Art briefly helps patients draw themselves out of mental illness

Awakenings Project believes art boosts recovery

A week into his hospitalization at the Elgin Mental Health Center, Jeffrey Eppard was given pencils and paper and invited to draw anything he wanted. The subject he chose was his left arm.

He outlined it in a blur of charcoal, then filled in the details: the lines crisscrossing his palm; the bracelet spelling out "Angel"; and the still-fresh scar that began at his wrist and slashed toward the crook of his elbow.

The wound was a remnant of the suicide attempt that had landed him in the hospital. He said evoking it with a sketch was, to his surprise, a comfort.

"It brings back some of the anxieties, but it's not entirely bad," said Eppard, 24, who suffers from bipolar disorder. "Just visually seeing it (on paper) tells me it's OK. I'm sick, but it's going to be all right."

Though he used the language of recovery, it was no therapy session. It was a simple afternoon of drawing put together by some who had battled their own demons that they believed could be quieted, at least for a moment, with a swirl of graphite.

The organizers were from the Awakenings Project, a collective of people with mental illnesses who have found strength in art. They meet weekly in a suburban studio to draw and paint, and, on occasion, they travel to mental health centers to share their materials and enthusiasm with those still emerging from crisis.

"My hope is to unleash the joy," said Irene O'Neill, one of the group's founders. "I just want people to get into it and have fun."

Psychologists long have believed that art provides a window into troubled minds, but what once was mainly a diagnostic tool — Draw a tree that represents your feelings — has become an instrument of healing.

Randy Vick, a therapist who teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, said making art brings a precious sense of control to those suffering from schizophrenia and other mental disorders. When the mind, body and emotions unite in the act of creation, a person can feel he has regained power over his life, Vick said

The Awakenings Project doesn't offer formal therapy, but it follows similar principles. It was founded in 1996 to showcase the artistic abilities of people with mental illness, allowing them to earn self-respect.

"Most people with a mental illness don't work, so they don't have a work identity," said co-founder Robert Lundin. Exhibiting their art "gives them a kind of identity in the community. They can legitimately call themselves an artist."

In time, the group began to seek out and cultivate that talent. It rents a downtown Elgin studio, where its members produce oil paintings, watercolors and collages. It spreads the word at national mental health conferences. For the last five years, it has reached out to institutions where people with severe mental illnesses are treated.

That is what led O'Neill and four fellow Awakenings volunteers to the Elgin Mental Health Center one recent Saturday. They passed out pencils, paper and a few art books to a dozen patients, and after they made a few introductory remarks, the sketching began.

Francis Chereck, 29, had an elegant, polished style. He had taken plenty of art classes when he was younger, he said, and even now, despite the bipolar disorder shaking his life, he liked to draw video game characters to give away as gifts.

He drew a human eye, its pupil dabbled with points of light, its lid heavy with charcoal. He shaded the corner over and over again until it appeared to be weeping black tears.

Art teachers "always told me not to overshadow," he said. "I tend to like things dark. That's just me."

John Miller, 30, worked in a lighter vein, reproducing simple likenesses of a rabbit and bird he had found in a book. Then he tried a freehand portrait of his childhood home. It was a place of sad memories, he said, yet he smiled as he drew its crooked stairs and wind-whipped flag.

"I think art's a good getaway," he said. "When we're sitting here doing this, it takes us away from our troubles. It's like we're kids again."

Other sketches were difficult to grasp. They were patchworks of runes, figures and phrases that remained impenetrable, even after their creators tried to explain them.

One young man stricken by schizophrenia drew symbols in the chunky, 3-D style of a graffiti tagger. The man, who asked to be called "Pi," said he was obsessed with numbers and formulas. Reproducing them gave him a feeling of tranquility.

His drawing was striking and skillful, but he dismissed it, telling a visitor to take it away.

"It's frivolous," he said. "I'll reproduce it another way, another time. I could burn this right now and it wouldn't mean anything to me."

A moment later, though, he asked to look at an image of his sketch that had been captured by a Tribune photographer.

"Oh, that's beautiful," he said.

He went back to the visitor with two clean sheets of paper, urging him to sandwich the drawing between them so the lines wouldn't smudge.

Such small moments of pride were evident throughout the three-hour session. But when it ended, it was hard to say whether it had produced any lasting effects. Most of the patients left their work behind when they headed back to their rooms.

