by Nina Beckwith

1st appeared 21 September 1998

Some very special people are creating a very special occasion for the whole UCSF community.

In the light and airy Millberry Conference Center all day Thursday, September 24, there is going to be an exhibition of strikingly unusual and powerful paintings. In addition, several of the artists will bring their materials and give the people of UCSF a unique opportunity to see them actually at work. (A slide show of selected works is available on Daybreak)

These are mature adult artists who never realized that they had artistic talent until they were given the chance to express their creativity through visual art: they are all people who have some type of developmental disability.

You may be surprised at the depth of your own emotions aroused by works of art which are not made to create effects but bring forth the deepest feelings of their creators. More often than anger or frustration, the art works embody extraordinary visions and rhythms of color, original styles, spontaneity, and beauty.

Above all, these artists are able, through their art, to achieve the self-realization and the recognition that their disabilities would otherwise deny them.

Among the artists:

Samuel Gant patterns his artwork with numbers, letters, images and colors, all the tools of communication. Born in l954, Gant is deaf and very limited in speech. His strong, densely-colored abstract paintings have been shown in New York, at a large one-man show at the American Primitive Gallery and group shows at the Outsider Art Fair, the National Black Fine Art Show and the Pelham Art Center, as well as in Baltimore, Chicago, Tokyo, Copenhagen, and at the Oakland Art Museum.

Audrey Pickering was hospitalized for recurring bouts of depression until she found an outlet in painting in her 60s. Though in contact with what we call reality, in her paintings she was able to live in her memories and recreate such happy events as childhood family picnics and her own wedding. With exquisite color sense, she paints people and animals against a tapestry of flowers and trees, of stars and mountains and fields, in a style that might be called naive but which creates its own reality.

Wendell Singleton is an enigma. He is in his 30s and enjoys painting in acrylics, which he applies with great precision and sensitivity in an enormous range of colors and in a complex variety of geometric shapes, yet he cannot read or write and is unable to measure. He also paints animals and flowers in a different and decorative style: for both types he changes his design with great facility to conform to the size and shape of the canvas. Wendell's speech is very limited; his creativity knows no bounds.

Juliet Holmes is a vibrant, exuberant woman in her 40s. She once said, "I am the most fantastic artist in the world, I paint my dreams, my hopes, and my laughter. I go with Martin Luther King, Junior -- the black dream, men, ladies, faces, lips and jaws. God gave me a gift." Her paintings are figurative intermingled with much abstract design in vivid color, and her themes include Ancient Egypt, American Indians, and African jungles. "The whole picture is in front of me," she said, " and I fill in the ideas."

The works to be seen in the UCSF September 24 exhibition, entitled "The Creative Spirit," come from the National Institute of Art and Disabilities, NIAD, an innovative visual arts center across the Bay in Richmond, founded by Elias Katz, Ph.D., a former UCSF clinical psychologist, and his late wife, Florence Ludins-Katz.

For East Bay adults with mental, physical or social disabilities, NIAD offers full-time studio training in painting, sculpture, printing, ceramics, and other arts; exhibitions in an on-site gallery and in traveling shows, and promotion and sale of the artworks. Half of the proceeds goes to the artists, the other half for supplies. There is no upper age limit for participants, thus the artists range from the 20s to the 80s. NIAD will soon add to its staff a poet-in-residence who will assist the disabled with visual/literary expression and creative work with computers.

The September 24 exhibition is co-sponsored by the UCSF Office of Affirmative Action/Equal Opportunity and Diversity, and by the UCSF Disabilities Interest Group, a recently-formed campus association of disabled people and others who are interested in sharing information and action on issues and policies affecting the disabled.

"The Creative Spirit," works by artists of the National Institute of Art and Disability will be seen for only one day, Thursday, September 24 , from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Millberry Union Conference Center on Parnassus. Artists will be at work there during most of the day. Try to drop in at some point

Slide show

This Just In -- Streetcar Riveting and Glorious

It is very rare that any work can live up to the huge hype-parades that preceded the world premiere Saturday, September 19, at San Francisco's War Memorial Opera House of Andre Previn's opera A Streetcar Named Desire, conducted by the composer.

In this case the transmutation of Tennessee Williams' 1947 play, one of the greatest of all American theatre works, into a ravishingly lyrical and dramatically riveting opera gloriously rewarded all expectations.

The librettist, Philip Littell, had to tighten parts of Williams' text simply because singing on stage takes much longer than speaking, but has retained the original rhythms and cadences, and all the lines that have become part of us, like those of Casablanca, from the play and the 1951 Streetcar movie with Vivien Leigh, Marlon Brando, and Karl Malden, and a jazz score by Alex North.

But in this opera Previn's music and Colin Graham's direction achieve their primary goal: to remove those icons from our minds and replace them with a Blanche, a Stella, and a Mitch who are more deeply characterized by the layers of thought revealed in their musical personalities. The music tells you what the words cannot.

That, really, is the reason Previn wanted to write this opera, the first by a 70-year old composer who has had great success with almost every other form of music. This is no screeching, discordant "modern" opera: it is accessible, thrilling, with echoes of Benjamin Britten, Richard Strauss, and even Alban Berg, and of blues and jazz. It's not a jazz opera either, any more than it is movie music or accompaniment to recitation, even though there are phrases played the way jazz musicians play them. It is a serious opera of a new kind and the colors and varieties of Previn's orchestration are astounding.

Soprano Elizabeth Futral, in her superb local debut, creates a Stella who is the pivot of the story, torn between her love for her husband and her sister. As Blanche, Renee Fleming is on stage for almost every minute: her singing and her stamina are astonishing even for this acclaimed artist, and her portrayal of Blanche's strength, her vulnerability, and her disintegration is both subtle and strong.

Even in a torn T-shirt Rodney Gilfry is his own Stanley, macho and menacing but no stereotype, his baritone as muscular and honed as his physique. And tenor Anthony Dean Griffey makes Mitch enormously sympathetic, a shy overweight mamma's boy whose disillusionment with Blanche precipitates her tragedy. Michael Yeargan has designed a beautifully intricate set with New Orleans wrought-iron balconies above the two-room Kowalski home which Thomas J. Munn has lighted magically.

In fact, magic is a keynote: before the opera opened, Fleming recorded one of Blanche's arias for an album out this week. Previn's lovely song begins, "Real? Who wants real? I don't want it. I want magic." And magic is what Streetcar will bring to audiences of the many other companies already in line to stage this opera.

San Francisco Opera has pulled off a real international coup with Streetcar, a long-held dream of its general director, Lotfi Mansouri. Some 200 critics came from all over the world for the premiere, which was surrounded by elegant festivities all over Civic Center.

After the first four performances here, British soprano Susan Glanville takes over the role of Blanche and the talented Patrick Summers conducts.

Only seven more performances, last one Sunday, October 11. Unless you call right away (864-3330 or online www.sfopera.com), it may already be too late to get aboard A Streetcar Named Desire.

Previous Artists Among Us

A San Francisco resident for 20 years, Nina Beckwith is a longtime arts writer and music critic and a former Time magazine overseas correspondent. She was founding editor of the UC Berkeley Library newsletter Bene Legere and worked for six years with the late Dr. Peter Ostwald, Director of the UCSF Health Program for Performing Artists.

DAYBREAK | ARCHIVES | CALENDAR | CAMPUS NOTES
CAMPUS EYE | LIFESTYLE | QUICK LINKS | HELP/RESOURCES | SEARCH

Copyright ©1998 Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
Last Updated October 13, 1998.
Please direct all comments and questions to the Daybreak Editor .
Please contact the UCSF Web Developer for questions of a technical nature.