Clean and Sober Streets Art Workshops
You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
Maya Angelou
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You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.
Maya Angelou
With the continuing support from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, the CASSA Arts Workshop under the direction of Ruth Stenstrom, ATR-BC, is entering into its 27t year of providing arts services for participants of Clean & Sober Streets. This year the Workshop is being assisted by two George Washington University graduate art therapy interns – Kiyoko Timmons and Amanda Wise.
With the continuing support from the DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities, the CASSA Arts Workshop under the direction of Ruth Stenstrom, ATR-BC, is entering into its 27t year of providing arts services for participants of Clean & Sober Streets. This year the Workshop is being assisted by two George Washington University graduate art therapy interns – Kiyoko Timmons and Amanda Wise.
Along with the arts program, participants have gone on museum trips to the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the National Portrait Gallery, the National Gallery of Art, the Sackler Gallery of Art, the Hirshhorn Gallery, the newly-re-opened Renwick Gallery “Wonder” exhibit, the African Art Museum, the American Indian Museum, the Botanical Gardens, and the Smithsonian Folklife Festival.
In December, examples of the fused glass program were displayed at a Holiday Craft Show at the National Geographic headquarters. On July 7, 2016, our artwork was displayed at the American Art Therapy Association National Conference in Baltimore. Ruth Stenstrom was chosen the focus on the history of her work with the program.
The CASSA Arts Workshop is funded in part by the D.C. Commission on the Arts & Humanities, an agency supported in part by the National Endowment for the Arts. Under the direction of its founder, A TR-BC, art therapist, visual artist, and art teacher, the workshop is currently assisted by art therapist Nisha Tracy, LPC, ATR, and two graduate art therapy interns from George Washington University, Anna Hailstone, and Carly Schepacarter.
While many of their images reflect issues of recovery and the dangers of substance abuse, most celebrate the simple joys of life-nature, flowers, landscapes, animals, abstract designs, and portraits of loved ones and celebrities.
Many explore cultural diversity while others have worked with color and design to give expression to feelings, spirituality, and ideas. Their art has been linked to recovery and the community, as CASSA participants have shared their images with friends and family and in exhibits throughout Washington, DC, and on the Internet.
Some participants such as William Larkins have continued to pursue work in the fine arts. In partnership with the George Vashington University Graduate Program in Art Therapy, 26 art therapy interns have received training and assisted the workshop since 2002.
In 1992 the CASSA Arts Workshop program benefitted from an artistic residency Sylvia Snowdon as a part of a community outreach program of the Washington Museum for Women in the Arts.
CASSA is supported in part with funds, from DC Commission on the Arts & Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Artists from CASSA have exhibited locally at:
Artists from CASSA have exhibited locally at:
• The Martin Luther King Memorial Library
• The Children’s National Medical Center
• The Congressional offices of Honorable Eleanor Holmes Norton
• Ingleside at Rock Creek
• Clean & Sober Streets, Inc.
• Federal City Recovery residences
• American Art Therapy Association National Conference
• National Geographic Holiday Craft Fair
