Refuge: Center for Artists in Recovery started out three years ago as the personal project of businessman-in-recovery Bill Current. Though the name conjures up a pricey private hospital staffed by social workers and shrinks, it’s something else entirely—a quirky Skokie art gallery, occupying the front half of a building shared by Current’s equally oddly named corporate design firm, Asylum. Refuge offers artists who’ve struggled with addiction the therapy of a gallery wall and reconnection to the world. A nonprofit, it’s got a half-dozen exhibits under its belt, a roster of artists, and a growing reputation that attracts work from all over the country. But it’s still largely a one-man operation, funded out of Current’s pocket. The budget last year, after a fund-raiser and a grant from the Illinois Arts Foundation, was a minuscule $11,000. Current says he’ll be happy if he’s able to add an intern this year.
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Current, 53, grew up in Morton Grove and started drinking in seventh grade. By the time he got to Northern Illinois University, alcohol was a necessary part of his daily routine and he was regularly bingeing on weekends. That pattern continued into his professional life as the owner of a typesetting business that eventually became the design firm Asylum. “For better or worse,” he says, he managed to escape the “big consequences that can make people reflect and change their lives.” Take for example the time he rolled his car, hit a tree, and walked away. And owning his own business proved to be a sort of crutch: “When you have an organization beneath you, they cover for you,” he says. “They’re doing a lot of the work.” If you scramble enough and compartmentalize enough, you can last—”dancing close to the fire”—as long as you can keep the work coming in.
After three years, one doctor figured out that Current was downing a fifth of vodka with his pills every night. He was 48 years old and “pretty beat up” when he began a 12-step recovery program five years ago. “Once I admitted that I needed help everything fell into place,” he says. “It was that point of surrender that made the change. I don’t know if I’d be alive today if it hadn’t happened.”
Love & Hate is up at the gallery, 4811 Main, Skokie, through March 25. Hours are Tue-Fri 11 AM to 5:30 PM, Sat 11 AM to 2 PM. The next show, PostMarks: I’m Sorry …, opens April 11. Artists and writers in recovery are invited to submit art on a four-by-six-inch postcard via snail mail, to be received no later than March 21. It’s an inclusive show, Current says: “You send, we hang.”v
