Carolyn Treat '82 entered Colby anticipating making strides as an artist, and she foresaw a career teaching art to children. Two decades later, things have worked out as she planned–and then some.

An exhibiting sculptor, Treat is also the art director of a therapeutic art program she started at Shalom House, a Portland, Maine, agency that provides housing and support services for people with mental illnesses to help them live as independently as possible. In the spring of 1999, some 40 of her students exhibited paintings, drawings, collages, papier-mâché, masks and clay pieces at the Danforth Gallery in Portland.

Her charges sold 13 pieces, but Treat says she prefers talking up the physical and emotional profit they get from making art: feeling comfortable in a group, being responsible, feeling self-worth and "just seeing the work!"

In the late 1980s Treat taught in the Portland public schools and particularly enjoyed the special education classes. "The kids were excited to be there, to be creative," she said. At Shalom House she says she feels the same connection, desire and gratitude in her students, who range from age 19 to their 60s. In addition to mental illness, some have physical disabilities. "They need attention almost like a child would," Treat said of the groups of eight to 10 that meet as often as three times a week. "I had to focus on their skills and interests. I felt I clicked with it."

After her junior year in Florence, Italy, and her final year as a Senior Scholar honing skills at Colby under Professor Harriett Matthews, Treat won a Watson Fellowship and spent a year in Italy studying and working with marble in a studio.

"I was an artist over there. But making art wasn't enough," she said. "I didn't feel connected or contributing something."

Back in the States–on a MacDowell Colony Residency in 1985, a Virginia Center for the Creative Arts Residency the following year and while earning an M.F.A. in sculpture at Maryland Institute's Rinehart School of Sculpture in 1992–Treat says she was trying to recreate the experience of doing art in Italy. "I had to get Italy out of my system," she said. "I had to sink my teeth into this art program."

In fact, the Danforth Gallery exhibit had some bite. Because Medicaid had ruled the Shalom House art program "recreational" and stopped funding, the show became a fund raiser for the program–and, says Treat, earned recognition for the therapeutic qualities of art making. Another Shalom House show by her students, a papier-mâché mask project, is slated at the Portland Library this November.

Treat says she's still intent on putting her own sculpture out there, "a piece here and a piece there." She has shown her work at Portland School of Art, at the Anne Weber Gallery in Georgetown, Maine, at Maine Coast Artists in Rockport and at the Maine Audubon Society in Falmouth. "It's about a show a year, but I don't push it," she said. "It's a choice I've made."

Teaching art at Shalom House also means "I've given up a few things," she said. "There's no vacation time, no benefits. But I feel like what I'm doing is a good thing." –Robert Gillespie