By Katie Rayner
Photo Courtesy of Dominique Breault
EASTON - With the opioid crisis continuing to impact communities, the Fuller Craft Museum is using art to make people see how it affects individuals.
On Thursday, Sept. 26, the Martin Institute Auditorium at Stonehill College filled with students, faculty, and community members to hear about the new exhibit called “Human Impact: Stories of the Opioid Epidemic” at the Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton. The exhibit is a collaboration of the Plymouth County District Attorney’s Office, Stonehill College, High Point Treatment Center, Brockton Area Hospitals, and Fuller Craft Museum. The Stonehill event featured panelists who discussed the exhibit and the overall opioid crisis in the area and country.
Somerville artist Jodi Colella, who specializes in needlework, was one of 11 artists chosen to work on this exhibit. She was matched with a single mom who lost her son only six months before they first met last November. “I wanted to stress this huge loss,” Colella said. She said she struggled at first to find a way to capture the family’s story. “She told me Dale will send you a sign so you’ll know what to do,” Colella said. Then one day Colella was reading a book and there was an opium poppy. This elusive plant symbolizes an object of dependence that at first is alluring and then it traps you, Colella said. This was the sign that she needed to begin her work. Colella created a five-by- twelve foot long double sided monument with 3,600 poppies. Each poppy represents 200 people who have died from opioids since 1999, Colella said. The poppies were hand stitched and made from clothing donated from those who Colella spoke with who were affected by the opioid epidemic. The center of each poppy is black to show the void that is lost when one dies from opioids, and the red lining of the poppy symbolizes the voices lost, Colella said. “What good are we as humans if we can’t help each other,” Colella, an independent artist whose piece is now on display at the Fuller Craft Museum, said.
At the recent Stonehill event, Joanne Peterson, founder and executive director of Learn To Cope, a family support group, said her family’s experience dealing with the opioid crisis prompted her to start the support group. Peterson’s son, Scott, was addicted to opioids that led to an arrest. This struggle with her son lead her to start speaking about the issue facing other families. “I thought to myself, if it’s going to be in the newspapers we might as well tell the other side of the story,” Peterson said. Peterson said she then began speaking at more events to get the story out to as many as possible. “When I started speaking I would look up and see mothers and fathers with tears in their eyes and I thought “that’s me;” they’ve been through it too,” Peterson said. She said the more speaking events she did, the more people with similar experiences started reaching out to her. Peterson started Learn To Cope, with about 25 people attending the first meeting in the spring of 2004. Learn To Cope is a peer-led support network for families dealing with addiction and recovery, according to its website. Today, Learn to Cope has approximately 11,000 people on its website’s private discussion board, and chapters serving most of Massachusetts, including Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket. Peterson said she hopes that with events like the exhibit at the Fuller Craft Museum will bring more awareness to the epidemic. “Stigma can prevent a person from getting help so we have to have compassion when we help them,” Peterson said.
Beth McLaughlin, one of the panelists at the Stonehill event and chief curator at the Fuller Craft Museum said the exhibit was designed to select a group of artists and families affected by the opioid crisis together to facilitate a conversation about the crisis. The goal of this exhibit was to cultivate public awareness and understanding of the opioid crisis, McLaughlin said. Seventy artists from around the country sent in submissions, and ultimately 11 were chosen to be included in the exhibit, she said. With the help of High Point Treatment Center, they were able to identify families who lost members to the opioid crisis, or had family members who were in recovery or actively using, and connect them with an artist. These 11 artists spent two hours speaking with their assigned family, to get an understanding of their relationship with the opioid crisis, she said. . For the next eight months, these artists created works of art that captured their families’ story, and brought to light the human impact of the opioid crisis, she said. “It was an extreme work of love,” Colella said.
The full exhibit of Human Impact: Stories of the Opioid Epidemic, is now on display at the Fuller Craft Museum, on Oak Street in Brockton. The exhibit will be open to the public until May 3, 2020
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