Celebrate Your Style!

Celebrate the beginning of fall with

We Care Arts!

Watch our artists walking the runway in our fashion show and enjoy an amazing breakfast buffet at NCR Country Club, overlooking acres of gorgeous fall foliage. On Saturday, October 7 from 10am to noon, the fashion show will feature hand-crafted wearable art modeled by our clients.  Shop for home décor, holiday items, jewelry and much more as you support We Care Arts!

We are very pleased that local celebrity Holly Allen will host our Celebrate Your Style event and brighten it with her special sparkle! Holly spent nearly a decade in broadcast news, including as a news anchor at WDTN. Now she is Marketing and Communication Director at the Dayton Chamber of Commerce. Thank you, Holly, for coming to join the fun!

During the show you will get to see several of our amazing clients modeling, including Steve that you read about last week, Erica, Betsy, Robert, Morgan, and Cindy. Let's give them a big THANK YOU for their hard work and time that helps make a huge difference in our community.

Fashion icons Erica and Betsy are very good friends and Betsy says that they are “twins”! Erica is from Trinidad and Tobago via Brooklyn and Betsy, with her myriad of health and developmental issues, was adopted by the Boesch family of Kettering. These lovely ladies both come to our program on Mondays and Wednesdays, and keep the place jumping with their fun personalities!

 

For reservations, click THIS LINK or call We Care Arts at 937.252.3937. Tickets are $40 per person or put together a table of 10 friends and the price per person is $35!  Ticket deadline is Friday, Sept 29. 

Another Amazing Family Member

Steve was born in Kirksville, Missouri and his family moved all over the country when he was a kid, due to his father’s job as a radiologist. He was always tall because he was born with Beckwith-Wiedemann syndrome, which causes gigantism, along with other conditions. Steve has always enjoyed the outdoors, being very fond of animals and hiking. So his early career choices are not surprising: trail guide in Montana and working on a commercial fishing boat in Kodiak, Alaska. He enjoyed Montana’s beauty, while working on a fishing vessel required four months of working seven days a week from 8am to 10pm.  But the benefits were that he saw many killer whales, seals and sharks, along with lots of other sea life.

Around 2006, he visited We Care Arts, and was impressed by the artwork in our gallery. Prior to that, he had become a client of South Community in 2002, after a very bad time with personal problems that caused him a psychotic incident.  He has a long history of self-harm but now is feeling much better and stronger. He has two children, both of which are very musical. His son has just graduated from Fairmont High School, and is now enrolled in the Firefighter program at Sinclair Community College. His daughter is a senior at Ohio State University, where she is studying biomedical engineering.

Steve loves coming to We Care Arts and thinks that everyone here is just great! He feels that the instructors are excellent and very patient, and encourage the artists to try new things. He attends our fiber arts class, and has recently joined another class where the artists are learning to use a sewing machine. He enjoys the variety of people at We Care Arts and likes to talk to everyone and see what kind of artwork they are doing!

Our amazing tall guy, Steve Weiss, will be modeling for us at #celebrateyourstyle fashion show this year! We figured that with his 6 foot 8 inch frame, we won’t be able to lose track of him! Celebrate Your Style will be held Saturday October 7^th, 2017 from 10 am to 12pm at NCR Country Club. We hope to see your smiling faces there! Buy your tickets here! https://wecarearts.networkforgood.com/events/3456-celebrate-your-stlye

Fiber Arts Class

We wanted to make sure you all knew of one of our very popular classes that takes place at the Berkley center, our main site, on Monday afternoons. We love seeing how much everyone enjoys taking this sewing class together. We wanted to share the excitement with you all.

Our fiber arts class has been very popular with our clients but we had many requests from them to learn how to sew with a sewing machine. Sewing machines can be quite challenging sometimes and learning their idiosyncrasies takes time and focus. So our teacher Sharen has created a manual and conducts weekly class so our clients can learn these skills. Sharen loves it when a “light bulb” goes off as her sewing students do things correctly and understand the techniques to use.  Sewing can be quite an exact science!

Sewing machines can be temperamental things so Sharen provides each student with a specific machine to use when they are here. She feels that they should have ownership of their ability to use their sewing machine.  The students also give their sewing machines names! Precious, Buttermilk and Bob of Borneo are just some of the funny titles they have! 

When the students begin working with their sewing machine, they have to start with making their own monster pin cushion.  Then they move on to stuffed animals, mug rugs (very popular!) and potato bags, for cooking your potato in the microwave. They also create handbags and totes and door draft stoppers for keeping out the winter cold.

Baby and adult bibs are very popular along with our beautiful aprons. You can find these wonderful products at our gift shop in Town and Country Shopping Center, or at our main studio gift shop at 3035 Wilmington Pike. Either store is a great place for your special holiday shopping!

Below are the open hours for our two shops.

Berkley Center:

Monday - Friday 9am - 5pm

Town and Country Shopping Center:

Monday - Thursday 4pm - 7pm

Friday 11am - 7pm

Saturday 10a - 7pm

Sunday 12pm - 5pm

Come see the amazing crafts and meet more of our We Care Arts Family!

Celebrating Recovery Awareness Month

Come join We Care Arts in celebrating National Recovery Awareness Month and promoting the importance of living a healthy life! We truly encourage each and every one of you to consider recovering and improving you health. There are so many different options that can help make strides in recovery including art therapy. Today let's learn about what National Recovery Awareness Month is, how it's related to art therapy, and hear some amazing quotes from our special members of the We Care Arts family.

National Recovery Month (Recovery Month) is a national observance held every September to educate Americans that substance use treatment and mental health services can enable those with a mental and/or substance use disorder to live a healthy and rewarding life. Recovery Month celebrates the gains made by those in recovery, just as we celebrate health improvements made by those who are managing other health conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, asthma, and heart disease. The observance reinforces the positive message that behavioral health is essential to overall health, prevention works, treatment is effective, and people can and do recover.

There are millions of Americans whose lives have been transformed through recovery. Since these successes often go unnoticed by the broader population, Recovery Month provides a vehicle for everyone to celebrate these accomplishments. Each September, tens of thousands of prevention, treatment, and recovery programs and facilities around the country celebrate National Recovery Month. They speak about the gains made by those in recovery and share their success stories with their neighbors, friends, and colleagues. In doing so, everyone helps to increase awareness and furthers a greater understanding about the diseases of mental and substance use disorders.

Addiction to drugs or alcohol has many different roots. From childhood traumas to stress, depression, and PTSD, there are quite a few reasons people turn to substances, and everyone reacts to them differently. Because there are so many delicate factors involved, there are also many treatments available, including art therapy, which can afford those in recovery a chance to find a way to relieve those feelings with something creative.

Art therapy can also help the individual come to terms with past incidents and lessen shame, which is often a side-effect to seeking help. And in most types of creative activity, there are few rules. The creation is entirely the artist’s own, from idea to execution. Below are some quotes we received from our clients, which expressed how art here at We Care Arts has helped them through their recovery. 
"We Care Arts has become an extended family for me. Instead of going to bars and other such places, this place provides a chance to socialize and accomplish something with my artwork." 
"It helps me a lot to be around people. When you get sober, it is a very lonely experience. I had to give up all my friends from the past.  Here I find that everyone is very positive and it is fun to be together and be creative." 
"The staff and clients at We Care Arts have improved my sense of self-worth by encouraging my artistic pursuits with suggestions and compliments." 
"I find it much easier to stay focused when doing my artwork here since there is a group of people sitting together and we are all making art."