{"id":9083,"date":"2015-11-12T10:12:03","date_gmt":"2015-11-12T17:12:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=9083"},"modified":"2015-11-13T06:50:25","modified_gmt":"2015-11-13T13:50:25","slug":"at-community-crisis-center-a-chance-for-creativity-to-flow","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2015\/11\/at-community-crisis-center-a-chance-for-creativity-to-flow\/","title":{"rendered":"At Community Crisis Center, a chance for creativity to flow"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Class\"<\/a>

Ed Kemmick\/Last Best News<\/p>

Denise Blike, left, who was leading a creative writing workshop earlier this week at the Community Crisis Center, listens as a client, right, tells a story. Also in attended were the three Vistas who organized the project, from left, Daniel Stephenson, Cahrissa Dasso and Liz Brennan.<\/p><\/div>\n

During her first session of teaching an acrylic painting class at the Community Crisis Center, Samantha Harris\u2019 two students didn\u2019t much like the first few ideas she had for what they might paint.<\/p>\n

After a little searching on the Internet, they found a subject more to their liking, and Harris, who works at In Good Glazes, was soon teaching them the basics of painting a night sky and some mountains.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs they got further into it,\u201d Harris said, \u201cthey got really into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the men used a walker and his hands shook noticeably, but he worked steadily and patiently on his painting.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was a little slower, but he was so proud of how it was turning out,\u201d Harris said. His painting and other artwork produced at the crisis center will be exhibited during the December ArtWalk. Some of the art will also be sold, but the man with the walker seemed more interested in showing the painting to his friends.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think he\u2019s going to be getting rid of his picture,\u201d Harris said.<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>The class taught by Harris is part of the Canvas Project, organized and run by three AmeriCorps Volunteers in Service to America, commonly known as Vistas, who wanted to do something to help the Community Crisis Center.<\/p>\n

Liz Brennan, Daniel Stephenson and Cahrissa Dasso all came here in January as part of the Billings Metro VISTA Project, Stephenson to work on promoting citywide volunteerism and Brennan and Dasso to work on the Illuminate Homelessness project.<\/p>\n

But as Brennan explained it, Vistas are also encouraged to take on \u201cpassion projects,\u201d and the three of them decided to focus on the crisis center, a 24-hour drop-in center for people with mental illnesses and addictions or dealing with some other crisis.<\/p>\n

They organized a project to build a privacy fence behind the center, and another project to enlist photographers to document homelessness in Billings. Then, based on a suggestion from center Director MarCee Neary, they came up with the Canvas Project.<\/p>\n

The six-week educational program has been bringing volunteers to the center to teach painting, expressive journaling, ceramics and creative writing. A selection of works from the classes, plus the photographs of homelessness, will be displayed at the Art House Cinema & Pub, 109 N. 30th St., during the Dec. 4 ArtWalk.<\/p>\n

\"Harris\"<\/a>

These are some of the acrylics produced in a painting class led by Samantha Harris.<\/p><\/div>\n

Stephenson said the ideas behind the project were to do something that would raise community awareness of the crisis center, give the center\u2019s clients a chance to express themselves and give people an opening to see those clients as individuals.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt can be kind of dehumanizing,\u201d Stephenson said of homelessness. \u201cWe hope people will look at the art and see the personality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dasso said the projects definitely brought out the artists\u2019 personalities.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey all produced really different works of art, which is awesome,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"Vistas\"<\/a>

This painting came out of an open session led by the Vistas.<\/p><\/div>\n

It will be up to the individuals to decide whether they want their art to be shown during the ArtWalk and whether to sell or keep their work, Brennan said. Pieces that are sold will be in a silent auction, with a base bid. That initial sum will go to the artist; anything over will be donated to the Community Crisis Center.<\/p>\n

Chris Waite, the volunteer coordinator for the city Parks and Recreation Department, is an enthusiastic potter and volunteered to lead the ceramics class. One of the best things about it has been all the interaction that goes on during class, partly, he said, because ceramics \u201cis a very social art.\u201d<\/p>\n

At a creative writing workshop earlier this week, led by Denise Blike and Kaitlyn Nicholas, all three Vistas sat in on the class and also took part in the writing exercises. They all picked hand-written \u201cprompts\u201d from a jar, consisting of single words\u2014\u201cocean\u201d and \u201cunicorn\u201d among them\u2014or more elaborate prompts like \u201cWhat was your most vivid dream that you remember?\u201d<\/p>\n

There were two crisis center clients at this workshop, a man and a woman, both of whom chatted with the instructors and the Vistas almost as much as they wrote, clearly enjoying themselves.<\/p>\n

Stephenson happened to pick the \u201cunicorn\u201d prompt and wrote a short, fanciful account of not only unicorns but also other imaginary creatures, at which the female client let out a laugh and said, \u201cDude, I have to say it: Get out of the game world. Gamer!\u201d<\/p>\n

The male client, for his part, read not only his contribution based on a prompt, but something he had written the night before on his own, a collection of things for which he was thankful.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m thankful to be alive,\u201d was one, and \u201cI\u2019m thankful for my sanity was another.\u201d Also, he read, \u201cI\u2019m thankful I\u2019m off the streets and don\u2019t have to sleep on the streets or in the forest.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During her first session of teaching an acrylic painting class at the Community Crisis Center, Samantha Harris\u2019 two students didn\u2019t much like the first few ideas she had for what they might paint. After a little searching on the Internet, they found a subject more to their liking, and Harris, who works at In Good […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9084,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,18,14],"tags":[1561,3368,3371,3374,1559,3370,3376,3373,3375,3369,1560,3372],"class_list":["post-9083","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","category-diversions","category-news","tag-americorps-vista","tag-billings-metro-vista-project","tag-cahrissa-dasso","tag-chris-waite","tag-community-crisis-center","tag-daniel-stephenson","tag-denise-blike","tag-in-good-glazes","tag-kaitlyn-nicholas","tag-liz-brennan","tag-marcee-neary","tag-samantha-harris","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9083","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9083"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9083\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9084"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9083"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9083"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9083"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}