Publications

Printed in the Sacramento Bee on Wednesday, May 7, 2008

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Sacramentan paints a picture of chronic pain
By Sam McManis

Words failed Mark Collen when his doctor asked about his chronic pain. Strange, because Collen had always been such a talkative guy.

But all the descriptive terms tossed out during that memorable 1997 appointment – "searing," "stabbing," "burning," "numbing," "pins-and- needles" – could not fully express Collen's sciatic nerve pain, vicelike and unrelenting.

And when the doctor asked where the pain fell on a standard 0-to-10 pain scale, Collen wondered: How could a mere number quantify the unbearable?

What was needed, he felt, was a tangible expression of his inner turmoil. Maybe then his doctor would understand. Maybe then, several years after two surgeries, he might be prescribed the right amount of painkillers needed to live and function normally.

Chronic pain had taken much of the joy out of Collen's life. His marriage had ended. His career as a salesman for a major insurance company had ended. His hope of living pain-free had ended as well.

"Half the time," Collen recalls, "I was lying in pain on my futon, going over how many ways I could kill myself."

What he did gain from the ordeal, eventually, was an artistic outlet. Having never taken an art class, Collen nonetheless created a stark mixed-media piece featuring a photo of himself entombed in packing tape, except for a single eyeball, and a poem about suicide.

He showed it to the doctor on his next visit.

"I could see her eyes welling up," Collen says. "She understood. That did it. There was never a question in my pain doctor's mind after that."

A gallery with global reach

That first foray into art as therapy has since led the 47-year-old Sacramento man to create a not-for-profit online gallery, painexhibit.com, in which he solicits images of work from others who suffer from chronic pain.

In the 10 years since he started the project, Collen has received more than 500 examples from around the world – many poignant, all pointed and, frankly, painful to see.

The site recently was featured in the New York Times, and the artwork has appeared each quarter on the cover of the Journal of Pain & Palliative Care Pharmacotherapy. Collen, who has become an outspoken advocate for non-malignant chronic pain patients, also has had essays and other writings appear in medical journals such as the Pain Practitioner and Practical Pain Management.

Reviewing the gallery, Dr. William M. Lamers wrote that "the gap between our scientific understanding of how to treat pain and the clinical application of that knowledge remains one of the frustrations of modern health care. ... The Pain Exhibit is a plea for understanding and better care for those who suffer."

At the very least, says Penney Cowan, founder of the American Chronic Pain Association, it will start a dialogue. Cowan says the Pain Exhibit was featured at a convention for pain-management health care providers.

"It's a wonderful way of communicating how we feel," Cowan says. "It's not about how well you paint or sculpt. It's how you interpret your pain."

'Reasoning surrenders'

The first time you meet Collen, he appears trim and fit. Although he walks gingerly, there is no pronounced limp. However, halfway through a 30-minute interview, he has to stand in an effort to relieve part of the pressure on his back.

"Say you're a doctor and you look at me in your office and you think, 'No. Not believable,' " Collen says.

In other words, no prescription drugs for you.

"But they see my artwork, and it gives them a better idea for what people like me are going through," he says. "It's like (philosopher) Blaise Pascal's quote, 'All our reasoning ends in surrender to feeling.' "

Collen's painful feelings began in 1995, eight days after his 35th birthday. At work, he was bending over to put a cardboard box in the back seat of his car when he felt immediate pain. Turns out, he had herniated a disk, and pain radiated down his left leg.

Then came the surgeries: one to remove a portion of the bone around the disk, another to relieve scar tissue pressing on his nerve. Neither, he says, significantly helped with the pain.

"It's unpredictable," he says. "Sometimes, I'll be lying in bed reading, and all of sudden it's unbearable. (But) there is always some level of pain."

Collen does not deny that some patients taking opioids will go to doctors to, as a common phrase among clinicians goes, "shop for meds." But he believes many physicians overreact and undertreat. "They're afraid to prescribe," he says. "One (reason) is the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) has prosecuted doctors – not a lot but enough to scare them. And the second is addiction.

