A Window Into Isolation Painted Into Corner By Mental Illness, Artists Break Free

Pills now control Russell Hansen’s bipolar disorder.

The manic, murderous rages have disappeared. His career is taking off and he’s at peace.

His life wasn’t always so serene. He first tried suicide at age 5. He later killed a man with a kitchen knife and spent 20 years behind prison walls in Walla Walla, part of it in solitary confinement.

Throughout his prison term, before his disorder was diagnosed and medicated, art saved him.

It calmed him, kept the rage under control. He sketched portraits of Native Americans, eagles, bikers, thugs.

His work was so popular the warden bought him supplies. After his release, his art helped him keep equilibrium, even during a short period of homelessness.

Hansen’s sketches, along with the work of 31 other mentally ill artists, is on display through May in the Chase Gallery at Spokane City Hall.

The exhibit, which opens today, is intended to be a mirror into the insular world of mental illness, said organizers Ralph Busch of the city arts department and Edie Rice-Sauer, a social worker with the county’s mental health division.

Some works - such as Megan Pittack’s watercolor of a disintegrating face, titled “Seattle Rain” - give the public a glimpse at the tortured isolation of some mentally ill people.

And displaying their work forces some artists to open up.

Just as artists have long traversed economic classes - from seedy bars to high society - these artists are finding they can leap beyond the isolation into public acceptance, Busch said.

“There’s a new mobility they’re finding in art,” Rice-Sauer said.

Busch said several artists were “discovered” at last year’s show. Some are now regularly displaying at a local gallery. He praises Sara Matson’s “On the Other Side of the World” as a piece bordering on high art.

Hansen, too, emerged as an artist. A benefactor is helping him make prints of at least 20 sketches. He, too, is slated for a gallery display.

Hansen gained formal art training at the Cornish Art Institute in Seattle, his hometown.

He spent three years, starting in 1964, in San Francisco during the hippie movement, then returned to work with his father as a financial analyst in Seattle.

“I went straight. I guess that’s what all the hippies did,” said Hansen, 60, who signs his work “Buffalo.”

Hansen’s life, which included raising two children alone, suddenly disintegrated in 1970, when a neighbor’s party angered him.

He says he doesn’t remember stabbing a neighbor to death. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and spent the next 20 years in prison.

He sketched in earnest, particularly during a two-year stretch in solitary confinement for assaulting a guard.

The violence, Hansen said, was a symptom of his undiagnosed bipolar condition. “I raged all my life,” he said.

After release, he again fell on hard times, eventually spending time at the Union Gospel Mission.

Three years ago, a Spokane Mental Health therapist, John Gordon, spotted the symptoms and recommended medication. He’s had no “rages” since.

Since then, he’s been reunited with his son, Canaan, with whom he lost touch during his prison years. His new, medicated peace allowed him to crank out a series of sketches of Native American themes, the most productive time of his life.

“Art is itself another medicine,” said Hansen.

RECEPTION A reception for the artists of the “Art-In-Me” exhibit will be held May 11 at Spokane’s Chase Gallery from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. A poetry reading featuring the work of the mentally ill will be held May 21 at 7 p.m. in the City Council chambers.