Children with special needs create poignant and colorful art.
This piece first appeared in The Vermont Standard.
Norm Frates of Woodstock was first inspired to establish Zack’s Place by his son, who is confined to a wheel chair by cerebral palsy. He “wanted a place where Zack could have friends, where he was learning, connecting, participating in things,” says Dail Frates of her husband’s vision, “so I said, let’s do it.” What the couple started five years ago with Zack has become a polestar for people with special needs, a place where their limitations are acknowledged, but so is their spirit.
The enrichment programs offered at Zack’s Place aim to exercise both body and mind. This winter, participants have ice skated, snowshoed, learned about history, sung, and practiced yoga. They love these activities, but many especially enjoy the creative projects orchestrated by Arts Program Director Kyu Hee Bussod. During these last snowy months, for example, the Bach and Mozart have flowed at Zack‘s Place; budding artists swayed to the melodies of violins and flutes as they worked mural sized papers with paints or pastels or colored pencils. “I had them sometimes close their eyes and carefully listen, and then let them go with the movement of the music,” says Bussod, “I think they really do enjoy their own way of being creative and just being free.”
The result of one of the music-imbued exercises is a striking painting, a “rhythm collage” Bussod calls it, with vibrant bursts of blues, reds, yellows, and greens subdued and integrated by the darker meanderings of narrow paint brushes. The piece is among thirty or so in the ArtisTree Gallery’s March exhibit, Spring Forward, that were produced, some individually and some collaboratively, by participants in Zack’s Place art programs. And while the works weren’t all inspired by music, they all reveal the inner resonance of the people who created them.
Bussod and ArtisTree’s Gallery Director Adrian Tans, who has volunteered often at Zack’s Place, developed the idea for the public exhibit. The art that will be on display includes several “rhythm collages” as well as other unique collaborative works. There are Jackson-Pollack-like splatter pieces that the artists created by filling balloons with paint, then bursting them over paper or canvas.
“It’s spontaneous splashes of color,” says Bussod, “We moved the paper around so it has these incredible drip marks.”
Zack’s Place artists will also be showing solo works at ArtisTree. There are, for example, a series of whimsical masks and dolls that the artists crafted by applying paper mache over inflated balloons. They’re embellished with yarn, buttons, and other findings, or dressed in garments fashioned from fabric scraps. Some paper mache, paintings, and other pieces will be available for purchase; Artistree retains a small percentage of the proceeds, the rest goes to Zack’s Place and, in the case of individual works, is shared with the artists. The wildly popular greeting cards that the non-profit began selling in November as part of their start-a-business theme that month will also be for sale at the gallery during the show; the sets contain twelve cards, each with a photo of an art piece created by a Zack’s Place participant.
Back when they started Zack’s Place in 2006, Norm and Dail Frates split their time between working at their full-time jobs and attending to the afternoon enrichment program. Several months later, though, their modest enterprise was the beneficiary of a charity event and they were able to hire a full time director, Anthea LaVallee.
“She took Zack’s Place to a whole new level,” says Dail Frates, “she got fantastic programs, she wrote grants.”
Although LaVallee has since left to care for a newborn, Zack’s Place is still benefiting from her energy and foresight. Now, it serves about 25 regular participants, including people with Down, Asperger’s, and Soto syndromes, autism, and cerebral palsy. “Everybody is welcome,” says Frates, who has taken over as Executive Director; she feels that the center particularly fills the social void that disabled young adults often experience after they complete high school.
While families must provide whatever medical or other support their participants’ conditions require, the programs at Zack’s Place are free of charge. Frates understands that families of the severely disabled must contend with extreme medical costs. “We don’t want people to not be able to participate because we charge a fee,” she says. But that means that Zack’s Place relies on volunteers and fund-raising to keep going. She estimates that over 100 “amazing” volunteers help out, “angels often appear at Zack’s Place,” she adds.
Frates and her eight member Board of Directors have developed imaginative fund raising programs to defray operating expenses. One is the “Dine Around,” a series of nine culinary events, spread through out the year, hosted by local supporters. There is a Saint Patrick’s Day dinner on March 17, for example, priced at $75 per person and planned for 30 guests. Zack’s Place also runs a road race on Thanksgiving morning, the “Turkey Trot.” And for the “Stay at Home Tea” program, Frates mails out the Zack’s Place Annual Report with a tea bag; those who wish to can read about the program over a cup of tea and mail in a donation.
While the exhibit at ArtisTree may also raise some funds, its primary focus is on the artists. “They used the abilities they have to create incredible pieces of art,” says Frates, “it just touches my heart that they can do that and feel so good about what they’ve done and that’s what makes these pieces very special.”