I am an artist. I've been making stuff all of my life.

I've been doing this

professionally for the last 20 years. It's my passion, and it's my addiction. Can I
just get a quick raise of hands? How many artists do we have in here today? I want
to see more. Didn't anybody listen to Jay's talk? We're all artists. There we go. I
believe we were born artists before we could read, before we could write, before we
could speak. We were communicating visually. We were expressing ourselves visually.
We were making marks on a wall. Some say that it was our ability to communicate
visually that gave us the evolutionary edge. So why so few hands that we have? Have
we lost our creativity? Is this just a particularly uncreative group? Or have we
stopped evolving? No, we've buried it. See, at some point in our childhood, an
authority figure felt that it was important to inform us that the cow that we were
drawing had too many legs, it was the wrong color, had too many heads, and it had
one big Cyclops eye. It was wrong. There was a mistake. So we buried it. That act
of raw vision, that act of raw creation was stepped on. So we buried it deep. Now
one of my jobs is I'm a ditch digger. I'll help you dig down to your latent
creativity, help you release it. What you do with it is up to you.

About four years ago, my life changed. I've been painting. It's been an exciting
career. I've been contributing to exhibitions. But it started to seem very hollow,
very... The victories were empty. It felt like I was preaching to the choir. I was
part of an inside joke that only a very select few could get or could understand.
There had to be more. I walked into Sherbert Community Center, a long-term care
home here in Saskatoon, and they were looking for an artist-in-residence. This was
my chance. This was my opportunity. This was my opportunity to give something back,
to really contribute, really make a difference. I thought, here's my chance to
teach all of the stuff that I've learned over my lifetime. What I didn't realize is
that this was the beginning of an incredible learning experience, and one that I am
still on.

Traditionally in health care, we're going to see art in two ways. That's the craft
room or as art therapy. Now every long-term care facility that I've been in, every
hospital, every rehabilitation center had the exact same birdhouses, the exact same
wagons, the exact same bird feeders, and then these strange sort of bunny rabbit
bookends for some reason. These were templates. This didn't seem creative to me.
This seemed like standardized creativity. This was busy work like folding towels or
folding linens. This didn't seem like an opportunity to express ourselves in a
creative manner. It seemed more like a diversionary tactic. Keep them busy, keep
them quiet until lunchtime or till supper. That art therapy terrifies me. I can't
think of two words in the English language when placed together that could be more
frightening. I mean, we're all still afraid of making those mistakes. We're afraid
of putting too many legs on our cow as it is, and now we're going to tack on
therapy to that? We're going to analyze what you're doing there? We're going to
assess you? I mean, don't get me wrong, I believe that therapy is very important.
It's very important for the mental health, the physical health, for rehabilitation.
But I mean, health care is full of therapy. Do we really need another therapy?

I was recently speaking at a conference to a group of medical students and health

care practitioners, and somebody raised their hand at this point and they said,
well, if we're not doing an assessment, then how do we know their limitations?
Bingo. Limitations. We're focusing on limitations. Every single one of us in this
room has limitations. There's things that we can't do. Whether somebody is going to
be able to do better than us, so who cares? Let's just push the limitations to the
side. Let's get over the limitations. Let's not think about barriers or obstacles.
Let's think about strengths.

What if we had an open studio model? This is what I'm promoting. This is what my
challenge is in the health care setting. An open studio model where there was no
hierarchy, where there's no assessments, where there's no focus on the limitations.
If we're skiing down that hill and repeating to ourselves, "I'm going to hit the
tree, I'm going to hit the tree, I'm going to hit the tree," we're probably going
to hit the tree. This is an environment of creativity. This is a peer group
environment. There's no teaching. I'm not a teacher in there, but I'm facilitating
a process, a safe environment to be creative, to make a mark where we can raise
that bar and push each other to strive for more. A place where product is just as
important as process, where we can have those critiques.