Packing up the materials, O'Neill said she was optimistic. Her bipolar disorder brought her plenty of misery after she was diagnosed in 1976, when she was 20. She had been hospitalized against her will, clapped into straitjackets and shot up with debilitating medications.

But she never lost her childhood love of art. And when she helped found the Awakenings Project, she said, she learned that her painting and collage-making — and most important, her relationships with other artists — could give her stability.

She had a new identity, one in which her mental disorder was only a single shard in a larger mosaic. Maybe, she said, art could help a few more reach the same place.

"Some of them will re-identify as artists," she predicted. "Some will start to see themselves in a different light. People get back in touch with themselves and know that they are more than just their illness."

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DEVO Plays The 2010 Winter Olympics!!! Tonight!

Devo and the focus-grouped comeback album

Monday night, Devo will publicly launch the marketing campaign for its forthcoming album -- its first in 20 years -- when the Los Angeles-via-Ohio band performs at the Olympics in Vancouver, Canada. With the release of the album not due until the spring, the Olympics appearance won't be the grand unveiling of new material, which principal Gerald Casale promises will occur at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival. But if all goes according to plan, the path leading up to the final product may make for a better story, anyway.

Casale speaks of Devo's May release, which the band has narrowed down to three possible titles, as somewhat of a formality. It's one aspect of a recently signed all-encompassing merch, music and tour record deal with Warner Bros., but the forthcoming album isn't necessarily the centerpiece.

"People still do that," Casale said of releasing a new CD. "We don’t feel it’s very important. I don’t know how many people buy CDs. When you look at the number of downloads Lady Gaga had compared to hard physical product, it’s 100,000 to one. That’s the way people get their music. This idea of the precious order of a 12-song CD is passe. It’s over. People go and get what they want off the Internet and the put it on their iPod and shuffle it."

That's one reason why Casale said the band won't be making the final decision on the songs and track-listing for its upcoming album. Instead, he said, the band will trust the consensus reached by those polled by an advertising agency. Casale said the new-wave pioneers have retained a company called Mother L.A. and that the firm will present focus groups with multiple mixes of new songs.

"It’s an art experiment," Casale said. "The experiment is the business of art. It’s always there, but nobody ever talks about it."

Of course, Devo has championed the theatricality in marketing for much of its career, making it a sort of mission statement. When the famously red-domed band released its first single in 17 years in 2007, it did so via a Dell commercial, and the band's Mark Mothersbaugh, via his Mutato Muzika company, has long celebrated the art of advertising, having scored numerous commercials.

If Devo would seem to have a handle on anything, marketing would appear to be at the top of the list. "It’s just fun, to use business as part of the creative process, even if it’s satirical," Casale said. "Devo is just real now. Devo is not ahead of its time. Devo is not scary or shocking. ... We’re the house band on the Titanic, and we’re here to entertain as we all go down."

Mother L.A. is unlisted, and the company's website is full of generic stock photos. Devo is the only client named on the firm's roster, and Casale declined to answer how fans who want to take part in the focus groups would go about such a task. To further interject an air of cynicism here, the L.A. Weekly has already revealed that Mutato has some ad agency vets in its ranks. A Warner Bros. spokesman promised that the label is indeed working with an advertising firm named Mother L.A. on the album

In response to our skepticism, Casale said it will all eventually be made available for viewing. The alternate takes of each song, Casale said, will likely make their way to release as well. "We’ll put this on YouTube, so people will see what happened, and then we’ll also put out bonus tracks of the non-focus-group-approved music," he said.

"For anyone who is interested, we’d like to let them examine this as an open book," he continued. "Here’s our first demos, and here’s the songs that never reached anybody, and here’s the ones the focus group didn’t like."

As for the music, Devo worked with an assortment of name producers on the new material. Santigold, the Dust Brothers' John King, and the Bird and the Bee's Greg Kurstin are among the artists who contributed. With Devo's dance-informed-rock having come in vogue again, Casale said the members wanted to go to those who point to the band as influence, intending to find out what "their idea of Devo was."

"When we were new, we were shocking and so different, only we owned that aesthetic," Casale said. "Now a lot of bands cite Devo as their influence. A lot of music sounds like Devo, especially a lot of the new music from groups like the Ting Tings, the Kills, LCD Soundsystem, Hot Chip. We love that stuff. It sounds like the kind of energy we had in the beginning."

