Next on Gallery America, we see how the arts offer healing with a powerful story of Deonna Marie, who overcame a troubled childhood to become a celebrated opera singer.

Hello, Oklahoma.

I'm Robert Reid and welcome to Gallery America, the show that looks at how art and creative expression not only inspires us but can heal us as well.

And we see that very poignantly with the first story about an opera singer in Oklahoma City who overcame a lot in her childhood.

pretty heavy story involving abuse, addiction, incarceration.

But in the end, as you'll see, she made it.

And now she is bravely sharing her story to make the world a better place.

Meet the unforgettable Deonna Marie.

I'm like, Oh my goodness, My stomach just dropped.

Oh, Lord.

And and usually, like, I'm not really nervous, but they're first, you know, that little.

Oh.

And then it kind of something kicks in.

Okay.

Its go time.

*singing * I grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

And I had two parents that were addicted to drugs.

I was bred to work hard.

You know I got my first full time job at 12 and my first apartment at 13.

And then when I was 18, I had developed a drug addiction myself, and that took me on a ride for five years, five, five long years.

And then after that, one day I woke up clean.

And so after that I started singing.

But my first voice teacher, he told me I was an opera singer and I told him, nu uh no, like, black people don't do that.

We don't do that.

he black, you know.

So I said, okay.

I didn't know it was going to take me between ten and 15 years.

I didn't get the memo.

You see what I'm saying?

*singing * I didn't really know at the time, but now looking back, singing to me was like a life jacket thrown to me every time I was drowning in life.

Whatever that was, to try to push me under, whether it be, you know, sexual abuse, neglect.

My my parents leaving, not feeling smart enough were pretty enough or just enough.

*singing * So I tell the sweet little girl inside and my world we made it, everything is all right.

The music was just there to save the day.

*singing * sweet little girl.

You can be sure... “the Deonna Marie experience: from the crack house to the Opera house, ” it's a rollercoaster of feelings.

Now, I'm gonna give you a quick lesson in drug dealing.

Don't do it.

It's illegal.

It's a story of hope, fearlessness and achievement *singing * I am enough...

I know that this is not just for me.

I am worthy of my hearts deepest desire.

I said I want my show to be somewhere different, somewhere eclectic.

I want.

I want like unicorns, like, galloping around.

And this is kind of what I said.

And then I was like, Factory Obscura, That's the place.

What most people recognize us for is our built experiences like Mixtape, which is a fully immersive world that you're invited to come in and touch and interact and explore, climb, crawl, slide, do all the things.

We also create these immersive experiences through performances and events like Deonna's show, and it felt like a really important story that needs to be heard.

You know, this is the Deonna Marie experience, and this is an experience that I want everybody to be free.

You'll see what I'm saying.

So can somebody say, Yeah, girl!

...and you can see that when you're watching her perform, that she really is meant to be on the stage.

you know?

I mean, I had two jobs.

Money wasn't a problem.

And, you know, and what I was doing?

“the first year was amazing.

i enrolled in college ”I is what you did.

Oh, yeah.

No, no, we had to do this.

She's amazing.

She's an amazing person, Amazing human.

I couldn't have done any of this without her.

When I met Deonna, instantly, like, I ran over to introduce myself to her because I was like, she's just magical being.

And we started talking.

And then we would, like, sit together and.

And then one day she's just telling me her story.

And I was like, Oh, my God.

“Shawty would come in.

She wore like a wife beater with no bra on, some baggy jeans and some Timbs and a Fitted.

Oh, my God.

It's good to have work with someone that I trust.

It just gives you the permission to be okay, to be vulnerable.

I didn't want to tell her, but I knew she had what i needed and she had plenty just needed a little bit to give the sickness oof.

I had to tell her.

we played cards and she blew crack smoke right in my face.

Well, my mom, I got something to tell you momma, i get high too, I'm sick.

I'm sick, Mom.

Crack is a drug.

So powerful drug.

I mean, just any worries, any fears, any insecurities, any for any stress of any kind is dissipating in an instant.

*singing * youve got the sweetest, gentle form, the taste that i adore.

I had gone through so much stress and this little white pebble, like, took it away *singing * “like a dream ” So I made a love song about one of the love of my life reality.

*singing * “Oh Crack rock.. ” The first four or five years of my career, focus on substance use and mental health.

And I'm also 11 years in my own recovery.

I mean, anyone who's ever experienced heartbreak knows what addiction is... knows what a part of addiction is like, right?

When you say your friends, they'll say, How can you text that person again?

How could you go back to them right?

*singing * Oh crack rock, Where have you been all my life, ”.. We all have this thing and we just judge each other on it, depend on what we think is best or not.

I used to with my mom all the time.

Like, I hated her.

Like, why don't you just pick your kids?

Why don't you just be my mom?

And I forgave her instantly in that instant.

That first hit of her crack pipe that I took, I was released from the burden of you see, the idea is to humanize.

We need to humanize each other, not stigmatize and write each other off.

And so seeing someone tell their own story about it is how we do that.

*singing * “Oh crack rock.

Where have you been?...

” I got pulled over by the police making a drug run for my mom.

