INSPIRED Magazine contributor Joan Boxall discusses her new book, published by Caitlin Press in May 2019:
DrawBridge: Drawing Alongside My Brother’s Schizophrenia by Joan Boxall
Illustrations by her brother, Stephen A. Corcoran.
INSPIRED Magazine: The title encompasses a lot. What do you mean by “drawbridge”?
Joan Boxall: Steve was an artist. Drawing was his medium. He used pastel, charcoal, conte crayon, and smatterings of acrylic paint. The act of drawing became a communication tool, bridging the gap between us. So-called ‘normal’ meetups over coffee had failed. Once I was on Steve’s common ground, we bridged the gap
Steve and I come from a lawn bowling family (my parents were BC and Canadian champions). In lawn bowling and bocce, the goal is to draw the bowl to a target or ‘jack.’ The closer you get, the better you do. Steve and I played bocce regularly. We drew closer.
Drawbridges open as well as close. Trust has to be earned. That takes time. Sometimes, bridges open. Sometimes, all goes sideways.
IM: How was trust established?
JB: We made a commitment to meet on Tuesdays. The first few months we bumbled around, but for most of our decade together, he did art Tuesday mornings. A time commitment builds trust. I was his co-trustee along with our older brother, who I call ‘Darren’ in the book.
IM: Why did you use the present tense and the first person in telling the story?
JB: I want to bring the reader along with me – to dissolve any icy membrane. DrawBridge’s 10 personal essays are about Steve (not by Steve). The use of ‘I’ is a representative one.
Personal essays are one form of creative non-fictional (CNF) representation: ‘true stories, well told’ according to Lee Gutkind (who some call the godfather of CNF). To Charles Simic, American Poet Laureate, personal essays are factually accurate yet shaped like fiction.
IM: Is DrawBridge a kind of collage?
JB: No, Steve thought in collages, but I braided the strands of research and poetry around a central story plait. His collage-o-scopes into braided essays.
IM: Is DrawBridge also about you?
JB: Yes, Steve and I both represented the ‘real.’ I did it in poem-and-essay form, and he did it, too, in figurative drawing. He was an artistic trailblazer/visionary. I depict our decade-long journey through my point-of-view, which is quite telling.
IM: What books influenced your writing?
JB: I researched the illness, but I also researched art and creativity. Betty Edwards’s Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain was a big influence. I did all the book’s exercises twice before I began my journey with Steve. The quest-style of storytelling was compelling.
Chris Vogler’s The Writer’s Journey based on The Hero’s Journey by Joseph Campbell played an important role. I saw Steve as hero, and me as mentor, but came to realize that we all carry those roles, and many more, within us. We all have the power to help each other, or not. Steve was my biggest influence.
IM: What did doing art with Steve look like on a Tuesday?
JB: The first couple of years, we met at The Art Studios, a Vancouver Coastal Health initiative for people with mental health diagnoses (now Vancouver Recovery Through Art Society, VRTAS).
Steve did sketch and silk-screen sessions with Ann Webborn, an occupational therapist and artist. She was so helpful in resuscitating the creative person he’d always been. He flourished in sessions with her and other teachers. He’d go; I’d go as buffer-advocate. And then I thought I’d be able to leave him to it. He, however, wanted me to share in the journey. That was the start.
IM: Did The Art Studios routine continue?
JB: No. I signed him up for as many classes as we could, until he said, ‘Stop signing me up.’ Still keeping in touch with Ann and the studio, we joined Basic Inquiry, which became our art venue for the next eight years: one morning a week for three hours. At Basic, we sat in a circle, along with a dozen other artists, sketching one nude model.
IM: You use the term ‘we.’ Did you also draw?
JB: Yes, Steve and I were in our fifties. He hadn’t been in a class situation or mingling with people for over 25 years. I became a family peer supporter. The Art Studios to Basic Inquiry was quite a leap. Basic sessions were not teacher-led classes – they were, and still are, timed sessions. Steve could get caught up in tangents in speech. By the time we started at Basic, he’d learned to focus on doing the art: to ‘shut up and draw.’ I sat next to him: drawing the same model and using the same tools and rules.
IM: What does ‘peer’ mean to you?
JB: Peers are equals. Siblings are family peers. Artists are peers. I went to a mental health symposium, which made this clear to me and gave guidelines for understanding the illness. The CMHA and affiliates are still helping families work together.
IM: What about poetry in the book? How did that evolve?
JB: Poems are another form of creative non-fiction. Most artists use a variety of genres as Steve might have liked to do. I use poetic forms such as the blues, villanelle, free verse, lipogram, pantoum, sestina, ghazal, along with poetic dialogue and prose.
IM: Is there a message here for families coping with mental health challenges?
JB: I want to share our story to inspire other families with hope. Every illness expresses itself differently: person to person, family to family. Steve not only suffered mental illness, but also the metastasized colon cancer that took his life. Art helped Steve regain his artful essence.
Art helped him cope with his mental illness. Support for programs like The Art Studios is vital to a vibrant society.
IM: What’s next?
JB: More poems, more essays, and from the French word, essayer, I’ll keep on trying.
All bookstores are able to stock DrawBridge on request, or contact the publisher, Caitlin Press: http://caitlin-press.com/our-books/drawbridge/
Steve’s art is at North Van Arts CityScape Gallery in North Vancouver: https://northvanarts.ca/?s=stephen+a.+corcoran&post_type=product
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