It was Kurstin, who recently produced Lily Allen's "It's Not Me, It's You," who brought the biggest changes to Devo's sound. "In terms of surprise factor, Greg Kurstin was the most transformative," Casale said. "He brought a kind of sparkle to the sound itself. It still sounds like Devo, but it sounds very contemporary."

Yet in terms of what to expect, Casale isn't completely tipping his hand, although longtime fans may find some changes shocking. When the act performs Monday night at the Olympics, for instance, its headgear is expected to be blue.

"You couldn’t get more of a broad-spectrum audience than the Olympics," Casale said. "People aren’t there to see Devo; they’re there to experience the Olympics. It’s like a cold call in business. They’re not there to cheer for you."

-- Todd Martens

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Booking a Flight the Frugal Way

By MATT GROS

It used to be so simple. You wanted to go to Paris, so you called a travel agency, gave them your dates and budget, and with any luck, you soon had in your hands a real paper ticket with a real dollar value. Even in the early days of the Internet, it was easier. You went to one of the few booking sites — Travelocity or Expedia, most likely — searched for your route, paid with a credit card and that was it. Maybe you even got a paper ticket in the mail. Those were the days!

Today, however, booking a flight is a total mess. Travelocity and Expedia have been joined by Bing and Orbitz and Dohop and Vayama and CheapTickets and CheapOair and Kayak and SideStep and Mobissimo and and and … I could go on and list every single Web site out there, but I won’t. There are just too many. Instead, I’ll lead you through the steps I make when I’m booking a flight myself.

I’ve covered this territory a bit before — here and here — but today I’ll try to go into more detail. For this experiment, let’s imagine a simple domestic trip: a weekend of snowboarding in Jackson Hole in Wyoming at the beginning of March.

My first stop is, as it’s been for years now, Kayak.com. It’s the simplest airfare search engine — minimal graphics, no discount vacation deals to confuse me, and it searches almost every other site out there — and also the most flexible. I can not only choose a window for my departure and arrival times but also decide where I want (or don’t want) to spend a layover, or which frequent-flier alliance to stick with.

Kayak gives me two decent-looking options: $231 on American Airlines (Newark to Jackson via Chicago) and $241 for Delta (via Atlanta); taxes and fees included in both figures. I’m lucky here — I have gold status on American, so I can avoid the checked-baggage fees for my snowboard.

Of course, I don’t stop there. Next, I’ll check ITASoftware.com, a somewhat complicated site that makes it feel as if you’re a travel agent tapping into unusual, semisecret routes. Maybe there’s a faster way to Wyoming, perhaps through Minneapolis? Not this time. For the Jackson Hole trip, ITA finds the same American Airlines itinerary, pricing it at $230 instead of $231. Frankly, it’s a pretty normal trip, so there are no surprises. And anyway, ITA doesn’t let you book tickets, instead directing you to other sites or travel agents.

So, I check out another site: cFares.com, which has a twist. For a $50 annual membership, you’ll get small rebates if you book through them. Each rebate may be only $8 or $20, but if you fly several times a year, that can add up quickly. And last spring, cFares found me a flight from New York to Paris for $543.17, or about $200 less than any other search engine found.

For my theoretical ski trip, cFares knocks that $241 Delta flight down to $229 via the rebate (clicking the link sends you to Orbitz to book), but it doesn’t bring up the American flight at all.

And so, finally, if I were going to book this trip, I’d go straight to AA.com, login with my frequent-flier account and buy my ticket right there. Except … I’ve waited too long! In the couple of hours between when I first started searching and when I eventually decided to book, the fares have gone way up — the flight is now $298. Still, because I have status on American, it’s the better deal.