Nine months after I started the studio at Sherbrooke, I curated a show at the
Mendel Art Gallery called "The Insiders." "The Insiders" was an exhibition that
featured the work of twelve artists with limited mobility and/or cognitive
disorders. It was a huge success. The artwork was incredible. It was the most
difficult job I had to do, was curate only twelve artists into the show. It was a
huge event, packed, a black-tie event. The media showed up. It was a huge affair.
The National Film Board of Canada was there filming their documentary "A Year at
Sherbrooke," which in part documents the evolution of the studio at Sherbrooke and
the lives that were changed. I highly recommend going to see it. So this was a big
splash. Individuals that were once on the margins of society, safely tucked away in
long-term care, were now at center stage. They were in the spotlight. They were
holding court, and they loved it. They arrived. This wasn't happening in a church
basement or in a community hall. This was happening in one of Canada's leading
public art galleries. We're raising the bar. They found their voice. They reclaimed
that voice. There was a sense of pride, there was a sense of accomplishment, there
was a sense of achievement.

This is Dennis Anderson. When I first met Dennis, he was a social outcast. He was a
social pariah. He had alienated everybody that was close to him. He had a black
cloud hovering over him. He was angry, he was in pain, and he wasn't happy with
where his life was. His body had betrayed him. He didn't want to continue living
like this. He was suicidal. Then he spoke of that daily. He came down to the
studio, though. He said he liked the energy, but he wasn't going to make any art
because that wasn't him. He had dabbled with some creative writing in high school,
and he recently tried to take up photography, but when the MS hit, he couldn't hold
onto that camera. When he could hold the camera, it shook so much that he couldn't
take the picture, so he gave up on that. We had a lot of really good conversations,
and he was always curious as to what my social life was like. As you know, we heard
earlier with a profile like that, probably not very good. And Dennis always figured
that his would be okay if it weren't for the hundred and seventy-five pounds of
stinking desperation strapped to his butt. That's what he called his wheelchair. So
I encouraged him to make a painting about that. And finally, one day, he did. 175
pounds of stinking desperation. And he painted a little wheelchair, and he exhaled.
He got it off his chest. It was a cathartic moment. He exercised some of those
demons, and he was hooked. He started painting. Here he is painting himself as a
football. Now, the story goes that there was this one incident where he was waiting
to be put to bed, and waiting and waiting. Nobody was coming in. And when the
special care aide finally did come in, instead of acknowledging Dennis as a human
being, he was treated like their job. He became an inanimate object. He became a
football to be punted about. This is an adult incontinence product. We're not to
call this a diaper. We live in very politically correct times. This is an adult
pad. This frustrated Dennis. He thought it was absurd that we were going to be so
sensitive and what we're going to call this item. There's two things that he did in
this garment. If it was good enough for NASA, if it was good enough for the
astronauts to call it a diaper, why wasn't it good enough for him to call it a
diaper? The title of this piece is "Misplaced Sensitivity." Dennis is pointing out
in quite a literal manner that it's more important that we treat him like a human
being, not like a job. Who cares what we call this particular garment? We can work
on the name next. This got Dennis a lot of attention. There was a petition to have
this painting removed from the Mendel Art Gallery exhibition from "The Insiders"
show. There was conversation, and like all good art, it created that dialogue and
that discourse. Dennis was getting heard. He had that voice. It was meaning
something. Now the problem was, is he had that sense of pride, but now he was
arrogant and still kind of a jerk. He was still sort of mean to people. So he
continued on, making a lot of shock art, really shocking stuff, just to get
people's attention. About two months later, I was just getting ready to leave for
my Christmas holidays, my Christmas break, and I received this envelope full of 40
letters. Some grade five and six students from Queen Elizabeth School had seen "The
Insiders" exhibition and were particularly taken by Dennis's work, and they wrote
him personally.

Dear Dennis, thank you for making these paintings.

Dear Dennis, I want to be just like you when I grow up.
Dear Dennis, can you come to our school and teach us how to paint and think like
you do?
Dear Dennis, you're my hero.

