Art Exhibits

Our professionally crafted art exhibits capture the magical flowering of creativity in our workshops, and have been displayed at world-class museums and galleries.

II. TimeSlips Exhibit Two (TSII)

This exhibit was originally created for exhibit at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City (1999) and for the Charles Allis Museum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (2000). Designed for a smaller space than TSI, this exhibit consists of up to 12 color photographs of people with Alzheimer's Disease by Dick Blau and 2 hand-crafted pop-up books by Beth Thielen.

The rich, color photographs (each 20 x 24 inches) are elegantly framed in simple natural wood and capture the far-reaching emotional range of those with AD. The pop-up books capture the whimsy and freedom of the TimeSlips storytelling process. Together the photographs and books take us on a journey from fear of a disease that can shut down our ability to communicate, to the realization that the imagination can open us up once again. The photographs can be displayed on a wall or on easels. The pop-up books are approximately 5 feet long and 2 feet high when fully opened, and must be displayed in such a way as to discourage people from touching them.

This exhibit was originally made possible with grants from the Helen Bader Foundation Inc., The Brookdale Foundation, Blue Cross and Blue Shield, and Alterra.

Artist Profile Beth Thielen: Beth Thielen, a graduate of the Art institute of Chicago, is part of a school of American artists whose work is grounded in social issues. These activist artists have historical roots in FDR's Works Progress Administration. Many, like Thielen, came of age in the politically charged '60s and '70s, and were influenced by the feminist art movement that connected art making to action in the community. To these artists, art can help make positive changes in peoples lives and encourage self-expression.

Through her craft, Ms. Thielen makes powerful statements about the homeless, the disenfranchised, and the incarcerated. Her highly visual books provide an immediate access to these complicated social problems, which are brought home to the viewer and which further dialogue about crime, culture, and society.

The importance of the artist's voice is heard through all of Ms. Thielen's unique art works, which have been placed in private and public collections around the world, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC; The J. Paul Getty Museum of Art; The Library of Congress (Rare Book Division); Harvard University; Yale University; the New York Public Library; the Brooklyn Library and Long Island University.

Drawing on a deep personal connection, Ms. Thielen created several artists' books that captured the process of the imagination emerging from people with Alzheimer's during storytelling sessions in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. These books were displayed in the "TimeSlips" shared show with photographer, Dick Blau, at the Charles Allis Art Museum in Milwaukee (2000), and included in the critically-acclaimed "The Time of Our Lives" group exhibition at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York City (1999).

Ms. Thielen watched her own grandmother, Blanche Hey, suffer from an often heartbreaking and sometimes colorful dementia while growing up in Chicago.

Ms. Thielen recalls; "As my grandmother's health declined and dementia grew, she seemed to find solace in daydreaming out loud. In retrospect, she seemed to be inventing just the kind of experience she would have found in this project. I'm left to ponder her brilliance in what looked to be abandoned folly at the time."

Artist Profile: Dick Blau Blau holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University. He is a prolific filmmaker, theater artist, and photographer based at the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee. Attracted chiefly to capturing emotion on camera, Blau has created books of photographs of polka artists (Polka Happiness, 1992; and Polka Theory, forthcoming), the Roma of Greek Macedonian (Bright Balkan Morning, forthcoming), and his family (Living with his Camera, forthcoming).

Blau has collaborated on the TimeSlips Project from its inception in the fall of 1998. Asked to document the storytelling project by photographing several workshops, Blau was soon enrapt by the process. He attended nearly all of the 18 weeks of workshops at both of the participating Milwaukee adult day centers.

He has since expanded his scope to document the TimeSlips Project itself, photographing storytelling workshops in New York, both play productions (in Milwaukee and New York), as well as roundtable discussions and planning meetings.