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Generating Awareness

The Foundation for Art and Healing produces programs across three areas: awareness, discovery and sharing.  Our approach is centered on the belief that in order to move the conversation forward regarding the connection between art and healing and impact positive change in the broader community, the Foundation must bring greater awareness to the connection, provide leadership in discovering new knowledge in the field through research, and create model community outreach programs that can bring the healing power of creative expression to broader populations.

Presenting Artist’s Program

Enabling artists to explore the intersections of creativity and healing and share their vision with the community has proven to be an intimate way to generate awareness.  The Presenting Artist’s Program provides accomplished and recognized artists financial and programmatic support to share some of their perspectives through the compelling lens of personal experience.  These artists include musicians, dancers, visual artists, writers, and filmmakers, unbound by choice of media, but linked by the common theme of exploring the human experience of illness.  Presentation venues include community centers, schools, and performance centers willing to provide space and support.

The program’s inaugural event, Reflections on Art and Healing:  An Evening with Bill T. Jones, was held on November 9, 2004, with close to 400 people in attendance.  Additional programs sponsored by FAH include Anna Halprin and Company:  Parades and Changes and Intensive Care and Robert Hass & Jane Hirshfield:  Two Outstanding Poets Reflect on Healing.

• Bill T. Jones, noted dancer and choreographer, shared his insights on healing as it has resonated across his work and continues to shape his creative agenda.  An early pioneer in the exploration of “difference” as manifested by race, sexual orientation and other characteristics, Jones now celebrates the common ground where we find healing. 
• Celebrating her 85^th year, internationally renowned dance icon Anna Halprin brought her groundbreaking dance company to the Eugene & Elinor Friend Center for the Arts for three performances.  The program included Parades and Changes, first seen in 1965, which explored the daily act of dressing and undressing, elevating that seemingly mundane act into a mythic exploration of life itself.  A new work, Intensive Care, set to music by Miguel Frasconia, was an eloquent rumination on mortality.  Both acts demonstrated why Halprin is considered a monumental force in dance. 
• Robert Hass, MacArthur Fellow and Poet Laureate of the U.S. from 1995-97, is a poet of great eloquence, clarity and force, who work is rooted in our magnificent Northern Californian landscapes.  Jane Hirshfield’s poetry speaks to the central issues of human existence:  desire and loss, impermanence and beautify, the many dimensions of our connection to others and to the creature and objects with which we share our lives.