salaries and the cost of the art materials. (Webb-Msemaji, 57, married with two children, tops the payroll at under $40,000 per year). Sponsors Aaron Bros. art stores and Warner Bros. Records underwrite annual art shows, the director says. “We usually sell out within three hours, and earn about $10,000 each time.”

There is no money to create an exhibition space at the center, but visitors can browse through the files and buy. The artists get a portion of the funds, and the rest is used to sustain the center.

The subject troubles Webb-Msemaji. He knows he could promote the artists so they’d earn more money during spurts of productivity, when they are doing their best work. But just as he never knows when something fabulous is about to be created, he also never knows when a student’s work will suddenly stop. Since they all survive on disability, he cannot take the chance that they will have a great temporary success and lose their SSI eligibility as a result of it.

“The interruption of their lives and resources would be tragic. Money they get from one or two sales would be very short-lived. They cannot be without a guaranteed stream of income, assured of food and a safe roof over their heads. The consequences of that disruption are too awful to even consider.”

What’s more, the artists would produce little or nothing if not for the environment of the center, he says. Most do not work at home, which is often a group setting that allows no quiet or privacy. “It’s something that troubles me about their lives,” Webb-Msemaji says. “They are adults who need private and personal time, yet they are frequently treated like children. I have had students pulled out of here because a family member came to pick them up and saw them kissing another student goodbye at the door.

“Many get no recognition or encouragement for their talent or their work from family and friends,” he says. “People ask them, ‘What will you do after you’re finished with painting?’ As if art is not a substantive use of their time. Would it be better for them to spend six hours a day learning to stuff combs into plastic bags, and seal them?”

There is no way to ensure or preserve their talents, he says. Little is known about the dynamic of creativity in general; almost nothing is known about it among the developmentally disabled. The art center is one of only about 20 such places in the country.

San Francisco-based art historian John MacGregor, an authority on the history of psychiatric art, recently wrote: “There is an astounding lack of literature . . . dealing with the psychological reality and subjective experience of retarded individuals. It is as if their lives and inner worlds are perceived as lacking in interest and unworthy of exploration.”

In a monograph called “The Boy Who Time Forgot,” about a profoundly retarded and extraordinarily gifted artist in Northern California who attends an activity program similar to the one at ECF, MacGregor writes: “Without knowledge of his amazing drawings, it would be easy to assume this man possesses no inner world of voices and images; little individuality, nothing in the way of fantasy or vision, no identity. This is the fate of the retarded person, to be seen as a type, and not an individual.”

This is not the fate of those who are referred to Webb-Msemaji’s center by schools or social workers. He sees only individuals, not just talents or types. He is not really concerned with the art per se, he explains, although most people assume he’s an expert.

“Much as I enjoy and appreciate the art, the excitement for me is watching individuals grow and develop. It is their mental health I care about, helping them become comfortable and happy with who they are. My payback is just being in this environment. I guess you could call it a passion. People ask me, ‘Don’t you ever burn out?’ I tell them no. Actually, this work replenishes me every day.”