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Decorating the Night in Brooklyn

By PENELOPE GREEN

IT was Valentine’s Day at the House of Yes, an old ice warehouse turned event space in Bushwick, Brooklyn: The three-story “skybox” was swathed in red satin and velvet, and red aerialists’ silks hung from the circus truss that spanned the ceiling. Kae Burke, 23, who runs House of Yes with her high school pal Anya Sapozhnikova, twined her way up and down the silks, while Marcie Grambeau, a 23-year-old New York University student wearing a red satin mini-cheongsam, fishnet stockings and stilts, played “Tainted Love” on her violin. Rhiannon Erbach-Gruber, 30, resplendent in a red satin petticoat and bustier, was singing from a perch halfway to the ceiling.
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Forty guests lured there by a Facebook page had paid $40 for an evening of dim sum and spectacle devised by Tara McManus, 27, a costume designer and event producer. Servers and performers received a small fee, but many had worked for pizza and the chance to be a part of the run-up to the event, creating costumes and decorations. “This is why I moved to New York,” said Ms. Grambeau, grinning down from her stilts.

Armed with glitter and grit, glue guns and sewing machines, impresarios like Ms. Burke and Ms. McManus have been redecorating the landscape of the city’s after-dark underground, tweaking and honing the warehouse parties that have roved Brooklyn for more than a decade into ever-more-refined environments.

Theirs is a tight-knit community of makers and performers, who share resources — from bolts of fabric and guest lists to manpower — and some ideologies, the most urgent of which is a do-it-yourself mentality that defines a good time not as passive entertainment but as a participatory event. With roots that reach back to ’60s “happenings,” it’s an ever-cresting notion of participatory culture — that’s culture with a capital C — that has been nurtured at festivals like Burning Man and careers through New York City’s many quasipolitical or creative tribes, from street theater to burlesque.

For those raised on the New York clubs of the ’70s, ’80s or even ’90s — whether your touchstone is the Mudd Club or Limelight — this is a startlingly healthy night life scene, in which décor trumps drugs.

A few miles away from the House of Yes extravaganza, another Valentine’s Day pageant was unfurling. Larisa Fuchs, 31, had transformed a Prospect Heights loft into “The Vault of Golden Vapors,” a theme party with vintage Chinese jazz and Asian burlesque and an extravagant opium-den décor. Early in the evening, Laura Lee Gulledge, a body painter, observed over her shoulder that “glitter is the herpes of the craft world,” as she blew red glitter on the arm of Naomi Ruth, 30, a poet who had moved into the space two weeks earlier (rent: $800). Ms. Ruth was no stranger to glitter: Her new home had hosted six theme parties in the last week alone, she said.

“I’ve just gotten out of a relationship,” she said, “and I didn’t want to do ‘safe.’ So I came here, and now I’m lost in the vortex.”

Wrapped in a costume that was part Chinese Empress, part Lorelei Lee, Ms. Fuchs drifted past, beaming her approval.

“Doing things is more fun than just watching, and people are more creative than they think they are,” said Dan Glass, 43, a freelance writer and fire-effects maker who has deployed his jaw-dropping fire sprinkler, fire whip and fire rope both at Burning Man and at Ms. Fuchs’s recent Halloween party, where he torched pumpkins on a rooftop at dawn.

“It starts with something easy — costumes — and builds from there,” Mr. Glass continued. “Not only do people have more fun, but the overall effect, as time goes on, is people feel more of a sense of community and more of a sense of responsibility for their community.”

MS. BURKE was studying fashion at F.I.T. and attending Brooklyn’s theme parties because she was new to the city and didn’t have any friends. “But I had this awful social anxiety, which meant I couldn’t stay longer than an hour at a party,” she said. “I didn’t know how to stand around and do nothing.”

So she began volunteering at Kostume Kult, a costume event and street theater club (KK sends a “fashion camp” to Burning Man each year and a float to New York City’s Halloween parade), spray painting this, stitching that, and before long she was organizing her own events. She and Ms. Sapozhnikova, who also attended F.I.T., began to hold parties in their first home, a basement in “deep Bushwick.” They bought an aerial rig on Craigslist, just because they couldn’t resist the listing, found a teacher and started performing as an aerial girl troupe. But in April 2008, a kitchen fire burned the place to the ground, wiping them out.

The new House of Yes, which they financed by throwing fund-raisers and built with the help of friends, is a sparkling event space with a three-story “sky room” and circus truss — you, too, can learn trapeze, at their weekly classes — and an enticing second-floor Make Fun Studio, filled with sewing machines, fabric, props and costumes that Ms. Burke rents out. Material for the Arts, the city’s program that offers castoff materials, furniture and supplies to nonprofit arts organizations, has been a rich source for them.

