Art. Spirituality. Social justice. When John Mix took up that trio of graduate studies 14 years ago, little did he realize that the path of his life would lead him precisely to those three areas.
Mix, a former minister living in Villa Park, is gaining a reputation for his artwork, even though the 46-year-old didn’t take up art until he was in his mid-30s. Mix’s commissioned works include painting, sculpting and bas relief.
Mix is also the only area artist who shares his knowledge and passion for art with inmates in the Illinois Department of Corrections. He works at three area detention centers, believing that “visually communicating the human experience is common ground we can all share; it’s a place to start.”
Although Mix also creates secular art, including pieces purchased by Elmhurst Art Museum, it is his religious pieces that get a lot of notice. A copper cross he created towers 18 feet high in front of Peace Lutheran Church in Lombard, and his “Risen Christ” sculpture graces Our Lady of Hope Church in Rosemont. A five-panel bas relief depicting the stages of childhood is a conversation piece for visitors at St. Paul Lutheran School in Melrose Park.
“He worked with the students, incorporating their drawings and working them into three-dimensional shapes,” principal Laura Latske said. “It hangs in the front hallway, so it’s seen by everyone who walks through the door, and it gets such a nice reaction. It basically shows the things children do in their lives, including religious aspects like baptism and confirmation.”
Latske was impressed both by Mix’s artistic abilities and his skills working with children: “He’s just a neat person, and he worked well with the kids and got them enthused. Rather than worrying about what the end product was, his approach was just `express yourself.’ “
Mix carries that philosophy into his work with youth and adults in detention centers, where he has worked about 50 hours each month since 1990. Of the Gateway program for addictions recovery at Sheridan (Ill.) Correctional Center, a medium-security prison for adults, Mix says, “Some guys occasionally ask me how the exercises we do fit in with the recovery process, and I tell them that it’s about getting into the present moment and listening to what we’re feeling and saying to ourselves. It’s about slowing down and listening to what is happening to us now.”
In addition to Gateway, Mix works with juveniles at the Illinois Youth Centers in St. Charles and Joliet. “Sometimes there will be a kid who just can’t verbalize what’s happening in him, and visual expression is just right to be able to get at it,” he explains in his calm, soft-spoken manner. “He might begin with scribbling, and that’s a beginning step to trusting yourself. We will not put an image out that we’re not ready for. Together we can come to some understanding of where he is and what it means.”
Mix says that the value of artwork for prisoners is in opening up the lines of communication. “If you can say the way it is for you to something, to a piece of paper, to another person, then that’s the beginning of coming clean with what’s going on,” he says. “We’ve been given the capacity to express who we are verbally, visually, musically and kinetically, and the more of these capacities we use, the more we can move toward wholeness.”
Joseph O’Connor, the chaplain at the youth center in Joliet, believes that Mix’s art therapy work is highly valuable.
“He deals primarily with the young men in our Intensive Reintegration Unit, the kids who need the most attention and have special needs,” O’Connor said. “What he does through art is help them to express the things they cannot articulate, and it becomes therapeutic. People respond to his demeanor and his empathy, his ability to relate to them, and his professionalism. He’s a very genuine person.”
Mix is also reflective and thoughtful, the kind of man who evaluated his life when he was a minister at the now-defunct Community of Christ the Servant Church in Lombard 10 years ago and decided that it was time to “find out what I was capable of in art.” He had no formal training, only a passion for drawing and woodworking projects.
Mix undertook a four-year apprenticeship at Burnside Mural Studio in Elmhurst, where he impressed owner David Burnside with his ability and his attitude.
“His level of training was limited, but I could see that he was pliable, available, easy to teach, easy to train, and I took a chance,” Burnside said. “He became competent over a period of time, and the matching word for competent is confident. He was willing to take a risk and seek work on his own. John is fearless; he’s not afraid to tackle labor-intensive work or difficult installations.”
Burnside added that Mix, who is separated and is the father of three grown children, is also modest. “A lot of this soul-searching aesthetic development traps artists in an ego trip, but I never notice that with John,” he said. “With all this growth, he has never lost his dedication to his children. Other artists sometimes lose themselves totally in their art, but that’s not true with John.”
Mix’s labor-intensive projects can take as long as a year for him to complete. For example, he first discussed a sculpture commission for Bethany Lutheran Church in Naperville in February, drew sketches, got approval, and is now working on the piece, which he hopes he can fully install by the end of this year. Another current project is a seven-panel painted and sculpted bas relief commission for St. Luke’s Lutheran Church in Montgomery.
Mix feels an equal pull between creating his own art and helping others through their art. Typical of his experience is a recent session with a 15-year-old who had been involved with gangs since he was 7. Mix asked him to lay down all of the pictures he had done and take a look at them.
“I said, `What do you see?’ ” Mix recalls. “He said, `I see a lot of death down there.’ He’d seen more death than I’d ever see in a lifetime, and he’s 15. So his experience with life was so permeated by death that he didn’t have much hope of really living himself. That’s a profound statement of what he lives with.”
For Mix, that was the starting point. “My task is to find out and help him see where life is, because I know he has plenty,” Mix says. “To come to know the kinds of conditions (inmates) live with and what they struggle with and to know the love and faith and trust they have in spite of all that is a powerful thing to see.”
Perhaps seeing that positive side of the inmates he works with insulates him from fear in those surroundings, where he might be working with one inmate or as many as 50. Although the crimes that brought them there range from drug charges to sex offenses to attempted murder, Mix says, “I’ve never felt threatened for even a single moment. I’m as comfortable there as I am in my own living room.”
At an inmate’s request, Mix will also draw a picture for him, a valued memento that can help a prisoner’s identity, because they are not allowed to get photos of themselves while incarcerated.
Adult inmates in the Gateway program, Mix says, live a life so radically different from most people that it is hard for outsiders to imagine it.
“They share images of being lonely, angry, confused and, occasionally, content,” he says. “Spirituality is the first thing to go in the addiction process and the last thing to come back. I try to establish an atmosphere of honesty, consistency and trust.”
Mix places his faith in the belief that the art process begins healing. “At its roots, art and creativity are about seeing connections between ourselves and the world we live in,” he says, “and you can’t be aware of those connections very long before you’re faced with a spiritual dimension of life. I enjoy having work where the art process is part of the human process.”
