Art offers connection to healing process, say those who create art for recovery

Carole walks the beach collecting bits and pieces of sea shells that, in turn, she molds with intricate detailing into a masterpiece she simply calls “the fish.” Her pallet is the beach itself, and only Carole and perhaps a few beach trekkers will enjoy this lovely work of art before the tide comes into to take “this fish” back out to sea. “I don’t mind losing my fish art,” Carole told Huliq during an early morning interview April 26, “because it’s already done its job of helping me to heal a bit. When I create the fish, it’s a time of forgetting when all my worries slip away.” In turn, famed Brooklyn cartoonist Roz Chast – whose been published in The New Yorker since 1978; while also recently publishing her own book titled “What I Hate: From A to Z” – explains how her art (cartoons and words) has real healing for her. For instance, she writes: “If you are the sort of person who never worries about spontaneous combustion, has fun at carnivals, and thinks that the shape of a hammerhead shark’s head is just fine the way it is, that’s terrific. I’m happy for you, but this (her) book is for everyone else.” Chast's cartoons also carry the message that art can open the door to find both the humor and reasons for many of life’s troubles.

Roz Chast writes in her new bestseller - “What I Hate: From A to Z” – that art has the power to heal lots of stress; while also using her art talents to both draw and then explain those things that tend to anoy or stress her out in this crazy world.

For instance, Chast writes in opening pages of her new book that “for many years I thought that people who claimed to have been abducted by aliens were either desperate attention-seekers or just nuts. Why else would they say that they were spirited out of their beds and through walls and roofs and into a flying saucer? I changed my mind after attending an abductee conference. Maybe they were lunatics, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t onto something.”

Also, the cartoon "art" of Chast asks the question "why?"

In turn, her cartoons that question the "why" of things that make us either crazy and stressed in life, can be better understood, states Chat's cartoons because they expose our fears and stress having mostly being caused by our own worried minds. Thus, we can make a change once we realize that we're doing our own heads in.

Also, on pages 7-8 of her book “What I Hate,” Chast both explains and draws a cartoon about elevators. She writes: “The perfect storm of claustrophobia, acrophobia and agoraphobia” is found in elevators; while stating these thoughts next to funny drawings of people in elevators. “You can get stuck by yourself,” or “You can get stuck with a crowd,” or “You can get stuck with a psycho,” and then “there’s the obvious: getting stuck in an elevator with spiders.”

Chast also fears “general anesthesia,” and to help vent her fears of having to get anesthesia when in hospital, she drew a cartoon of herself with fear on her face stating: “what if you’re lying on the operating table, aware – i.e., watching, hearing and smelling everything? But you’ve been paralyzed by the anesthesia, so you can’t call out? And what if the anti-memory drug that is part of your anesthesia cocktail then erases this experience? Except it’s not really erased. It’s just been buried really deeply, like a ticking time bomb.”

At the end of the day, “we’re all sort of sitting with a ticking time bomb,” adds Carole while walking the Florence, Oregon, beach collecting sea shells to create more of her “fish art.” This accidental artist then quips: “The time bomb that Roz Chast is talking about is “stress,” and we all have it and need to deal with it. I think art is one good way to help rid yourself of stress and those worries in your life.”