The police officer said that I had a warrant out for my arrest.

*Singing * Oh Crack rock, Where have you been?...

” The judge calls my name and he tells me that I had over 50 parking tickets in the same spot.

Miss Cartlidge, I sentenced you to 60 days in the Kent County jail.

I went to jail for parking tickets, and I had a bunch of crack on me that day, too.

That's crazy.

When I got in my cell, I'm sitting there and I'm crying.

It was that I was the lowest and loneliest I had ever been in my life.

But I have this overwhelming urge to sing *singing * “I don't know.

Oh, about tomotrow.

Oh, I just live from day to day.... ” And I just started singing.

And I don't even know where it came from.

It just came out.

I'm like, What is this?

*singing * ”...its sunshine for its skies may turn to gray.... ” I went out and I looked up to hundreds of adoring fans!

.

I was a celebrity in jail.

Going to be the first time?

It used to be late.

I was booked in, busy, highly sought after singer in jail.

Yeah, I was somebody in here.

I didn't want to go back out there.

I didn't want to be a junkie.

I just was afraid.

Please, I don't want to go back to my mom's.

I don't know what to do.

*singing * I do believe in second chances, I believe in the impossible... ” I don't want to put limits on it.

I think that at this point is limitless.

There will be, you know, music and a book.

And I'm hoping a television series, a documentary, perhaps a movie.

Honestly, at the end, I want people to leave better meaning I want people to maybe they judge somebody with addiction.

Maybe some people have gone through one or more things that I've gone through and they're bitter and they're not allowing their light to shine.

Hopefully when they step out there, one is better.

You know what I mean?

I am worthy my deepest heart's desire.

and guess what?

you are too.

Thats all!

You can find out more about Deonna Marie by visiting her website, Deonnamarie dot Com or following her on Instagram at Deonna Marie Experience.

And to find out more about this amazing place, Factory Obscura, go to their website.

Factory obscura dot com.

Next we're going to Cincinnati, where there's a group that's using musical therapy to help people recover from addiction.

Take a look.

8 to 10 years ago, the mix of alcoholism versus some form of drug addiction was almost half and half.

The alcoholism factor has dwindled to almost 5%, and nearly everyone else is involved in heroin.

There seems to be a highway that runs through Cincinnati and Dayton, where a lot of this stuff shows up and it's very cheap and easy to get get hold of.

The movement from recreational drug use to addiction seems to be more people coming off of opiates for for some kind of pain management that has led to their addiction.

Music therapy provides in, in that context, a different way of approaching individuals awareness of of their issues and of their current coping skills and how they might change, how they might use creative arts or more creative outlets as a means of getting in touch with themselves, their emotions, so that they can move forward.

Music therapy training includes a lot of training in psychology, as well as how music effects human beings or how music helps human beings get in touch with their emotional lives.

Sometimes I sit in the music therapy sessions and participate in them and I get to listen to the dialog that's going on.

And what is said really does translate into their individual counseling.

Sometimes it translates into group in terms of themes that we cover when they first get there.

They're kind of in survival mode, but the idea of being held by a community is communicated very effectively and they feel that music therapy provides an avenue for them to use their creativity and use their inner resources towards emotional expression and learning how they handle them.

Which part of addiction is hiding or burying emotions that are difficult, challenging counseling?

It's all in the head.

Music gives us a chance to express our feelings differently and connect with other people around our feelings differently.

And music therapy.

We think of four primary methods, so one is to use song material and to sing.

Another way is to use improvization.

We also use composition and so in groups we might compose songs together, or we might take a song that everyone knows and tear it apart and recompose the lyrics to that so that it says what they want it to say.

I was actively addicted from the age of 14 to about 39.

I'm probably in the first generation of people to not have like a generic alcoholism, poly substance, mostly opiates and alcohol.

People are more adept at processing their feelings, and milieus in the past have been and I attribute that to the music therapy because it gives them another channel to work with their feelings.

They work better together because for that hour what they're doing is they're kind of linking up and they're becoming a community at a different level.

And so once that part is over, it resonates out through the rest of the week and their daily life together.

We are so readily exposed to song material.

Everywhere we go.

As Americans, we are bombarded with music depending on where they use.

There's typically some kind of music happening that can very easily be triggering for craving feelings.

So as we listen, then we talk about the energies that that song brings.

It's not just about the lyrics, it's about the energy of the music that supports the lyrics that might be triggering or that they might find really soothing.

So we talk about those process, how to focus on engaging with music that's healthier for me than the music that triggers my craving feelings.

Any time you're involved in in a creative process or with a creative medium, you're getting in touch with the esthetic.

And I think all human beings need that.

When I am in an addictive process, my focus is so on self and getting my fix, getting that addiction need filled.

I lose track of everything around me and those around me, and those relationships are all static properties.

My relationship to the world and my relationship to you, to my family.

To lose touch with the esthetic to to the beautiful aspects of life is serious stuff.

So to reclaim that through a creative medium like music or art therapy really, I think enhances any kind of treatment process.

Hello!

Last we are going into the Gallery America archives to revisit a story we first told four years ago about an Oklahoma artist named Cynthia Brown, who had a troubled childhood and an eating disorder and then spent a full year painting to help her recover.

