About the Exhibit

May has been designated Mental Health Month. One in four families will have a member with mental illness! In keeping with the mission of ArtRage to exhibit art of social importance, and in collaboration with NAMI Syracuse (National Alliance on Mental Illness), we proudly present an exhibit of art by and about survivors of schizophrenia. Jamie Campbell, featured in the photo essay of NOTHING TO HIDE, is a young woman with schizophrenia. “When I first got sick,” she says, “almost all of my friends gave up on me. One friend even called me a ‘schizoid’. For me, losing my friends is the saddest example of the stigma of mental illness.” Mike Campbell, Jamie’s Dad says, “Living with mental illness is a struggle and a real test of your faith, but getting through it proves that the human spirit can survive.”

The exhibit features  work of mixed media from three sources including the art of Amber Christian Osterhout, a Syracuse native, painter and family member dealing with mental illness in her family. Her series of richly colored paintings titled Gaining Insight give us a glimpse into a world as frightening for family as it is for those afflicted. Also on display is a photo essay from Family Diversity Projects offering photographic portraits by co-founder Gigi Kaeser and compelling stories from interviews conducted by Jean Beard and co-founder Peggy Gillespie of family members who demonstrate strength, courage and accomplishment in the face of adversity and stigma. Also featured is artwork from courageous local artists, Zachary Penfield, Wayne Turner, Barb Higgens, James P. McCampbell and Fred Hickey who are currently consumers of the mental health system. Films and presentations will accompany this exhibit throughout the month featuring psychologists Bill Cross and Shelia LeGacy and artist Amber Christian Osterhout.

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Join in this community-wide event to celebrate, document and create a Queer Syracuse. Students from the Space and Sexuality class at Syracuse University have archived and mapped a Queer Syracuse, but your involvement is needed. Please bring small artifacts or pictures to add to our living map.

Performance by Keith and Ferasha featuring Down to Funk.

Refreshments provided by Sparky Town.

The LGBT Studies Program & Minor, Gepgraphy Department, and Imagining America are pleased to sponsor the Sexuality and Space lecture series and Queering Syracuse event with support from Anthropology, Cultural Foundations of Education and Rhetorical Studies, College of Human Ecology, Women’s and Gender Studies, Sociology, English, the Writing Program and the LGBT Resource Center.

Directed by Susan Smiley (2006)

This film is the story the director’s family’s secret struggle to deal with her mother’s schizophrenia within the confines of the public health system. A story of madness and dignity, shame and love, illuminating a national plight through one family’s journey.  Official selection, Vancouver Film Festival.

“Millie Smiley is an object lesson in resilience and gratitude. OUT OF THE SHADOWS is a valentine to her and a heartening one.-NY TIMES

“A fascinating and important film”-Mike Wallace, CBS News

“Brave and full of intelligent insight. A beautiful and important film”. -Cynthia McFadden, ABC News

“captures a side of schizophrenia that few of us ever see, revealing the humility behind the disease without sentimentalizing it.”-Wall St. Journal

8pm – $5 suggested donation. ArtRage is handicapped accessible. Off-street parking at 408 & 414 Lodi Street.

In his eye-opening masterpiece, Frederick Wiseman chronicles the daily activities of the staff and inmates at the State Prison for the Criminally Insane at Bridgewater, Massachusetts. From psychological evaluations, to recreation time and from treatments to impromptu concerts, this evocative film shows with gritty clarity the way in which the inmates are treated by guards, social workers and psychiatrists.

Titicut Follies takes its name from the New Year’s Eve variety show put on by the staff and featuring musical acts by inmates who are more likely to look lost, confused, and frightened than happy to be performing. The staff’s indifference to the discomfort of the inmates is disappointing, but it is benign in comparison to the routine treatment of the inmates who are frequently manhandled, incessantly badgered or condescended to, and abused and degraded in a myriad of ways. Sessions with the psychiatrist are cold and accusatory with little apparent therapeutic purpose. Inmates are typically kept naked and housed in barren, isolation chambers without plumbing, cots, or personal effects. The guards’ behavior towards the inmates ranges from indifference to sadism.

This is Wiseman’s first film and it is a hellish descent. It is an indictment of the mental health system so powerful that the authorities felt compelled to quash it, and a record for the ages, lest we ever forget. Banned in Massachusetts in  1968, the authorities suppressed Titicut for a quarter century, arguing that it violated the privacy of the inmates – a risible claim, as it’s painfully clear that these men had no rights at all.

FREE TO THE PUBLIC. ArtRage is handicapped accessible. Off-street parking at 408 & 414 Lodi Street.

“THE HEART OF THE WORK IS THE HEART IN THE WORK”

A presentation by Bill Cross & Shiela LaGacey.

Bill and Sheila have led many workshops for professionals instructing them in the Supportive Family Training model. They will be speaking about the essential role that families play in the recovery and rehabilitation of their relatives diagnosed with psychiatric disorders. Research has shown conclusively that education and support for families improves patients’ outcomes  by preventing  relapse, reducing  rehospitalization, improving medication compliance and reducing  family burden. There are 100 million first-degree relatives of people with mental illness in the U.S.  This number does not include grandparents and spouses.

Yet families are too often not included in the support loop

Sheila will describe Supportive Family Training, the 12 week course that she created and which serves as the model for NAMI’s Family to Family training, a free family education class that has trained  thousands of family members in the US.  Supportive Family Training is offered twice yearly in Central New York through the Family Support & Education Center at T.L.S.. It combines education, advocacy training and group support, instructing families in communication ,coping skills, practical problem solving as well as providing essential information about serious neurobiological brain disorders.

Sheila Le Gacy is the Director of the Family Support & Education Center, located at Transitional Living Services, a large not for profit rehabilitation and housing agency in Syracuse.  Before assuming her current position, Le Gacy directed the Club Without Walls, an innovative model of community based rehabilitation, and designed Provisions Restaurant and Bakery, a successful supportive employment business.  Ms. Le Gacy’s work has been influenced by over 30 years of experience with Buddhist medication and yoga.

Bill Cross, PHd. has been a psychology professor and psychotherapist practicing in this area for over 30 years.  He has worked closely with the parents, sibling, adult children and partners of persons diagnosed with serious psychiatric disorders.  He is an authority on post traumatic stress disorder and recently has been deeply involved in the support of veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.  For the past 10 years Bill has taught Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction at the Zen Center of Syracuse, a technique which includes medication, yoga, and stress reduction techniques.