Addiction and Art

Acknowledgments

[ix] ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We gratefully acknowledge the grant support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, whose sponsorship through the Innovators Combating Substance Abuse Awards Program made this unique book possible. Early encouragement of the concept of art as a viable and important approach for communication as well as a complement to science in understanding the human side of addiction was provided by former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, American Visionary Art Museum’s founder and director, Rebecca Alban Hoffberger, former first lady of Maryland Kendel Ehrlich, and Innovator Award recipient Ray Materson. We are indebted to the members of the Innovators’ Addiction Art Advisory Board (see Appendix A), who committed two days to a “think tank” meeting to review and select the art and to discuss the pivotal role that addiction art plays in education about, treatment of, and prevention of substance use disorders. We are grateful to Keith Weller of Columbia, Maryland, for his superb photography of the original art contained in this book. Mr. Weller photographed the majority of the art while it was on display at the annual meeting of the College on Problems of Drug Dependence, San Juan, Puerto Rico, June 2008. We appreciate the excellent editorial assistance of the editors and staff of the Johns Hopkins University Press in preparing this book. Most of all, we are grateful to the contributing artists whose art highlights the need to seek more effective ways to treat addictions and to help individuals achieve recovery. This page intentionally left blank ...