Benefit Booth 1: The Art Station - Healing through Art

"Everyone Needs Art." These are the words of therapist Jane Avila who, with her family, has been quietly working in a 1920s Fire Station for ten years to help clients cope with serious life challenges. Jane and a team of five therapists meet with over 75 clients per week at The Art Station, using art as a tool for communication and self-awareness. 

These are very special clients. They have cancer or other diseases. They are abuse survivors. They are suicide survivors. They are seniors or teens or children who have difficulty talking about a crisis or a behavioral problem in their lives. They struggle with depression or addiction. They are veterans who, as Jane puts it, "are so guarded that they cannot use words to describe their needs." 







When talk alone is not enough, art therapy helps human beings heal. "Our focus is not on the end result of a piece of art," says Peggy Marshall, below right, CEO of the Art Station. "We emphasize the process of working with art alongside an art therapist. The art creates a visual language for people to deal with a crisis in their lives. It opens up the talking and helps to create a vision for the future." Tools are simple: paper, glue, paint, brushes, re-cycled string, fabric, cartons and boxes. The issues are complex.

The Art Station works with clients regardless of ability to pay for services. "We have a sliding scale and no one is turned away for lack of money," says Avila. That's where Peggy Marshall and a growing base of community supporters come in: to raise awareness and financial support for the expanding work of The Art Station.  

The Fort Worth Show of Antiques & Art welcomes The Art Station as one of our two Benefit Booths at the March 5,6,7, 2015 show. Their booth will be the one with all the color! The booth will display vintage doors painted with art to celebrate the Art Station's tenth anniversary theme: Opening Doors. The therapists at the Art Station have created sets of artful note cards for sale, as well as several of the giant folk art paintbrushes that you can see in the corner of this individual therapy room. Get there early to buy one of those!

On each of the three days of the show, The Art Station will invite show goers to "put their mark" on a spontaneous painting that will be created right there at the show and raffled off that day. A selection of antique & art donations from the community will round out offerings in the booth.
All booth proceeds will benefit The Art Station. 





In this former fire truck bay, above, now a beautiful, light-filled studio offers a place for group art therapy. Below left, the top shelf displays "art bras" by breast cancer clients. 
The broken and re-glued pot, below right, represents the process of one person's grief.  

   

Located on Fort Worth's South Side near the Medical Center, The Art Station opens its doors six days a week, year-in, year-out. Help those doors stay open by supporting this Fort Worth blessing, The Art Station --using the power of art to heal. 

For information about the Art Station's first Benefit Golf Tournament on May 11, 2015 and their "Public Figures/Private Artists" annual benefit on Oct. 22, 2015, see www.theartstation.org or meet them at the Fort Worth Show of Antiques & Art, which will soon be here! 

Stay tuned for news on our second 2015 Benefit Booth,

 the Amon Carter Museum of American Art.