"But there's a big difference between physical dependence and emotional addiction. Say you've never used drugs in your life and, after you get injured, you're prescribed opioids. What will happen when you stop using it is the body will have withdrawals. That's physical dependence. Emotion addiction is, 'I want that drug!' "

Something of an autodidact, Collen has used his own experience as a jumping-off point to research such topics, including pain tolerance – defined by the American Academy of Pain Medicine as "decreasing relief of pain with the same dosage over time."

That led to a 2007 essay he wrote, published in the Journal of Pain & Palliative Care Pharmacotherapy, in which he posited that patients become afraid of their pain doctors and don't adequately express the level of their pain.

"Fear of losing the prescription may encourage patients not to mention that their medication is no longer working," he writes.

Catharsis through art

Collen isn't naive enough to think his online exhibit, supported by the California Assembly of Local Art Agencies, a nonprofit arts organization, will physically ease people's pain.

But he calls it cathartic.

Some of the images are startling in their depiction of pain in its numerous manifestations.

In "Resonance," Susan Gofstein of Chicago painted a portrait of herself on her MRI film, minus most of her face, to illustrate her chronic facial pain. Helen Tupper of Dartmouth, Canada, expressed her chronic muscle spasms by visualizing the feeling as a "hot fiery ball of pulsating pain, which is wrapped up in barbed wire."

Collen has several of his own pieces included. One is a plaster likeness of a foot with a dozen steel blades piercing the sole. Another, titled "Hey Doc, Have You Figured It Out Yet?," is a 10-foot-high tower of X-rays, which Collen says represents doctors ordering "the same test over and over again in hopes of understanding the cause of chronic pain."

By far the most visceral is "Trapped in Hell." A red plaster face, a rictus of pain, is impaled by three strips of rebar.

Though the visual is arresting in itself, Collen's statement about the piece is pretty illustrative as well:

"There are times when my pain medication stops working and the horrible nerve pain takes over, ripping through my innocent leg. I lie on my bed trapped, trapped by pain. I feel fear, afraid the pain will never cease, afraid I'll go insane.

"I cry out to God, begging for mercy. What have I done to deserve this fate? I feel like an innocent man condemned. I am trapped in a cage of pain, a cage made of rebar. I cannot tolerate it another second. I try a desperate escape by pushing my face through the bars, but I can go no further. I'm trapped in hell."

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Article courtesy of sacbee.com

Printed in the New York Times Online on Tuesday, April 22, 2008

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Pain as an Art Form
By Tara Parker-Pope


Selections from the Pain Exhibit. To see a slide show, click here.

Pain doesn't show up on a body scan and can't be measured in a test. As a result, many chronic pain sufferers turn to art, opting to paint, draw or sculpt images in an effort to depict their pain.

"It's often much more difficult to put pain into words, which is one of the big problems with pain," said Allan I. Basbaum, editor-in-chief of Pain, the medical journal of The International Association for the Study of Pain. "You can't articulate it, and you can't see it. There is no question people often try to illustrate their pain."

One of the most famous pain artists is Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, whose work, now on exhibit at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, is imbued with the lifelong suffering she experienced after being impaled during a trolley accident as a teenager. Her injuries left her spine and pelvis shattered, resulting in multiple operations and miscarriages, and she often depicted her suffering on canvas in stark, disturbing and even bloody images.

Sacramento resident Mark Collen, 47, is a former insurance salesman who suffers from chronic back pain. After his regular doctor retired due to illness, Mr. Collen was struggling to find a way to communicate his pain to a new doctor. Although he has no artistic training, he decided to create a piece of artwork to express his pain to the physician.

"It was only when I started doing art about pain, and physicians saw the art, that they understood what I was going through," Mr. Collen said. "Words are limiting, but art elicits an emotional response."