This was a very emotional moment, and just like the Grinch who stole Christmas,
Dennis's heart grew three sizes that day. When he was an engineer working for CN,
he could understand the idea of being a role model. When he was part of the Alpine
Rescue Team, he could understand what it meant to be a hero. But as some dude
tucked away in a long-term care facility, sitting on a hundred and seventy-five
pounds of stinking desperation and wearing a diaper, he didn't think he would ever
hear these words again. That light bulb went on, that cloud lifted, and Dennis has
gone on to be an incredible role model and leader. Clap.

Now this is Paul Major, the gentleman in the beard. Paul came to long-term care
because he couldn't afford home care any longer. He had had an accident when he was
still in his teens, but he had survived that. He went to school, got his degree,
became a social worker. He was contributing, got married, had a family, had a
house. He was living life. Circumstances became such that he could no longer afford
that home care, so he had to come to long-term care. In the process, he lost his
house, he lost his family, he lost his pride. He'd lost so much. He was in this
downward spiral.

Now, by this time, the studio had been up and running for about a year. It was this
hub of activity. There was an energy there. It had spread throughout the Saskatoon
Health Region. People were taking interest. Other long-term care facilities were
coming and using the facilities. Other rehabilitation centers were using the
facilities. This something was percolating in the studio. Now Paul, educated man,
he was a farmer, hunter, fisherman. Not an artistic bone in his body, right?
Somebody had told him that his cow had too many legs, but he thought there was
something happening, and he said, "I want to give it a try. I want to try this
out." And he got it almost immediately. He came into the studio. I put a piece of
paper in front of him. I said, "You've got one minute to put a mark on this page."
One more minute, another mark, and so on. 'Cause he froze. He didn't know what to
do. Just like if I were to give everybody a canvas in here and say, "Let's start
painting right now." It's like, what do I paint? I can't do a straight line, right?
Paul got this. Three minutes later, three paintings. He was exhausted, physically,
emotionally. We laid them out, and he could see the progress in these works, and it
clicked on him. He started coming into the studio every day. He was producing
incredible work. He became a leader, a role model. Here he is working with Jacob, a
young artist that was coming to the studio. He was training our volunteers. He was
speaking at conventions. Paul had regained all of that that he had lost. Again, he
was contributing. Now, unfortunately, his condition got worse. Paul was in so much
pain that he couldn't continue to be in the studio anymore. He could no longer
paint. He'd come so high up that hill, he was on the top of that mountain again,
but we hit a limitation. We hit an obstacle. We hit a barrier, and Paul was on his
way down again. "I'm gonna hit the tree. I'm gonna hit the tree." And then hit the
tree.
This is the largest painting ever exhibited in Saskatchewan. It was just displayed
at aka Gallery here in Saskatoon on 20th Street, just came down about a month ago.
Sixty feet by sixteen feet, and about four hundred kilometers of paint on there.
This is Paul painting it. Didn't hit the tree. No limitations. This was guerrilla
warfare 101. Take a perceived weakness and turn it into a strength. Instead of Paul
being limited by his condition or limited to the wheelchair, what if it was the
wheelchair that enabled Paul to make an even greater mark, a bigger mark, a bigger
statement? Well, he was back. He was contributing again, and he hasn't stopped.

And if I can just point out, when you look at his hand, these are purposeful marks.
And it's not much different than if I were holding a brush in my hand and painting.
This is a device that I invented called the Mobile Painting Device. Not a very
colorful name, but it does its job. It attaches to any wheelchair and effectively
transforms it into a giant paintbrush. Now these are just two stories, these are
two people, two individuals. I could tell you dozens and dozens and dozens of them.
This is happening in one studio. This is an adaptable model, and it works. My dream
is to see this happening in every long-term care facility, in every acute care
setting, in every rehabilitation center. What if we had an artist working in all of
these? Lives are changing. Lives are being saved.

We know that art is so much more than just the pretty pictures on the wall. Art as
a vehicle for change. Art as a vehicle for healing. And art as a vehicle for hope.

Thank you.