A mental health consumer spends hours cutting out delicate figures and nature scenes to form a silhouette image. Frank (108 years old) works every day creating pastoral scenes he remembers from his youth. He uses crayons on butcher-block paper. Karen, a resident of Partlow Developmental Center (for persons with mental retardation), draws art deco figures with pink and black tones. These are just a few of the 30 works of art displayed at the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts.

Voice & Vision III is the third in a series of consumer art exhibits sponsored by the Alabama Department of Mental Health and Retardation in partnership with the Montgomery Museum of Fine Arts. The exhibit not only gives consumers an opportunity to display their work in a prestigious museum, but it also sends forth a strong anti-stigma message of “Look at My Ability.”

Recent studies have shown that there is a strong link between creativity and mental illness. A Harvard and University of Toronto research team found that the brains of creative people have low levels of latent inhibition. Latent inhibition refers to the mind’s ability to block out irrelevant stimuli. Creative people, therefore, soak up and observe more impulses from their surrounding environment than the average person. Scientists continue to look for explanations for the correlation between creativity and, in particular, bipolar disorder. Nevertheless, society has benefited from the art produced by generations of creative people with mental illness. For information search “Famous People with Mental Illness” at www.nami.org.

The opportunity to view these unique works will end on October 3, 2004.