Mr. Collen wrote to pain doctors around the world to solicit examples of art from pain patients. Working with San Francisco college student James Gregory, 21, who suffers from chronic pain as the result of a car accident, the two created the Pain Exhibit, an online gallery of art from pain sufferers. The images are evocative and troubling.

"Some of them are painful even to look at," Dr. Basbaum said. In November, he included an image from the site on the cover of Pain; it can be seen here.

Finding ways to communicate pain is essential to patients who are suffering, many of whom don't receive adequate treatment from doctors. In January, Virtual Mentor, the American Medical Association Journal of Ethics, reported that certain groups are less likely to receive adequate pain care. Hispanics are half as likely as whites to receive pain medications in emergency rooms for the same injuries; older women of color have the highest likelihood of being undertreated for cancer pain; and being uneducated is a risk factor for poor pain care in AIDS patients, the journal reported.

Some of the images from the Pain Exhibit, like "Broken People" by Robert S. Beal of Tulsa, Okla., depict the physical side of pain. Others, such as "Against the Barrier to Life," convey the emotional challenges of chronic pain. "I feel like I am constantly fighting against a tidal wave of pain in order to achieve some quality of life," wrote the work's creator, Judith Ann Seabrook of Happy Valley in South Australia. "I am in danger of losing the fight and giving up."

Mr. Collen said the main goal of the exhibit is to raise awareness about the problem of chronic pain. However, he said he hopes one day to find a sponsor to take the exhibit on tour.

"People don't believe what they can't see," Mr. Collen said. "But they see a piece of art an individual created about their pain and everything changes."

To see a slide show of selections from the Pain Exhibit, click here, or visit the Web site to see the full gallery of photos. Another slide show from The Times in February features art created by migraine sufferers.

To view the original New York Times article, click here.

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Article courtesy of nytimes.com

Printed in The Pain Practitioner in the Summer 2006 issue (Volume 16, Number 2)

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Article courtesy of aapainmanage.org

Printed in the Journal of Pain and Palliative Care Pharmacotherapy in the September 2005 issue (Volume 19 Number 3)

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Website Review

http://www.painexhibit.com
THE ONLINE EXHIBIT OF THE Pain Exhibit, developed by Mark Collen.

Accessible on line at no charge.

A donation form is available at the exhibit site. Tax deductible donations are used to help keep the exhibit alive.

Chronic pain is difficult to define, describe, measure and treat. It varies in location, distribution, intensity, timing, and chronicity. It conveys messages across a spectrum from meaningful signals to a meaningless, grim foreboding. Untreated, chronic pain tends to increase in severity and enlists affective components from anxiety and depression to insomnia, frustration, withdrawal, anger, and even thoughts of suicide. Chronic, under-treated pain afflicts millions of persons and exacts a huge toll in lost wages, health care costs and human misery. The gap between our scientific understanding of how to treat pain and the clinical application of that knowledge remains one of the frustrations of modern health care. The complexity of pain contributes to mistaken assumptions and inappropriate generalizations about its causation and its impact on the individual. For example, I once saw a chart notation, "The pain is not as bad as the patient says it is." The Pain Exhibit is a plea for understanding and better care for those who suffer.

I have seen individual paintings that tried to convey what pain does to people. A single painting, good as it may be, does not usually convey a lasting impression. But put sixty-nine works by artists with chronic pain together with their comments and suddenly the impact is undeniable. The artistic renderings offered in the Pain Exhibit range from direct attempts to depict the pain to symbolic representations of what under-treated pain does to the individual. Despair is there, but transcendence and hope can also be found. Humor, anger, yearning and genius are also present in these works. The human spirit shines through them.

Mark Collen, a young businessman who has experienced chronic pain for ten years following failed back surgery, found some relief through expressing in art what his chronic pain meant to him. Eventually, he asked other similarly disabled persons to share artistic impressions of their pain. After receiving more than 500 submissions, he selected sixty-nine to represent various aspects of chronic pain. Some of the pieces are starkly realistic; others are symbolic representations of pain and its impact.

