WOUNDED HEALERS FOR POST-PANDEMIC TIMES Field Guide to a Crisis at Morris Graves and Old Town Ink Lab

L.L. Kessner

Michelle M. Miller did her first acrylic paint pour in the fall of 2019. A self-described agoraphobic at the time, Miller says she almost never left her home as a result of fear. When a friend invited her to see and make some art however, she decided to try. Doing so, she met Eureka-based socially engaged artist Justin M. Maxon and started a transformative artistic journey through recovery, some of the fruit of which is on view at the Field Guide to a Crisis exhibit at the Morris Graves Museum of Art.

Maxon, a lecturer in Art and Film at Cal Poly Humboldt, is co-creator of Field Guide to a Crisis, an ongoing, multi-aspect project that challenges conventional notions of authority by providing structure and resources for members of the addiction recovery community to become “educators in resiliency.” Maxon himself is 20 years clean and wanted to make art that could flip common negative perceptions about individuals suffering from substance-use disorder. He developed a project that upends the relationship between student and teacher, calls into question ingrained ideas about who is an expert and disrupts some of the stigma around addiction.

A native of Eureka and Hoopa, Maxon was living in Eureka when the pandemic hit. He observed that the isolation and the interruptions of community and support systems the general public was experiencing were all-too-familiar conditions for members of the recovery community, who are often cut off from their families and cast out from mainstream society. To Maxon, these individuals were experts in navigating the negative conditions that were a new reality for much of the public. Who better to educate people on how to get through? Maxon, along with project co-conceptualizer Marina Lopez, imagined that, with the right support, members of the recovery community could teach their survival skills to the public. In so doing, they would position themselves in roles of authority, as citizens of value, and perhaps shift some common opinions about those with histories of addiction.

Maxon began a journalism career on the East Coast after college. He focused on long-format documentary work that investigated the white gaze, environmental racism and unsolved murder. Maxon was interested in organizing community but realized that he didn’t have the resources or vocabulary to do, so he went back to school for a master’s of fine arts degree in art and social practice at Portland State University. He decided to concentrate on community building and social justice efforts in the realm of art because, he says, more than other disciplines, art allows for “multiple entry points” and the possibility of disrupting power systems. “Any structure,” Maxon sates, “is possible within an art context.”

In Maxon’s own recovery from addiction, the support and guidance of a mentor were integral. Rosendo Medina, an Apache elder and then caseworker for the now defunct Arcata Endeavor social services program, saw and encouraged strengths in Maxon, who ultimately became a chosen son. Maxon articulates his efforts to support the recovery community as a way to carry on Medina’s legacy. Through Field Guide, he aims to help participants identify hidden skills they can then pass on to others, continuing a chain of mutually beneficial mentorship.

Even before the pandemic, Maxon was aware there were gaps in resources for people working to overcome addiction, who often move from treatment centers to sober living houses and can feel somewhat rudderless transitioning out of intuitional living afterward. Community-based recovery fellowships like Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous can bridge this gap. At the very beginning of the pandemic, AA and NA meetings were immediately available on Zoom, but not all who had previously availed themselves of these recourses made the adjustment to online meetings. Maxon saw how the disruption of the day-today structures of recovery lifestyles were having a detrimental effect on recovering addicts. He thought group artwork could be a way to build community within recovery houses during the reconfiguration of their support systems. Through National Geographic and Humboldt Area Foundation grants, Maxon was able to pay voluntary participants as contributing artists and help them continue to be (or become) self-supporting, and to foster self-confidence and a sense of personal accomplishment.

Field Guide to a Crisis, which was sponsored by Cooperation Humboldt and is now a Dreammaker project of the Ink People, evolved through many revisions with the financial support of the California Arts Council and the Center for Photographic Art, in addition to The National Geographic Society and the Humboldt Area Foundation. While it began with the offering of creative prompts to residents of sober living houses in the area to encourage community during the pandemic, it developed into a process that fosters the abilities of residents to figure who they are and who they want to be, utilizing storytelling as a way to generate a vividness in being present. In the current formulation of Field Guide, participants identify skills they have learned in their recovery that can be beneficial to larger communities. Working collaboratively and with Maxon’s facilitation, they draft lesson plans to transfer their beneficial knowledge to others, to become educators in resiliency. Maxon envisions the whole program as a kind of “alternative school” that allows people to participate for the duration, first as students, then as instructors. He hopes the next steps will include employment support for those in recovery.

At the Morris Graves Museum of Art on Saturday, May 6, Maxon and a few Field Guide educators in resiliency, including Michelle M. Miller, presented their lessons to a public audience. Each of the participants introduced themselves and stated a demarcation of sober time. One at a time, they told refined stories of their experiences through addiction and recovery. Several noted transformative and healing effects of the examination of their histories through the process of telling their stories. Then, with the use of projected PowerPoint slide images and text, they introduced and explained their survival skills.

Upstairs in the Knight Gallery, a selection of Field Guide artworks were on view. The work included drawings, photographs and collages by participants, most of which examined their past traumas and explored subjective experiences of addiction. There were also several stylized color posters showcasing line illustrations of specific survival skills by Maxon and Matthew Contros, and paperback books available with illustrations, project descriptions, skills and exercises printed by

Brown Printing in Oregon.

Produced with the help of Tibora Bea, the May 6 event covered: Tackling Resentments, Responding on the Fly and Synchronicity. Miller, who now describes herself as living “one day at a time” in recovery, lectured on the healing effects of random acts of kindness.

Miller says she had “tried every anti-depressant on the market” and nothing worked. What she discovered did work was “getting outside of self.” Miller notes she no longer needs anti-depressants. She believes non-addicts can benefit similarly from acting selflessly. “Any crisis requires skills to cope,” she explains. “People might not learn [these skills] at home or in school or have a habit [like addiction] that requires them to change their behavior” to help others. But they can learn from the experiences and efforts of people in recovery.

Miller operates a hub within the alternative econ-

Continued on next page »