West Newsmagazine 11-14-18

16 I COVER STORY I
November 14, 2018
WEST NEWSMAGAZINE
@WESTNEWSMAG
WESTNEWSMAGAZINE.COM
The Art of Sobriety
Nonprofit helps teens, young adults
creatively battle addiction
By JESSICA MESZAROS
Trading drugs and alcohol for paintbrushes
and musical instruments – that’s
what one local organization is encouraging
in its fight to stem the tide of teenage substance
abuse and self-harm.
Kathie Thomas, a Chesterfield resident
and innovation business consultant, is
the founder and president of Hope Creates.
The nonprofit arts program was created
to help local teens and young adults
obtain sobriety and recovery by providing
them with creative opportunities, including
painting, improvisational theater, tie-dye,
pottery, fiber artistry, music and more.
“If you’re going to take drugs, cutting or
alcohol away from a kid, and that’s the only
thing that made them feel like they had any
control over their life or their world or their
pain, then you have to give them something
back,” Thomas said.
Through Hope Creates, teens and young
adults create original works of art, receive
one-on-one coaching and then participate
in gallery shows and concerts across the
community. Recently, the nonprofit held
its third annual “Don’t Quit Before The
Miracle: An Expressive Arts Exhibition”
on Oct. 21 at .ZACK, the Kranzberg Arts
Foundation’s multi-use arts facility.
Each participant must be one year sober
to showcase their work – though they can
participate in creation events at any time
during their sobriety. Pieces at the exhibition
are priced for individual sale with the funds
going toward future Hope Creates events.
“It’s a program that gives kids experience
as both artists and entrepreneurs,” Thomas
said. “It pretty much pays for itself, but the
goal isn’t so much the revenue generation
as it is the programming, the experiences
and the realizations of self-worth, value
and a sense of pride.”
The positive feedback doesn’t just come
from exhibition attendees.
Musician and artist Adam D. returned to
the St. Louis area from Colorado when he
was about three months sober. He originally
participated in the creation of physical art
but now he plays music and has performed
concerts at multiple Hope Creates events.
Most recently, he played original music at
a 2018 National Council for Alcohol and
Drug Abuse [NCADA] event in which
Hopes Creates participated.
“With getting sober, the biggest thing is
that if you’re not having more fun being
sober than you were when you were using,
you’re usually not going to stay sober, and
that’s what Hope Creates has really done
for me,” Adam said. “It’s given me a place
to express my music, and have a place and
outlet for that. It’s been really cool because,
for my entire life, I’ve wanted to do something
with my music. Now, I’m getting
more and more opportunities with Hope
Creates, and at the same time, helping to
support the sober community.”
According to Thomas, 36 artists participated
in the 2019 exhibition. She said their
stories are “tremendous.”
Pieces from the “Don’t Quit Before The
Miracle: An Expressive Arts Exhibition” in
2017 at .ZACK [Hope Creates photo]
“Grandmothers were there saying, ‘I’m
so proud of my grandson, and all these
kids,’” Thomas shared. “One young man
said he never thought he’d be good at photography,
because he was into sports, and
then once he got into drugs, all he cared
about was drugs. Now, he’s a photographer
and a painter and really thriving.”
To provide structured time in which
the artists create their art pieces, practice
music and prepare for upcoming exhibitions,
Hope Creates hosts community creation
events. The program had 17 creation
events and six gallery exhibitions last year
and also provided recovery community art
projects, art creation workshop opportunities,
dedicated studio time, internships and
mentoring programs for expressive arts
and entrepreneurialism.
Lexy A., who has been sober since October
2015, has been involved with Hope Creates
for about a year. She heard about the program
in one of her art classes at her school,
where she
is majoring
in environmental
science
and minoring in
ceramic pottery.
“Ever since then,
I’ve been going to
the community creation
events,” Lexy said. “I’ve
even been able to hold a leadership
role in teaching one of the
community creation events and
served as a summer intern for the
organization.
“I was able to start learning the business
side of a nonprofit entity and really just
help out with setting up these exhibits and
kind of being a facilitator of, basically, a
nonprofit that runs on donations, setting up
a database in order to reach out to people,
things like that,” she said of her internship.
An artist with
Hope Creates makes
a piece at a community
creation event in Overland.
[Hope Creates photo]
Creating hope
“It’s personal,” Thomas said of her desire
to found Hope Creates. “One of my kids is
a recovering addict.”
During those helpless days of her daughter’s
addiction, Thomas turned toward art as
a coping mechanism for herself; later, she
saw the benefits of it for others.
“I’m a graphic designer and innovation
consultant, so art is part of who I
am,” Thomas said. “I turned to it. I started
making large, black and white landscapes
or abstract collages just to vent and to feel
like I had control over something. It was
therapeutic, it was meditative, and at the
end, there was something beautiful that
was some kind of expression of what I was
feeling – but it wasn’t toxic anymore.
“Creation, literally, is the opposite of
self-destruction ... creation can be clean
and sober and enjoyable.”
Most of the artists in the Hope Creates
program agree with Thomas. The
program has a 93-percent success rate
compared to a national success rate of
15 percent for similar programs. Thomas
credits both the process of creating
something meaningful and the support of
the community.
“You can’t stay sober alone,” Lexy said.
“Isolation is what takes us back out there
into wanting to drink and use, because we
don’t feel like we’re a part of something.
With Hopes Creates, we do feel like we’re
part of something. And in having that
cohesive network, there’s always somebody
I can turn to, and I feel comfortable
talking about my problems to these
people.”
According to the NCADA, a recordbreaking
760 people died as the result of
opioid abuse in the St. Louis region in
2017.
“People don’t know that in 2016 we lost
more people than we lost in the 10-year
Vietnam War,” Thomas said of opioid
deaths. “People don’t know that in 2017
we lost 24 times the number of people we
lost on 9/11, for which we went to war. This
year, we’re going to lose 76,600 people or
more; we could fill the [Enterprise Center]
four times with the bodies.
“We lose two [people] in St. Louis every
single day, and we lose 200 in the United
States every single day ... The community
needs to know.”
Lexy said the goal of Hope Creates
events is to create a mind-shift about the
stigma of addiction.
“The stigma about people suffering from
addiction is that they’re on the fringe of
society and that they don’t have anything
else to offer. Unless someone has somebody
who is close to them who is dealing
with such a thing, most people view it as,
‘they have nothing to offer,’” Lexy said. “I
think because we have these galleries and
we are showing these beautiful pieces of
art and we’re able to tell people our stories,
that definitely induces a mind shift
and changes the way the community views
people like us.”
“The opposite of addiction isn’t sobriety,”
Thomas said. “Sobriety is a necessity …
The opposite of addiction is community. If
you feel that you are connected to people
who will give you unconditional love and
accountability, and really get you and care
about you, don’t enable you and really support
you, that is what makes sobriety stick
in most cases.”
For more information or to donate to
Hope Creates, visit hopecreates.org.