The graphic representation of a nerve in the grip of two large, black pincers needs no description, nor do the prison-like bars across a scene of a pleasant yard. The text accompanying a distorted self-portrait, however, informs us of the importance of artistic expression:

Pain is the beginning and end of every day to me. I have suffered from chronic pain for so long that I can't imagine life without it anymore. As my back pain increased and the brace came into my life, I found myself painting an increasing number of self-portraits. I try to express a feeling I cannot put into words. They are an attempt to explain the torment I am going through. Through them I try to express a feeling I cannot put into words. For me, creating art is just something I do to survive a life of constant pain. It's as if the paintings have become a record of my pain, giving a face to an otherwise faceless enemy.

A close-up painting of the face of a cat offers an unexpected comment detailing the value of what might be called 'distraction,' 'focused attention' or 'pet therapy.'

In my deepest hours of pain, we acquired a nut-case (sic) cat, who is able to keep me entertained. When the heaviest prescription opiates would not cut the pain, she would make up some new game that could get me laughing. This cut a spiral of pain and has allowed me to draw off all pain killers.

The fusion of a torso into a stylized cross provides a basis for the artist to challenge commonly held religious assumptions about the heuristic value of suffering. The succinct text accompanying this painting, entitled, "Amateur," offers an undeniable, message, a calculus of suffering beyond mere words or numbers:

Amateur is about questioning religion in the depths of despair and making a statement about Jesus' suffering which was short and humane compared to RSD(1) victims.

Words of sufferers describing their art surpasses the impact of either words or art alone. It is hard to imagine a more convincing argument for the value of art therapy than the works and words presented here.

Out of the misery of his failed surgery and resultant chronic pain Mark Collen persevered to provide a forum for persons with chronic pain. Its obvious value in health care education is reflected in the prestigious institutions that already employ it in their programs. The Pain Exhibit can be viewed at painexhibit.com. One of the works from the exhibit can be viewed on the cover of this journal.

A user-friendly CD containing the sixty-nine works of art and accompanying description is available by arrangement from Mark Collen who can be reached through the website or at 916-362-0363. Donations to the Pain Exhibit are tax deductible.


NOTE
1. RSD: reflex sympathetic dystrophy, now also known as 'complex regional pain syndrome'

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Article courtesy of Informa Healthcare

Printed in the Guideline for the Management of Fibromyalgia Syndrome Pain in Adults and Children (2005)

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Publication of the American Pain Society

Printed in the Sacramento News & Review on Thursday, July 29, 2004

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15 Minutes
Everybody Hurts
By John McCormack


          Photo by Larry Dalton

As the old adage goes, what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. For Mark Collen, founder of the Pain Exhibit, these are words to live by. After spending the greater part of his life with chronic physical pain, one day, Collen discovered a new medium for expressing it: art. Inspired by the therapeutic results, Collen founded the Pain Exhibit, a gathering of visual artwork by people living with chronic pain. Much more than just a collection of art, it's a voice for chronic-pain sufferers worldwide.

What is the Pain Exhibit?

The Pain Exhibit is an educational visual-arts exhibit that features artists with chronic pain. These artists come from all across the globe, and their art expresses some facet of the pain experience, whether it's torture, fear, acceptance, love, hope or any other feeling that someone will go through in dealing with chronic pain.

What is the mission behind the exhibit?

The mission of the exhibit is to give a voice to the many who suffer in abject silence and to educate health-care providers and the public about chronic pain. There are estimates that up to 120 million people in America suffer from chronic pain. And my guess is that less than 10 percent of those people are effectively treated. The idea is to use art as a tool in communicating the pain experience.

How did the idea for the Pain Exhibit come about?

The way it got started was as a direct result of my own negative experience in trying to find treatment. One day, I was going through a terrible pain episode, and I started creating a piece of art about the emotions that I was going through. I ended up finishing the piece that day and found that it was really cathartic to create art around the pain experience. And so, I kept doing more and more pieces about my pain, relating different facets of it, until one day, I thought, "You know, it would be interesting to know if other people around the world are doing the same thing." And that's when I decided, naively, of course, "Why don't I find out?"

