Virus Tsuris Mental Health Resources
Get immediate help in a crisis
- Call 911
- Disaster Distress Helpline: 1-800-985-5990 (press 2 for Spanish), or text TalkWithUs for English or Hablanos for Spanish to 66746. Spanish speakers from Puerto Rico can text Hablanos to 1-787-339-2663.
- National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1-800-273-TALK (8255) for English, 1-888-628-9454 for Spanish, or Lifeline Crisis Chat.
- National Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233 or text LOVEIS to 22522
- National Child Abuse Hotline: 1-800-4AChild (1-800-422-4453) or text 1-800-422-4453
- National Sexual Assault Hotline: 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or Online Chat
- The Eldercare Locator: 1-800-677-1116 TTY Instructions
- Veteran’s Crisis Line: 1-800-273-TALK (8255) or Crisis Chat or text: 8388255
Find a health care provider or treatment for substance use disorder and mental health
- SAMHSA’s National Helpline: 1-800-662-HELP (4357) and TTY 1-800-487-4889
- Treatment Services Locator Website
- Interactive Map of Selected Federally Qualified Health Centers
Pandemic Related Mental Health Resources
- UCLA’s Stand Together
- Child Mind Institute
- CNN Sesame Street: the ABC’s of Covid 19 Town Hall
- CDC – Coping with Stress of Pandemic
- Physician Support Line (888-409-0141) – for healthcare providers who need support.
Dr. Shelly Cohen’s Top 10 ways to Stay Healthy/Positive During Pandemic
- Keep a routine
- Sleep
- Exercise
- Eat well
- Help others where you can
- Refrain from reading the news all day
- Stay connected to others
- Get help if you’re feeling overwhelmed from a mental health provider.
- Try to find meaning for yourself during this time.
- Take vacation
Secrets: Maury Ornest’s Hidden Art
Secrets: Maury Ornest’s Hidden Art
January 19 – March 5, 2019
MAURY ORNEST
ARTIST STATEMENT
MAURY ORNEST – March 4, 1960-July 31, 2018
Maury Ornest’s many talents took him from the baseball diamond to the artist’s easel. Born in Vancouver, Canada, he was the youngest of four children of Harry and Ruth Ornest.
Fun-loving, creative, and bright, Maury became a star player who attended college and played minor league baseball until injuries ended his career.
When Maury was 23, he began working in the business office for his father, who had recently bought the St. Louis Blues hockey team and arena. 27
Over the next few years, Maury began to experience paranoia and delusions. He suffered a psychotic break. His life changed almost overnight. While searching desperately for effective treatment, he began to paint.
Despite the isolation he experienced, he was an eternal optimist, evident in the joyous nature, wit and vibrant colors of his paintings. Upon his death from heart disease, his family discovered some 1400 paintings and journals in his Beverly Hills home studio and storage units.
GALLERY
Secrets – Maury Ornest’s Hidden Art
Secrets – Maury Ornest’s Hidden Art
Jan. 19 – March 5, 2019
MAURY ORNEST
ARTIST STATEMENT
Sacred Resistance
Laurie Katz Yehia
Inspired by sacred texts, philosophy and literature, Yehia’s work explores the nature of
what we see and how we respond. Her mixed media paintings and constructions with re-
purposed objects encourage seeing beyond the habitual or status quo. At the same time,
the work is to be experienced simply as “what is,” which is something other than
language and incapable of precise understanding.
“Song of Songs” (2009), one of a series of oil paintings with mixed media on linen
canvas, was inspired by Old Testament passages and by passages of Radiance Sutras
from the Vijnana Bhairava Tantra, Sutra 3. Layered, graffiti-like markings on plaster
evoke the texts graphically, while dissolving and tessellated imagery evoke their themes
of dispersement and re-unification with the Divine.
The “Purgatory” series was inspired by imagery and themes in Dante’s The Divine
Comedy. “Purgatory” (2011) re-ˇcontextualizes Dante’s 14th century allegorical poem of
spiritual growth and salvation, which in contemporary lexicon is about personal growth
and transformation through the integration of unconscious “shadows” with enlightened
“consciousness.” The painting’s surface grew out of a searching process that included
burning, scraping and sanding as well as applying tar, marble sand and oil paint.
“Adamantine” (2011) evokes the first of three steps leading up to Purgatory, described
by Dante as: “White marble…I saw myself reflected as I was.” (Canto IX, 94-ˇ96). Oil
paint and plaster are mixed with white marble sand to take on properties of white marble,
known for its relative resistance to shattering and capacity for taking on a reflective
polish. “Lethe” (2011) refers to the “sacred river,” which washes away all memory of sin
in Dante’s Earthly Paradise. The surface of thick oil paint, tar and marble sand was
inspired by “the heavenly forest thick with living green” where the inexhaustible stream
“flows dark, very dark, beneath an everlasting shade…” (Canto XXVIII, 2, 31-ˇ32).
“Empyrean” (2012) combines white oil paints, gesso, vellum and paper to express the
realm of light, geometry and “the fusion of all things” in the highest heaven of Dante’s
Paradise. (Canto XXXIII, 92).
“Light Emerging” (2013) invites contemplation of the relationship between object and art
as well as between materiality and energy. In “Switches” (2013), re-purposed objects
become repetitive forms with a minimal palette and invite shifts in perspective of
function, aesthetic value and meaning. Light switches suggest being empowered to turn
energy on and off. “Ex Nihilo” (2017) is constructed with re-purposed wall switch plates,
without the switches. Empty spaces in the plates, and the central oil painting surrounded
by blank plates, evoke an inherent power to “switch” – and to create something from
nothing. Repetition and variation in the wall plates of “Awakening” (2017) explore
geometries, colors and values associated with the energy of intention, awareness and
action. The “Sacred Resistance” series (2018) are single wall switch plates painted and
mounted on wood panels. Each one envisions being empowered to “flip the switch” in
troubled times.
June, 2018