To show their indie Martha Stewart commitment, Ms. Burke and Ms. Sapozhnikova sport matching tattoos of yardsticks that stretch from wrist to upper arm. “We’re dedicated to making stuff,” Ms. Burke said.

Watching her M.C. Sunday night’s party from 20 feet in the air, clad in a red lace unitard and hanging upside down, it was clear she no longer suffered from social anxiety.

EIGHT years ago, Ms. Fuchs and her friend Jamie Kiffell were both single and investigating the then-new world of online dating. Armed with a trial subscription to JDate, they sallied forth, sometimes meeting prospects together, sometimes alone, and sending each other copious post-mortems by e-mail — which eventually inspired them to write a handbook for online dating. To market the book, they began throwing parties under the name Gemini & Scorpio, for their respective astrological signs.Enlarge This Image“We were also having trouble finding things to do on our dates that catered to our type — our type being so-called ‘creative adults,’ meaning ‘creative but can still hold down a job,’ ” Ms. Fuchs said. In other words, she said, they wanted to make singles parties that didn’t stink. And they achieved that to such a degree, they couldn’t keep couples out.While Gemini, or Ms. Kiffell, is now married and living in Los Angeles (“Her husband was the waiter at the diner where we hung out to edit the book,” Ms. Fuchs said), the Gemini & Scorpio parties are still going strong: there have been gypsy-music dance parties at a Coney Island bathhouse, a “circus throw down” in a vintage tent with fire spinners, and all manner of burlesque and other vintage mises-en-scène. “Nightclubs are over,” Ms. Fuchs said. “They’re too expensive and they’re just not interesting.”At the Urban Sanctuary last Tuesday, Ms. Fuchs was knee deep in yards of iridescent tulle, gold vinyl and red velvet, culled from Material for the Arts. Volunteers had shown up to make 100 red-and-white tissue-paper blossoms as big as your head. Ms. Fuchs now has an intern, Michelle Bruenn, who was so inspired by the events that she veered away from law school to learn at Ms. Fuchs’s satin knee. “I love that I am her Plan B,” Ms. Fuchs said as she gave a tour of Sanctuary’s 2,000-square-foot space, which boasted two Balinese beds and a kissing booth that Ms. Fuchs said was left over from the adult-theme party she had held there over the weekend. “Don’t worry,” she added soothingly, “we washed everything.”IF everyone was an artist in the ’90s, this is shaping up to be the era of the events producer. With his partner, Mark Winkel, Kevin Balktick, 25, seems poised to become the David Rockwell of the alt-events world, an organizer of vast, multistructured events inspired by those at Lunatarium, a 20,000-square-foot space in Dumbo, Brooklyn, shuttered since 2004, which might be described as the Studio 54 for the Moveon.org crowd.Standing in an empty 13,000-square-foot warehouse in Sunset Park the other day, Mr. Balktick pointed out the remnants of his New Year’s Eve party, at which 2,500 guests wandered through a wonderland of 30 artists’ installations, including a Mylar-coated geodesic dome, a bar sculptured from ice and a room-size tent. A lone streamer lay on the cement floor, along with a cardboard box filled with moldy peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches neatly stacked in Ziploc bags.His artist’s call — the entreaty that party promoters e-mail to names in their voluminous address books — was typically enticing: “We are seeking art projects, performers, activities, production crew and volunteers of all kinds,” it read in part. “Sculpture, installation, activities, games, theme camps, performances, decorators, carpenters, riggers and general volunteers are all welcome. A strong D.I.Y. ethic is important. We can provide the space for your project, a crowd to enjoy it, transportation assistance and a modest stipend, but it’s ultimately up to you to get it together, make it happen and clean it up afterwards.”Mr. Balktick — who works part time in computer security and whose father worked as a stage manager for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade when he was growing up — has dedicated himself, he said with some passion, to “promoting creative culture here, that is, shaping New York culture in a way that isn’t work-oriented.” Like other producers, he is unfazed by the low profit margins, “whereas from a business perspective, not making a profit would be a failure.”“I love that everyone comes with this attitude of ‘I’ll bring tools,’ ” said Ms. Erbach-Gruber, an event producer/D.J./musician/you name it, last seen singing in red satin on a perch at the House of Yes. “I just love the effort.” Recently, Ms. Erbach-Gruber reminisced about an Alice in Wonderland party at Lunatarium, with a white paper rose garden that guests, in playing-card costumes, painted red with cans of paint she handed out. A huge volunteer team had been corralled to paint a section of the 20,000-square-foot loft’s floor in a chessboard pattern, and guests danced so hard they erased all traces of it.“I’ve never seen a picture,” she said sadly. “You just had to be there.”
EIGHT years ago, Ms. Fuchs and her friend Jamie Kiffell were both single and investigating the then-new world of online dating. Armed with a trial subscription to JDate, they sallied forth, sometimes meeting prospects together, sometimes alone, and sending each other copious post-mortems by e-mail — which eventually inspired them to write a handbook for online dating. To market the book, they began throwing parties under the name Gemini & Scorpio, for their respective astrological signs.
Enlarge This Image

