ART FOR TILLMAN

The 24 Hour Club stimulates better health and well-being through a permanent installation.

BY GAVIN DELAHUNTY PHOTOGRAPHY BY VICTORIA GOMEZ AND JOHN SMITH

The Tillman House. Helmut Dorner (b. 1952), Light Wall (white spot), 2008, oil on canvas over wood support 14.25 x 17.75 in. Gift of Deedie Rose.

Cordy Ryman (b. 1971), Broken Star, 2004, acrylic and mixed media, 21 x 15 x 6 in. Gift of Deedie Rose. William Eggleston (b, 1939), Untitled (Memphis), 2008, pigment print, 30 x 24 in. Gift of Cindy and Howard Rachofsky.

In December of 2020 I was invited to join the Dallas 24 Hour Club Advisory Council, an honor I enthusiastically accepted. “The 24,” as it is commonly known, was founded in 1969 to “provide transitional living, support services and essential life skills for homeless alcoholics and addicts so they can embrace long-term sobriety and become contributing and self-supporting members of the community.” Over the past 50 years, The 24 has grown exponentially, and it now helps over 600 people each year to get off the streets, find employment, and embrace recovery.

Around the time I came on board as a council member, The 24’s CEO, Marsha Williamson, announced that they were purchasing an apartment building just minutes from The 24 on Ross. The idea was that Tillman House—as it has been renamed—would provide affordable sober-living apartments for up to one year for successful graduates from The 24. There would be on-site staff, structure, and a focus on accountability to support these residents as they build a stronger foundation of sobriety. Tillman offers a vital opportunity to learn how to live independently in a safe, structured environment.

One day over lunch, Marsha suggested that we might think of introducing art to the public vestibules and apartments at Tillman to stimulate better health and well-being for the residents and extended community. Her idea caught me off guard. This wasn’t a proposal to find things to decorate the halls and bedrooms, but to identify art that might support recovery from addiction by transforming functional environments into spaces that encourage, enrich, and empower.

In both my personal and professional life, I have had numerous firsthand encounters with the formidable impact the visual arts can have on our lives. Art has the power to move us in ways that sometimes transcend our attempts to describe them. The project for The 24 offered an opportunity for me to pass on a gift that has sustained me when I needed it most: the gift of art. Inspired by Marsha’s suggestion, I offered to help.

The support for this idea from the art community was instantaneous and overwhelming. We received gifts of over forty works of art from several

Peter Ligon, White House on A Hill White Rock Lake, 2004, oil on canvas, 20 x 16 in. Gift of Anna and Gavin Delahunty.

exceptionally generous Dallas families: Michael Corman and Kevin Fink, Jennifer and John Eagle, Tim Headington, Marguerite Hoffman and Tom Lentz, Cindy and Howard Rachofsky, Deedie Rose, Lisa and John Runyon, and Sharon and Michael Young. The donations included works by artists such as TM Davey, Peter Ligon, Catherine Opie, Cordy Ryman, James Everett Stanley, and Charline von Heyl. Framing, art handling and installation, labels, and an accompanying booklet were supported by Runyon Arts, 24 FPS, Unified Fine Arts, TM Graphics, and Miko McGinty Inc. In no time at all, thanks to an incredible display of generosity, we were well on the road to achieving our goal.

One of the first donations to the art for the Tillman project was a set of 17 screen prints by painter, furniture designer, color theorist, glassmaker, writer, and educator Josef Albers (1888-1976). They were selected from his 1972 portfolio Formulation: Articulation. Dedicated to his wife Anni, the double portfolio’s intention was to show Albers’ methods of formulating and articulating his ideas and to demonstrate his unique concern for color and formal relations. Several of the prints selected for Tillman House are derived from previous works by Albers that are now held in some of the world’s most significant museums. These include his seminal Homage to the Square series; Fugue, 1925; Skyscrapers, 1926; Windows, 1929; Viewing, 1933; and his Treble Clef or Violin Clef series, 1932-’35. Despite their two-dimensionality, many of these works appear voluminous and spatial. This is achieved by the artist through graduated distances between the horizontals and juxtapositions of the colors, which produce the illusion of space.

In the booklet that accompanies Formulation: Articulation, Albers describes the origin of art as “the discrepancy between physical fact and psychic effect.” Put simply, there is a gap between these abstract compositions and the profound effect they have on the surrounding space and the viewer’s state of mind. After fleeing Nazi Germany in the 1930s, Anni and Josef Albers maintained an unshakable belief in the transformative power of art. Josef Albers went as far as to suggest that habits that prevent self-actualization could be overcome through the study of abstract form, which has the potential to challenge ingrained behavior and offer a fresh perspective on the world. One print from Formulation: Articulation has been installed in every apartment. It is our hope that the residents will benefit from some the effects envisaged by Albers as they commit to a fresh start in their own lives. P

Top right: Gary Hume (b. 1962), One Thousand Windows, 2013, acrylic on paper, 14.75 x 12.50 in. Gift of Anna and Gavin Delahunty. Right: Otis Jones (b. 1946), Yellow Circle and Red Circle, 2005, mixed media on canvas (2-parts), 7 x 7 x 2 in. (each). Gift of Deedie Rose.

Lynne Woods Turner (b. 1951), Untitled (#9069), 2010, oil on linen, 12 x 12 in. Gift of Marguerite Steed Hoffman.