Group Teaches Troubled Youths to Communicate Through the Arts

Art therapist Megan Barr asked each of six teenage boys seated around a table to draw a picture of something they were thankful for.

One boy drew a pair of talking stick figures and explained he was grateful for learning how to express his feelings since arriving at the Highland Park campus of Optimist Youth Homes & Family Services, a nonprofit that helps troubled youths.

“How did you express your feelings in the past?” Barr asked.

“By robbing people,” the boy responded. “Because I was mad.”

Optimist officials received a $12,000 grant from the Los Angeles Times Holiday Campaign, which raises money for nonprofit agencies in Ventura, Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties. The group used the money to purchase supplies and equipment for its cultural arts program, which teaches kids to express their feelings via art, dance and music.

Communications skills necessary to conduct more traditional forms of therapy -- such as a child revealing his or her problems to a therapist -- are foreign to many of the kids who arrive at Optimist, according to Barr.

“They’ve been told: ‘Don’t cry,’ ‘I don’t care how you feel,’ ‘You’re not important,’ ” Barr said. “Those are the messages they’ve received.”

Unable to discuss their problems, some children act out, Barr explained.

During a recent session, Barr recalled a boy making a clay sculpture of a beast with horns, a pocked face and slashes on its cheeks, which the youth titled, “Gremlin.” He explained that his mother often was not around to prepare food for him and that he would get angry when he was hungry.

“That’s the beauty about art,” Barr said. “You can project your feelings onto it.”

Optimist officials recently broke ground on a 21,200-square-foot building for which they need to raise an additional $1.4 million. The building will contain classrooms, a multimedia library, community meeting space, computer lab and the cultural arts program.

Barr currently conducts her “journal group” in a garage that has been converted into a classroom.

Each week about 25 students attend her art therapy sessions. Optimist officials annually serve nearly 600 children, mostly teenagers, by providing them with housing, schooling and therapy, among other programs.

“The kids come from horrendous backgrounds,” said Sil Orlando, the group’s executive director. “They come from families with extreme violence.”

Perhaps as a result, Orlando said it is not uncommon in art therapy sessions for students to make masks decorated with blood or guts, or to use a family painting to illustrate their feelings of isolation.

“Often in the far corner will be [the child],” Orlando said. “He’s the ostracized black sheep of the family.”

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