“We were also having trouble finding things to do on our dates that catered to our type — our type being so-called ‘creative adults,’ meaning ‘creative but can still hold down a job,’ ” Ms. Fuchs said. In other words, she said, they wanted to make singles parties that didn’t stink. And they achieved that to such a degree, they couldn’t keep couples out.

While Gemini, or Ms. Kiffell, is now married and living in Los Angeles (“Her husband was the waiter at the diner where we hung out to edit the book,” Ms. Fuchs said), the Gemini & Scorpio parties are still going strong: there have been gypsy-music dance parties at a Coney Island bathhouse, a “circus throw down” in a vintage tent with fire spinners, and all manner of burlesque and other vintage mises-en-scène. “Nightclubs are over,” Ms. Fuchs said. “They’re too expensive and they’re just not interesting.”

At the Urban Sanctuary last Tuesday, Ms. Fuchs was knee deep in yards of iridescent tulle, gold vinyl and red velvet, culled from Material for the Arts. Volunteers had shown up to make 100 red-and-white tissue-paper blossoms as big as your head. Ms. Fuchs now has an intern, Michelle Bruenn, who was so inspired by the events that she veered away from law school to learn at Ms. Fuchs’s satin knee. “I love that I am her Plan B,” Ms. Fuchs said as she gave a tour of Sanctuary’s 2,000-square-foot space, which boasted two Balinese beds and a kissing booth that Ms. Fuchs said was left over from the adult-theme party she had held there over the weekend. “Don’t worry,” she added soothingly, “we washed everything.”

IF everyone was an artist in the ’90s, this is shaping up to be the era of the events producer. With his partner, Mark Winkel, Kevin Balktick, 25, seems poised to become the David Rockwell of the alt-events world, an organizer of vast, multistructured events inspired by those at Lunatarium, a 20,000-square-foot space in Dumbo, Brooklyn, shuttered since 2004, which might be described as the Studio 54 for the Moveon.org crowd.

Standing in an empty 13,000-square-foot warehouse in Sunset Park the other day, Mr. Balktick pointed out the remnants of his New Year’s Eve party, at which 2,500 guests wandered through a wonderland of 30 artists’ installations, including a Mylar-coated geodesic dome, a bar sculptured from ice and a room-size tent. A lone streamer lay on the cement floor, along with a cardboard box filled with moldy peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches neatly stacked in Ziploc bags.

His artist’s call — the entreaty that party promoters e-mail to names in their voluminous address books — was typically enticing: “We are seeking art projects, performers, activities, production crew and volunteers of all kinds,” it read in part. “Sculpture, installation, activities, games, theme camps, performances, decorators, carpenters, riggers and general volunteers are all welcome. A strong D.I.Y. ethic is important. We can provide the space for your project, a crowd to enjoy it, transportation assistance and a modest stipend, but it’s ultimately up to you to get it together, make it happen and clean it up afterwards.”

Mr. Balktick — who works part time in computer security and whose father worked as a stage manager for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade when he was growing up — has dedicated himself, he said with some passion, to “promoting creative culture here, that is, shaping New York culture in a way that isn’t work-oriented.” Like other producers, he is unfazed by the low profit margins, “whereas from a business perspective, not making a profit would be a failure.”

“I love that everyone comes with this attitude of ‘I’ll bring tools,’ ” said Ms. Erbach-Gruber, an event producer/D.J./musician/you name it, last seen singing in red satin on a perch at the House of Yes. “I just love the effort.” Recently, Ms. Erbach-Gruber reminisced about an Alice in Wonderland party at Lunatarium, with a white paper rose garden that guests, in playing-card costumes, painted red with cans of paint she handed out. A huge volunteer team had been corralled to paint a section of the 20,000-square-foot loft’s floor in a chessboard pattern, and guests danced so hard they erased all traces of it.

