Message from the Gallery Co-Chairs

Welcome to Brushes With Life!

Our physical gallery, "Brushes with Life: Art, Artists, and Mental Illness," is located in the hallways leading to the STEP Inpatient Unit on the third floor of NC Neurosciences Hospital on Manning Drive in Chapel Hill. The gallery features works by both inpatients and outpatients of the UNC Schizophrenia Treatment and Evaluation Program (STEP).

Like our "live" gallery, our online "virtual" gallery features works from many different artists working in many different media, including watercolors, acrylics, oils, pen, pencil, and colored marker drawings, sketches, and paintings. There are also photographs, collages, ceramics, sculptures, fabric arts, and even poetry and occasionally, music.

The STEP Art Gallery was created to give our patients an opportunity to display their artwork. We also hope to lessen the stigma associated with mental illness by showing that people with serious mental illnesses, such as schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, and bipolar disorder, can be perceptive, creative, and productive.

A lot has happened since the gallery's inception.  Since our first show debuted in December 2000, exhibitions have rotated about every six to nine months.  Our next show is slated for installation on October 25, 2011.

From April through August 2004, we were honored with a large special exhibition at the North Carolina Museum of Art (NCMA) in Raleigh.  That exhibition subsequently traveled to local arts councils and other public sites around the state.

In 2005, our gallery won the Lilly Reintegration Award for Mental Health Advocacy.  For information about Lilly Reintegration Awards, go to http://www.reintegration.com/.

In early 2009, we launched a notecard series featuring the works of four amazing artists, Philip Brubaker, Colette Corr, Michael Dunne, and Bill Wyatt.  Additional projects are planned, including a series of holiday notecards.

If this is your first visit to our web site, please take time to browse our virtual gallery and enjoy the beautiful works our artists have created.  Be sure, too, to visit the sections featuring our artists and poets.

If you are a returning visitor, we thank you and direct your attention to our upcoming events and important notices posted in the quick links column on the right side of your screen.

As always, our volunteer committee is busy looking for ways to promote and display our artists' creative work to larger audiences.  We welcome your feedback and ideas.  You can contact us via email at stepart@med.unc.edu or by phone at (919) 966-8990.

Thank you. We hope you enjoy your visit and please come back again!

Core Committee of the STEP Art Gallery