It's a powerful, positive story.

Have a look.

I've been a painter all my life or an artist all of my life.

And here's my fabulous studio in the downtown Tulsa Arts District.

This is part of the George Kaiser's Tulsa Artist Fellowship program.

And so I've had the studio for three years.

I paint large, colorful, abstract paintings that are about intuition and about expressing my feelings.

And I paint every day.

And so it's a record, really, of my daily life.

I would say that I am an artist first and foremost, and I like to dance.

I like to move.

I like to when I paint.

I like to move around and get a lot of energy going.

And I I'm a I practice gratitude every day.

And I don't know, I'm just an artist.

I don't know what else to say.

I grew up in a traumatic childhood.

You know, I had a dysfunctional family and there was a lot of screaming, yelling, cursing and all that.

And so I would just go outside and go into my room or just go off into the woods and be by myself and live in my fantasy world.

You know, daydream all the time as a kid.

And I think it's what helped me get past some of the struggles of being a child.

Today, we're going to draw a snow scene in which we make the paper work for us.

We don't have to do too much work ourselves.

Let's start.

One third of the way down like I was about four or five years old.

And I would wake up on Saturday morning before the rest of my family and put this little screen plastic screen on our black and white TV that made it color.

And then I would watch this Jonathan Nagy's show and draw with him on Saturday mornings.

And I was like probably five years old.

I mean, I was always rearranging my room and weaving nests and doing stuff outside and creating environments outdoors.

And I just always knew I was an artist.

But at age 19, I developed an eating disorder, a really severe eating disorder that I had for 20 years.

And because I thought nobody else in the whole world ate and threw up six times a day every day for 20 years, I thought I was the only one that did it.

And I just carried that around with me like this huge albatross.

And so it was just a way of coping with my reality.

It was self-abuse.

And every night I would go to bed crying and thinking, God, I got to get control of myself.

And the next day I would start the whole cycle up again.

And it went from the time I was 19 til I was 39, 20 years.

And then I met the man I'm with now.

And he I told him about it and he just said, I'm not going to leave you alone.

And so he just wouldn't leave me alone.

I was in counseling, but I still couldn't stop.

And so he just wouldn't give me any time alone.

So I was able to get past it.

He's like, I'll support us for a year, Don't worry.

Just paint.

And so I just painted.

And I did.

I was doing that.

I psyching myself out.

Like, be bold, be brave, you know, follow your heart.

Trust yourself.

Let go.

And so I was able to do that.

Painted every day, 8 hours a day, just like my husband goes to work.

I go to work, paint.

And for that first year, I got quite a bit of success.

I got a gallery in Santa Fe from that first year of hard work.

The next year I got a residency at the Mark Rothko Contemporary Art Center and Douglas Peel.

Daugavpils, Latvia.

And so I went over there for three weeks and painted with ten other artists from around the world.

And then I came back and it was just like I got into galleries and things just started happening.

And then I got the TAF Residency Fellowship in 2017 and it's just been, you know, great gowns ever since.

I think I got the right one.

It's very much using both the left and the right brain, because right brain is all about no words, just feelings and all intuition.

But then the intellect does have to step in.

You've got to take over with the right left brain and use your language to think about composition and, you know, different elements of art line space.

The way that it's repeated.

So I do have to use both sides of the brain to finish a piece.

So right now I'm doing what I call veiling, pushing that stuff back where you can still see the marks.

But I'm just pushing, pushing it to the background, sort of like putting a veil over it.

It does look easy and it's not easy, though.

It's a pretty difficult way of painting because I'm lost the whole time.

You know, I don't I step into this unknown territory with no preconceived idea.

I just do things to it and then I do something else to it until it's like present moment, moment to moment until I've come up with a finished piece.

It's this is just how I work.

It's the process, and I'll have a love affair with it.

And then I hate it, hate it, hate it.

And then I go back to loving it again.

And sometimes I'll when I go home in the evening, I think I just painted crap all day.

And the next day I come in and look at it.

It's like, Wow.

I actually like it.

So, you know, I don't I try not to judge it too much.

Well, I think one of the reasons people like my abstract painting is because it is grounded in reality as far as there's usually a horizon line.

There are things that are in the foreground, middle ground, background, the top of the painting reads the sky, the bottom reaches earth, and I use a lot of grit in my paintings, which is what what I see everywhere.

When I look out at fences, road markers, telephone poles, windows, doors, it's all a grid to me.

And it's mixed with organic shapes, which are the trees and all of that.

So that's really what I do, is I mix organic with grit.

That's basically if I have a formula, that's it.

Yeah.

I think it makes them feel grounded somehow in my my colors, I think, make people feel happy.

What I really am trying to do is express or I want to bring more beauty and joy into the world.

Well, that's all the time we have for Gallery America.

Big thanks to Factory Obscura for letting us set up here.

Remember, as always, you can revisit past episodes of Gallery America by going to our robust archives at OETA dot TV slash gallery America And don't forget about the new Gallery America podcast.

Look for it anywhere you find podcasts.

Until next time, Stay arty Oklahoma!