“I’ve never seen a picture,” she said sadly. “You just had to be there.”

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Chico (the sheep) + Dorothy (the goat) = true love

Love may not conquer ALL, but it certainly has the potential to shake things up and turn our usual way of thinking on its ear. Love also tends to sneak up on us when we least expect it: we're hanging out in our favorite neighborhood watering hole, maybe munching on some food. We look up and there she is. We're pretty sure we've seen her around, but this time something feels different. Our eyes lock across the crowded room. It's instant chemistry and (insert sappy muzak) we live happily ever after.

This may sound a tad fairytale-ish, even to the most hopeless of hopeless romantics, but it's exactly what happened in the sheep barn at The Farm Sanctuary in New York when a sheep named Chico and a goat named Dorothy (above) fell head-over-heels in love. The Farm has seen its share of special bonds: steers Larry and Kevin have stood by each other for 16 years while Bing and Bessie, two geese, have been loyal companions for 24 years. Free from fear, stress and deprivation, its residents are able to express their true natures and, well, follow their hearts.Sometimes, just like with people, animals' hearts lead them in surprising directions. Though sheep and goats often get along fine, The Farm has rarely seen any keen interest between members of the two species. Dorothy and Chico live in a herd of more than 100 sheep and goats. They weren't rescued together and, according to The Farm, people often have a hard time telling them apart, especially the sheep. But Dorothy recognizes Chico from the other end of the barn. They seek each other out, and when they meet, they exchange adoring greetings by rubbing their heads against each other. They spend hours each day grooming, playing and snuggling together. No one knows exactly how it happened, but this sheep-goat pair is over the moon.While Dorothy and Chico are not intact, their union begs the question, if they were, could they have a little "geep" of their own? The New York Times recently addressed this issue in a science Q&A. According to the article, "a geep is not actually an offspring of the sexual mating of one sheep and one goat; rather, it is an animal resulting from the physical mingling of very early embryos of the two species" also known as a chimera. The first well-known geep was born in 1984 in Cambridge, England. It showed patches of both goatish hair and sheepish wool.An actual sheep-goat hybrid is also possible, but because goats and sheep have mismatched numbers of chromosomes (60 and 54, respectively), the resulting offspring, if it survives, is sterile.Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/pets/detail?blogid=48&entry_id=57280#ixzz0fuJGzG1E
This may sound a tad fairytale-ish, even to the most hopeless of hopeless romantics, but it's exactly what happened in the sheep barn at The Farm Sanctuary in New York when a sheep named Chico and a goat named Dorothy (above) fell head-over-heels in love. The Farm has seen its share of special bonds: steers Larry and Kevin have stood by each other for 16 years while Bing and Bessie, two geese, have been loyal companions for 24 years. Free from fear, stress and deprivation, its residents are able to express their true natures and, well, follow their hearts.

Sometimes, just like with people, animals' hearts lead them in surprising directions. Though sheep and goats often get along fine, The Farm has rarely seen any keen interest between members of the two species. Dorothy and Chico live in a herd of more than 100 sheep and goats. They weren't rescued together and, according to The Farm, people often have a hard time telling them apart, especially the sheep. But Dorothy recognizes Chico from the other end of the barn. They seek each other out, and when they meet, they exchange adoring greetings by rubbing their heads against each other. They spend hours each day grooming, playing and snuggling together. No one knows exactly how it happened, but this sheep-goat pair is over the moon.

While Dorothy and Chico are not intact, their union begs the question, if they were, could they have a little "geep" of their own? The New York Times recently addressed this issue in a science Q&A. According to the article, "a geep is not actually an offspring of the sexual mating of one sheep and one goat; rather, it is an animal resulting from the physical mingling of very early embryos of the two species" also known as a chimera. The first well-known geep was born in 1984 in Cambridge, England. It showed patches of both goatish hair and sheepish wool.

An actual sheep-goat hybrid is also possible, but because goats and sheep have mismatched numbers of chromosomes (60 and 54, respectively), the resulting offspring, if it survives, is sterile.

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