Young artists in the making at Dorchester’s Brookview House met up with Michelle Millar Fisher, curator of Contemporary Decorative Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, in July when they went to the museum to see an exhibition of a contemporary collection.

“We talked about what the Youth Advisory Board (YAB) artists – Day, Janiya, Keith, Ramona, and Rose – had done last year and what they were hoping to do this year and figured out ways the museum and myself could be a resource,” Millar Fisher told The Reporter. “We talked about how the artists in the exhibition approached their materials and ideas and how that might inspire the artists.”

As summer drew to a close, the YAB and others hosted an exhibition of their artwork at their Moreland Street Youth Space entitled “Breaking Barriers: Expressions of Hope and Agency.”

Brookview House, which opened in 1990, is a multi-service nonprofit organization for women, children, and youth experiencing homelessness. “It sort of grew organically,” said CEO Deborah Collins.

“What initially started out as a transitional housing program for families experiencing homelessness, domestic violence, substance disuse, just grew out of the need of the residents and participants. Once we had families coming in, we heard from the moms that their kids needed services. Out of that came our youth development program.”

Last summer the five-member board had a similar small-scale art exhibit in which they answered the prompt, “Regarding Substance Use Disorder, what does a healthy community look like to you?” This year, the high school students were invited to explore Substance Use Disorder and the stigma surrounding it through the theme, Breaking Barriers. 

“We know substance misuse has a lot of stigmas and barriers attached to it and we recognize that people learn and absorb information differently,” said Collins. Some people are visual. How people take in information is very powerful. We know that art particularly is also a powerful and transformative work.”

During the summer, 15-year-old Keith developed an appreciation for good art: It isn’t just something that looks nice, but rather something that provokes thoughts and feelings. “When I first saw the art, it just looked like an art piece but once [Millar Fisher] told me the story of it, there was a deeper meaning,” he said.

When they got back to Brookview House, the teens quickly got to work on their own canvases. Inspired by what he saw at the museum, Keith wanted his piece, “The Healing of the Blossom Tree,” to be aesthetically pleasing and emotionally communicative. He wanted to share the message that recovery is possible.

“The tree is the growth of a person who was suffering from Substance Use Disorder,” said Keith. “If you look closely at the skyscrapers, you can see all the details, the spoon, the pill bottles, the needles, the wine glasses.” Like the tree, someone surrounded by substance disuse can still rise above the adversity.

He added: “The background is sort of just the different phases someone goes through when they are going through the withdrawal stage.”

Keith’s older sister, Dranaya Owens, also played a role in the exhibition. The director of community-based services at Brookview, Owens spent the summer mentoring her brother and the other YAB teens. 

“Keith is my little brother. It’s interesting, I never knew he was artistic. It’s good to see him tap into something we don’t see at home,” shared Owens. 

When asked about her work, Owens said, it’s about “trying to get people to understand that sometimes taking a step backward is all you need to see that there is a better route to go.” 

While Owens hopes those who attend the exhibition learn something new about addiction, she and co-mentor Kacie King, Brookview’s Youth Addiction Specialist, are confident the teens learned a lot.

Ramona,15, shared her newfound knowledge saying: “I am more socially aware of what addiction is. I used to have a biased view of what addiction was before this. I just thought drugs are bad, people who use drugs are also bad but now I’m more aware that sometimes it’s not a choice. Sometimes it’s not the people themselves it’s what the drug does to the person.”

For her piece, “Breaking Fall,” Ramona drew two images. One of a broken wine glass with a person falling out of it that she said, “represents once being consumed with alcohol addiction and the falling out.” She added, “The glass breaking is them moving to recovery” while the second drawing of two intertwined hands “signifies support.” 

Right next to Ramona’s drawing was the work of 16-year-old Rose, who split her canvas in two. One half of Rose’s piece shows the negative names and stigma surrounding Substance Use Disorder while the other humanizes those affected. 

Millar Fisher believes Ramona and Rose were able to appreciate these things because of how therapeutic art is.

“One of the things I learned over the last couple of years is sometimes one person sees your work, sometimes ten people see your work, sometimes ten thousand. My hope is artists feel proud of themselves.”