What kind of response did you get?

It was shocking. In putting out the call for art, I got more than 500 pieces. At first, the submissions would just dribble in. And when I got the first 15 submissions, I remember thinking, "Yes! I have enough to justify the exhibit." But by the last week leading up to the submission deadline, I was just getting piles of packages on my front door. It was unbelievable.

How can pain art be used to educate others about chronic pain?

When an individual has chronic pain, you can't see it. I am a fit, healthy person. You would never know that I have chronic pain. And on one hand, that's good, because you can hide it rather easily. But on the other hand, it's very bad, because it means that a doctor can't see it, either. A lot of times, if a doctor is shown art that effectively expresses a person's chronic pain, the doctor is able to better understand it. The beauty of pain art is that it communicates the pain experience far more effective than words ever could.

What do you hope to accomplish?

I want to continue to have medical schools using the images for education. Right now, physicians from Harvard and Stanford are using the art in medical education. I'd also like to have a catalog made, which would go into the offices of pain doctors across the world, so that people can use pain art to explain the pain they're going through. I'm also hoping to raise money to tour the exhibit so that people can see the art in person. It's powerful to look at the images, but when you see them in person, it makes all the difference in the world.

How has the experience affected you?

It's been really phenomenal. It's been difficult and challenging, but I don't regret anything. I have an e-mail and letter file--I call it my positive-vibe file. It's full of e-mails and letters that people have sent me from all over, saying how much they love the site. And I'll open it up and read a few of them when things get tough, and that really makes you feel good. Sometimes, it can be hard because I'm doing all of this more or less alone, but I just feel that it's something that has to be done. I feel that this stuff has to get out there so that people can get the treatment they need.

How can someone get involved with the exhibit?

Anyone who'd like to get involved can do so by checking out painexhibit.com or by calling (916) 362-0363. Any donation, whether it's someone's time or it's help with funding, would be great. It's been kind of an uphill battle in getting help so far, but I'm confident that the exhibit will be successful.

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Article courtesy of newsreview.com

Printed in the American Pain Society Bulletin in the May / June 2004 issue (Volume 14, Number 3)

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Web Site Review
Organization: Pain Art Exhibit
Reviewed by Ronald J. Gironda, PhD

www.painexhibit.com

Site Audience
This is the home page of the PAIN Exhibit, also known as the Pain Exhibit. The stated mission of the site is "to educate healthcare providers and the public about chronic pain through the poignancy of art; and to give voice to the many who suffer in abject silence." The site has had more than 5,000 visitors from 41 different countries since its launch on March 8, but not a single donation. Says project manager Mark R. Collen, "The PAIN Exhibit will not survive the year without funding."

Content Appraisal
This site is an educational exhibit of visual art created by individuals with chronic pain. Each of the 69 pieces in this diverse, well-rounded collection focuses on some aspect of the chronic pain experience. The works are thematically organized into categories such as Portraits of Pain, Pain Visualized, Isolation and Imprisonment, and Hope and Transformation, among others. Accompanying each piece is a brief statement by the artist, which provides greater depth of understanding of the individual's phenomenology and generally adds to the impact of these works. The site also includes background information regarding the project, its funding, and the use of art to communicate the experience of chronic pain. Educators who would like to use the works for instructional purposes are provided with the necessary information. There are no commercial banners or hyperlinks on this site, although donations are solicited.

Navigation/Ease of Use
The site is fully accessible to anyone, requires no registration, and is well-maintained. It is simply designed and easy to navigate. Verbal content is logically organized into a few general categories and presented in a straightforward, readily accessible manner. The site does not have a search engine, but it is not missed.

Recommendations
This fascinating site should have broad appeal to APS members. Not only is the art aesthetically intriguing, but also it truly provides a provocative glimpse into the personal experience of those who suffer with chronic pain. An example of the art that can be viewed on the PAIN Exhibit site is presented below. Perhaps the most compelling reason for APS members to visit this site is to be reminded of the sentiment captured by the statement that accompanies this work.


