Ray Materson
(Interview
featured on A Man's World, June
20,
2006)
Raymond Materson believes in the healing power of art. While
serving a 15-year prison sentence for drug-related crimes, he salvaged
the threads of worn socks to create embroidered miniature tapestries
depicting life outside prison walls and used needlepoint to stitch
his life back together. Under such conditions, his art was both
an escape and an act of courage.
Born into a troubled family, Materson experimented
with alcohol and drugs as a young student in Grand Rapids Michigan.
He dropped
out of high school, but eventually earned a G.E.D. and attended
Thomas Jefferson College, were he enjoyed life as a drama and philosophy
major but also descended into drug addiction. In his junior year,
he was introduced to cocaine. "That absolutely changed my
life,” he says. "I became a junkie literally overnight.
That was the demon."
Today, Materson uses his art and his experience as a recovering
addict to help troubled youth transform their lives. A celebrated
artist whose painstakingly embroidered scenes typically measure
a mere 2 1/4 x 2 3/4 inches, Materson is program director of Pregnancy
Prevention, HIV education/parenting programs at the Berkshire Farm
Center and services for youth in Canaan, New York, a residential
placement and treatment facility for troubled adolescents and young
men.
Besides garnering him a national recognition, Materson's
art has now also won him the prestigious Robert Wood Johnson
Foundation's “Innovators
Combating Substance Abuse” award-the first time this honor
has been given to someone working in the arts.
This program is a powerful example of how one's total immersion
in something as simple as needle-pointing can deter, and even heal,
the ravages of chronic drug abuse, and paralyzingly low self-esteem.
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