"The dignity of the artist lies in his duty of keeping awake the sense of wonder in the world."— Marc Chagall
The proliferation of hues and shapes at the Cummer Museum of Art & Gardens along the St. Johns River in Jacksonville, FL, is the never-to-be “finished” work of the Cummer family art collection that kept growing. Today, the Cummer is noted for 6,000 American and European paintings, scenic and peaceful historic gardens, well-known collection of Meissen porcelain, and award-winning art education center.
It’s where more than 2,500 special-needs elementary school students anticipate molding clay tea cups, designing their own collage, and creating a large mural. Why? Because everyone in the Exceptional Student Education programs in Duval (Jacksonville), St. Johns, and Clay County public schools gets invited to the annual VSA arts festival in Jacksonville.
“There are people who actually take vacation days to volunteer year after year at the festival,” said Chrys Yates, Cummer’s associate director of education. “We couldn’t conduct the festival without the huge efforts of the fantastic volunteers, including some students.”
Eight stations Formerly known as Very Special Arts, the program is affiliated with the national nonprofit group that seeks to allow all students, regardless of ability, to experience the arts. A Cummer official said Jacksonville’s event is now a model for VSA festivals nationally, and is the only one that has allowed more than 2,000 special-needs children to participate in art programs in the galleries of a museum.
The students pass through eight art stations at the Cummer and are able to create interactive art projects, view original works, listen to live musicians and storytellers, and enjoy art appreciation. They’re assisted by more than 1,200 volunteers from Merrill Lynch, Brooks Rehabilitation, Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Florida, Rink Design Group Inc., and others.
The Cummer provides a home to various VSA programs that yield hands-on experiences for children and adults each year. There’s something else: Art Education for the Blind (AEB) had been hoping to develop guidelines for employment of people with vision loss in the arts when they consulted with the Cummer’s executive director. To their surprise, they learned the museum had a part-time visually-impaired employee who was recruiting high school and college interns with visual impairments for summer jobs.
Meanwhile, Lori Guadagno is reminded daily that her brother Richard was lost on Sept. 11, 2001. Still, she and her cousin, Lisa Landwirth Ussery, conceived an arts program to bring joy to some very ill children and their families. At the same time, it aids Lori’s own emotional healing.
Overpowered terroristsRichard Guadagno, 2½ years younger than Lori, graduated from Rutgers University in New Jersey in 1985 and was a biologist for the New Jersey Division of Fish and Wildlife. Later, he joined the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and for 17 years was a biologist and wildlife inspector at wildlife refuges nationally, becoming manager of the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge in northern California. Lori lived in Seattle for 10 years while her brother worked at a wildlife refuge in Oregon. They were the “West Coast branch of the family,” she says.
On Sept. 11, Richard boarded United Flight 93 at Newark Airport to return to California after celebrating his grandmother’s 100th birthday with the family. When the terrorists hijacked the plane and aimed it at Washington, the 33 passengers joined the seven-member crew and overpowered the terrorists, and the plane crashed near Shanksville, Pa. Lori is convinced Richard died a hero. He had a law enforcement background, noted by Rep. Mike Thompson (D-Calif.) when he introduced a bill passed by Congress naming a visitors center at Humboldt Bay after Richard. That law enforcement background “would have aided him in his convictions and desire to prevent an even greater tragedy,” Rep. Thompson said.
Over the past 4½ years, Ussery estimates more than 7,500 children have participated in their program with the motto “Healing children’s bodies and spirits through art.” Lori is the artistic half of Art with a Heart for Children, at Wolfson Children’s Hospital and Nemours Children’s Clinic, both in Jacksonville. It gives sick and injured children a personalized art experience. Ussery is the administrative half of the duo.
Dream comes true More like sisters than cousins, Guadagno says she and Ussery always dreamed of being part of something together that improved the lives of others. While their mothers are sisters, Guadagno was raised in a close Italian-American family near Trenton, N.J. Ussery grew up the daughter of Nazi prison camp survivor Henry Landwirth, who came to the U.S. with $20, but became a prosperous hotelier in Florida.
The arts program was spread over the palette in the spring of 2001. Guadagno, with a fine arts degree from New Jersey’s Rutgers University, was working at a Vermont school with special-needs children. She would let them paint or draw, and “I saw that emotionally it worked,” she notes.
Ussery asserts Art with a Heart “embraces sick or injured children with a personalized art experience that enhances the healing process and brings joy and hope to patients and their families.” It’s a nonprofit program that has provided an opportunity for more than 7,500 hospitalized children in Jacksonville to express themselves creatively in a supportive environment, to regain a sense of control taken away from them by their illness. The Art Cart and artists travel to the patients’ floors of Wolfson Children’s Hospital and Nemours Children’s Clinic five days a week, armed with paints, brushes, pastels, and an unlimited supply of paper. Temporary art studios are set up in children’s rooms (bedside) the Dialysis Unit, Pediatric Intensive Care, the Behavioral Health Unit, and various playrooms throughout the hospital.
Never, everGuadagno is the director of arts for Art with a Heart; she became a freelance artist so she could develop her skill in decorative finishes and mural painting. In Seattle she focused on fabric painting, floor cloths, clothing, and wallpaper, and she relished a successful one-woman show at the Bell Gallery.
In Vermont, she became a special education assistant for teens at a local high school. Ussery is board chair and serves as president of the Fanny Landwirth Foundation, a private family foundation formed in 1986 to focus on high-risk youth and families. A graduate of Mercer University, she has been involved in philanthropy since 1983, and has served on the boards of Baptist Health Foundation, Dignity-U-Wear Inc., and the Monique Burr Foundation for Children.
Guadagno laughs when people discuss closure. She exclaims, “There will never, ever be closure for me. I struggle every day to find a way to live with it in a positive way.” Rather than “live on the dark side, the survivor in me makes me step into the light,” and she believes her work with the art program is a gift. “That’s the way the universe paid me back,” she maintains, because working with children facing possible death is a “wake-up call” to the transformative power of art. She paints a line between Flight 93 and the battle young patients and their parents face every day.
Like a surreal painting, “I see the two fitting hand in hand,” Guadagno muses. “No child, no family, should have to face this.” These fabulous kids have opened their hearts to us, and it takes courage at this time in their lives when they are so vulnerable.”
For some of the children, what they paint or draw is their last stroke in this world, and for their parents it will forever remain a masterpiece.
In his wheelchair in Jacksonville, FL, Herb Drill heads Able Me & Associates. His e-mail address is herbdrill@ableme.com. He has Muscular Dystrophy.
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