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An art show and fundraiser at Hotel Tides on August 3 will showcase pieces created by Center clients during a 13-week creativity workshop.

The workshop, meant to foster self-awareness and a sense of well-being, utilized art as a segue to more open verbal communication.

Local artist Steven Brunner organized the workshop and led the group as the class’s creative adviser with co-facilitator Victoria Perry. Perry started working with watercolors herself a few years ago but has a background in psychotherapy. The two provide support and guidance to the six Center clients that signed up.

Brunner sought to make the workshop’s atmosphere  as comfortable and safe as possible, to allow for optimal creativity to flow from each participant, he said. Donations provided by individuals and local businesses in the Asbury Park community covered the costs of the workshop.

In the previously unused lounge area — now a more high-traffic area  — fresh flowers, burning candles and incense helped to set a relaxed mood in a sanctuary-like space.

The Center is a nonprofit service organization that provides support services for people living with HIV and AIDS along with those that care for them. It provides permanent, supportive housing — as opposed to transitional housing — for 25 individuals, and daily nutrition programs, referral services, transportation services and education to those who live both on and off-site.

The class moved through three overarching themes, encouraging participants to first explore the way they think of themselves, then they way they see themselves in the world, and finally the way they see their higher selves.

One painting Barbara Steward completed, called “Happy Together” shows two flowers in glass, with the rest of the painting shrouded in darkness. The flowers represent Barbara  and her HIV positive friends inside of a petri dish and the darkness the “uninformed public,” she said.

“I look forward to these classes,” Steward said [shown just above, holding her painting All Night Dancing Afterglow.] “It’s enlightening — the things you let out that you maybe don’t start to let out. It’s a great way of expression. Words can’t always at what you are thinking and feeling inside but the art and the canvas and the colors – they do.”

“They are really starting to look and see what is around them and where they are,” said Brunner.

Both Brunner and Perry agree the class has allowed Center client Art Sample [at right] to emerge from his shell. Prior to taking the class, Sample kept to himself and did not speak very much, they said.

In Sample’s previous experience, art classes outside of the center made him feel like he was “doing it wrong,” he said. “And we eliminated that in this class. The most important thing is to show up and slap some paint on the canvas.”

“That is what keeps them healthy,” said Center volunteer Jen Hickey. “Something that gives them purpose and it is something they enjoy.”

In Hickey’s eyes, the class has more than achieved the goal of increased communication among the clients.

“It’s amazing — it’s like letting a bird out if a cage,” she said.

An opening artist’s reception and fundraiser will be held August 3 from noon to 4 p.m. at Hotel Tides, located at 408 Seventh Ave. All works on display will be available for purchase with proceeds benefiting  The Center.

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