Spring – time when creative work wrought in winter’s dark comes to light for all to see…
Jonathon Mattoon and George Karabakakis outside the HCRS office in Brattleboro.
Health Care and Rehabilitation Services (HCRS) Spring Art Show is entitled ‘Celebrating the Synergy of Art & Creativity on Wellness.’ This 4th annual show is back after a two year Covid hiatus, opening Friday April 7, 2023 and extending throughout the month at 118 Elliot.
Work from 50 artists, all clients and staff members of an agency at the front lines of mental health and substance use treatment in southern Vermont, poignantly depicts the fundamental connection between creative expression and wellness while disassembling the notion of hierarchy between ‘client’ and ‘caregiver.’
Blurring that line underscores an ethos CEO George Karabakakis, PhD seems to successfully cultivate within HCRS, something he calls the ‘interconnectedness and mutuality’ between clients and staff. ‘We’re all bound by our shared humanity,” he says.
Karabakakis knows first-hand the challenges facing our community and sees how creative expression can play a transformative role. “Practicing art and developing creativity really gives people a sense of connection and helps them emotionally navigate their journey,” he says. (See more on Karabakakis below).
Jonathan Mattoon, a HCRS Case Manager for 10 years who’s worked in the arts his entire life, offers art wellness programming for people he supports. He coordinates the annual show.
“Art can be a very powerful tool for self-discovery and growth,” Mattoon says. “The opportunity for these artists to display their work is one more step in achieving wellness and sharing with the community.”
Mattoon explains that art and creative expression can be used as a means to individual self-discovery and self-reflection. “It can pull experiences or emotions out of us in a different way than traditional talk therapies,” Mattoon explained.
“Creativity has the potential to re-wire thought patterns, changing the “default” thought patterns to give a person the potential to look at a situation with a fresh perspective,” Mattoon says.
“It is vital we keep art in our communities because art can connect people to each other and help us arrive at solutions we might have missed without it.”
~ Jonathan Mattoon, Caseworker and Coordinator of Spring Art Show
Jonathan Mattoon leading an art class, and his own painting in the show ‘The Beginning of Something Great’
HCRS client groups use visual art including multimedia projects, dance,/movement, writing, storytelling, poetry, acting, music, and everything one would think of as art or creative expression paired with exploring art outside of the agency.
Staff can take clients to, for instance, the River Gallery School or the Theater Adventure Program (TAP), where they can tap into that part of themselves, make friends and build community connections as part of their paid services.
HCRS has an after school silk screening business in an unused storefront across from Brooks Library. Summer therapeutic art programs for youth, such as Mollie Burke’s ‘Art in the Neighborhood’ in Brattleboro are another part of the mix.
‘It’s well documented that idle time in early substance and mental health recovery can increase the chances for relapse. Keeping busy and engaged may expedite an individual’s recovery process,” Mattoon says.
“The goal is to use creative expression to explore who we are as individuals, who we want to become moving forward, and who we are in the community,” Mattoon says.
Celebrate art and community at the opening reception Friday, April 7, from 5:30 to 8:30 pm, featuring live music performed by Shishka Bob and Gary, both from the HCRS community. Light refreshments will be served.
View the artwork during the following open hours at 118 Elliot: Fridays (April 14 & 21) 3:00-7:00 pm, Saturdays (April 8, 15, & 22) 12:00-4:00 pm, and Sundays (April 9, 16, & 23) 12:00-4:00 pm.
HOLDING THE CENTER THERE’S GEORGE KARABAKAKIS
George Karabakakis, Health Care and Rehabilitation Services CEO
It takes passion and a strong ethos to run an organization that administers to those struggling most within a society where poverty is on the rise and human needs are insufficiently funded.
George Karabakakis started at HCRS as a clinician 29 years ago. As CEO for the past nine years, he oversees a $51 million budget that serves more than 4500 individuals annually and leads, directs and works to retain more than 500 employees .
What’s kept him at it for almost 30 years? A sense of humility in the face of ‘the human condition’ and a mission to do better on what he terms “a work in progress.” His commitment is heavily informed, perhaps more than his PhD in Clinical Psychology, by many years traveling as a younger person across the entire world. His experiences allowed him to see through the brilliant multiplicity of cultural expression to the essential characteristics we share as human beings.
“The people we serve can be any one of us,” Karabakakis says. “Seeing our staff day-in, day-out, helping people find their way, rekindling hope, transforming lives, seeing the courage of the people we serve – it’s just phenomenal.”
Prioritizing the well-being of staff and approaching HCRS as one big, beautiful community where staff and clients are growing everyday may help counter the very real burnout that occurs in the profession.
Since taking the lead at HCRS 10 years ago, Karabakakis says HCRS instituted a peer-support program that today stands-out statewide.
But he admits funding is a struggle because the funding HCRS gets from mainly Medicaid (about 90% of its total funding) is simply not enough to pay people what they deserve for the necessary work they do. And this has resulted in a serious staffing crisis since the start of the pandemic.
Karabakakis said the challenges people face have risen dramatically in the years he’s been at HCRS. “Our system just does not provide adequate resources for the basic housing, health care and employment people require. Many crises would be avoided if our society would prioritize preventative services and people’s basic needs.”
President John F. Kennedy helped pass the 1963 Community Mental Health Center Act, which shifted the paradigm of care nationally from institutional models to more community-based service delivery. “Folks with developmental challenges and mental problems were involuntarily sent to asylums and lost their rights,” Karabakakis says. Medicaid didn’t start funding such services until 1973.
Things are different today. “We try to focus not on the deficits but on peoples’ strengths and developing trust to form healing relationships …We focus on building hope and creating a sense of connection to the communities they know.”
IN OTHER WORDS
The internal human
interplay
Back n forth
between
shadow and illumination
fuels great energy
fuels great chaos
fuels great art.
‘Great art’ means
art that heals
both maker
and some who see.
Making art
together
magnifies that benefit.
Sharing work wider
multiplies
an even greater good,
improving
health and wellness
of whole communities.