The Crowne hosting The Birch Art Show

Sometimes it’s easier for people to express themselves through art than words.

That’s the driving thought behind the The Birch Art Show, which opened June 26 at The Crowne, 107 E. Second St., and continues from 5 to 7 p.m. today.

Artwork on display was created by residents of The Birch, a unit that cares for high acuity youth that’s housed within RiverValley Behavioral Health’s psychiatric hospital for children and adolescents.

“They are adolescents, from 12 to 17 years of age, and it’s to help get them back into a good lifestyle set, routine,” said Catrina Craig, The Crowne’s front desk support navigation specialist, about the work of The Birch program. “One of the things they do is art therapy while they’re there, and June is one of the biggest art months. We just hosted our event for the community and the schools, asking children to put in their artwork.

“We didn’t want our children at the hospital to feel left out, so we asked them to participate and wanted to put their artwork on display, even though we have to keep (names) confidential.”

Karyleen Irizarry, senior director of community health and forensics for RiverValley Behavioral Health and supervisor of The Crowne, which provides a wealth of resources to combat mental-health and substance-abuse issues, said the art is part of the residents’ healing process.

“Art is a gateway to healing,” Irizarry said. “It builds resiliency. Everything that you’ve held in for so long, it gives you an opportunity to share out and express. This also helps the person navigate those kind of behavioral issues that kind of stem from holding everything in.

“So it gives that opportunity to share that out in a productive way and promotes a lot of the healing process.”

Irizarry said the artwork is the perspective of the artist who has experienced challenges in their lives, whether it stems from what’s happening in their family circle, what’s happened to them, or they’ve been impacted by whatever they’re involved in.

“A lot of that is sharing their story,” she said, “telling you through art their perspective on how they’ve seen things or how they’ve experienced things.”

The artwork on display includes everything from animals to skulls to superheroes to faceless heads.

“We say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so when you’re viewing the art, you’re seeing it from your perspective and the perspective of the person who created it and trying to understand what that looks like and what that means to you,” Irizarry said. “For example, with faceless, the person could feel lost. They don’t have a face anymore because they lost their identity. They don’t know where to navigate, who they are, and that could have been from challenges and traumatic events that happened in their childhood. It can mean a lot of things within that.”

With the artwork often exposing patients’ inner feelings, it often provides a pathway for treatment.

“If I see that someone is having that challenge that they don’t know who they are, how can I help them navigate that so they can find themselves?” Irizarry said. “And on the behavioral health side — it helps with the therapeutic side as well — addressing some of that, because now we know from the perspective of the child what those things are. Art brings that about. It offers that opportunity.

“But it also offers that voice that they’ve been maybe holding off so long, haven’t been able to speak it, but can draw it, illustrate it, and can demonstrate what’s going on and how that’s impacted them and maybe demonstrate why the challenges that they’re in the middle of right now stems from that. It offers a lot of perspectives.”

Some of the artwork includes inspirational messages, such as an exceptional drawing of a tiger’s face with the inscription “Our mind is like a tiger: powerful, proud and sometimes in need of quiet to regain its strength. Even a tiger rests in the shade — give your mind permission to pause, too.”

Irizarry said the show provides a great opportunity for the community to better understand the issues others face.

“This can happen with anybody, and community members may not know what it’s like, what that is, because they haven’t experienced it personally, they viewed it differently, or its something they’ve never thought of,” Irizarry said. “This opportunity of displaying art offers that moment where you can kind of come in and see and maybe ask questions, maybe bring up the conversation, and understand just a little more so we’re more trauma informed in how to address that in our community.

“We all want to help the community, but how do we do that if we don’t reach out and understand what the other side is facing and those challenges that they have?”