Chicago Tribune - April 2, 2002
Jon Anderson, Tribune staff reporter

There was humor.

"Early on, reservations were proposed to isolate us from you. Could we have built casinos?" wondered one drawing, part of a juried show of works by individuals whose lives have been touched by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.

There was poignancy, in a handcrafted wooden box with an etched glass top, like a see-in coffin.

Titled "Bernard's Pen Collection," it contained 15 ballpoint pens, laid out in the shape of a fan. Each one carried the logo of the manufacturer of a drug considered helpful in battling what has become a worldwide scourge.

Other works dealt with such themes as "reforming life," "loss and hope" and "midnight demons/daylight's relief," in an exhibition that will run until April 28 at Inclusion Arts, at 6932 N. Glenwood Ave. What they reflected were ambiguities of life that have fascinated the afternoon's lecturer, Don Seiden, professor emeritus at the School of the Art Institute.

"I was in this field before there was a field," Seiden began, going back 40 years to his early days as a sculptor, an art teacher--and a part-time worker in the psychiatric wing of Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke's Medical Center.

There he first saw the healing benefits of encouraging patients to express themselves in art, a process that allowed them to vent inner conflicts, bring a measure of order to life, accept dualities, reach out to others.

"I have become more and more convinced that if anything in the world speaks to the joy of living, or gives a reason for living, it is the making of art," he said, urging his audience to look around at the gallery works. All the art is done by clients of BEHIV, a support agency located next door that seeks a better existence for people with HIV and AIDS.

"These people are in danger--all the time," Seiden said. "Why do they make art? Why not commit suicide?"

Art therapy, he suggested, "takes into account the need to make meaning of one's whole life experience." Isolation, a source of much pain, is escaped by entering into a community that, through art, shares information.

That was the message Seiden carried back to his superiors at the School of the Art Institute years ago, eventually persuading them to set up a master's degree program in art therapy. Now a respected elder in a growing discipline, Seiden helped train many of the 6,000 art therapists now practicing in medical and community settings across the country.

His mission, then and now, is to encourage patients to make art--as they see it.

"The world is so complicated, confused. It's angry. Joyful. There are multiple meanings to everything. Today's world presents the same problems that have gone on throughout history. Art helps us tolerate ambiguity," he said.

Therapy, he observed, has been a component of art ever since the days of cave paintings, when hunters defused their fear of wild animals by capturing their images in pictures, bringing about a measure of control.

It could even help now in the Middle East, he suggested.

"If they could sit down at peace talks and externalize some of their emotions, they'd save us all a lot of trouble," he said, as a number of heads nodded in agreement.
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