     "Reflection" by Hester Stekelenburg.
     Featured courtesy of PainExhibit.com.

"This is what my work is about. Trying to make an invisible illness visible. Trying to get the inside out. I am also dealing with the fact that people around me can't see what is wrong. They don't know that I live with pain every single day and that I don't have another choice but to learn to live with it. People tell me not to overreact and that I need to loose the dramatic way of feeling pain. How easy it is for them to forget and how difficult it can be for the one who lives with pain."

Reviewer content represents the opinion of the reviewer, not APS.

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Article courtesy of ampainsoc.org

Printed in the Buenos Aires Herald on Thursday, May 20, 2004

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The art of dealing with chronic pain
By Juliana Green

"Whenever I have a bad pain day I use the parking spot for disabled people. You can't imagine the looks I get from people when I get out of my car."

Mark Collen is the creator of the Pain Exhibit (PainExhibit.com), an online exhibition of art works from people all over the world who suffer chronic pain. The aim is to educate healthcare providers and the public about chronic pain, to get better treatment and understanding.

Collen lives in Sacramento, California. He had a wife and was the top sales person in the nation for the insurance company he was working for. He was putting a box in his car when he ruptured a disc, which stuck into the nerve that ran down his leg, causing severe nerve pain. He was immediately operated on and the pain went away for three months. Desperation overtook Collen when the pain resurged unexpectedly. There was nothing he could do. Pain became part of his life.

One day, as he was feeling especially bad, he made an artistic piece of work and discovered that it not only helped him cope much better with the pain, but that it was an excellent way of transmitting to others what he felt. That's where he drew inspiration from to create the PAIN Exhibit.

Collen then contacted a great number of patients with chronic pain all over the world and found himself with an enormous amount of art works inspired by pain, which he divided according to themes. As he was unable to become a non-profit organization, he began to work under the California Assembly of Local Art Agencies (CALAA), in order to gather donations for his project.

"Because pain cannot be seen," said Collen, "many people fail to understand that a person might look normal, but might be suffering from chronic pain."

There is a section on the website that illustrates this point very well: But you look so normal. One of the artists, Judy Kay Merryman Cowan, made a collage showing herself in pieces surrounded by phrases that show people's total lack of comprehension as to her condition.

"Art is very powerful," said Collen. In art he found a unique way of expressing what he felt, and people saw that. Collen's sculpture of a foot with steel blades stuck in it expresses what chronic pain feels for him. Many doctors placed the art works in the medical history of their patients. Doctors from Stanford and the University of California at San Francisco are using the art from the site to educate doctors, nurses, and others about chronic pain.

"I went through a great deal of pain, unnecessarily," said Collen, "Because of ignorance most physicians are either afraid to prescribe narcotic analgesics or won't prescribe an adequate dose. They are afraid of two main things: being prosecuted by law enforcement and losing their license to practice medicine, or they fear the patients becoming addicted to the drugs. Public policy desperately needs to change its attitude about the ethical use of narcotic analgesics. Most people don't understand the difference between psychological addiction and physical dependence. Study after study show that people with chronic pain rarely if ever become psychologically addicted to narcotics."

"This project has been the most difficult endeavor of my life," said Collen, "I have had a very difficult time getting help from anyone. It's been very frustrating." He used his own savings to keep the exhibit afloat six months ago, when he ran out of donations, and is currently looking for a sponsor. His idea is to tour the world with the exhibition.

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Article courtesy of buenosairesherald.com

Printed in the Daily Nebraskan on Monday, March 29, 2004

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Painful artwork illuminates suffering
By DN Staff Writer Josh Harrison

Pain is part of art. There is almost a myth that enshrouds the artist as isolated and suffering physically, mentally or both.

D.H. Lawrence had tuberculosis. Frida Kahlo was crippled in a devastating bus accident. Friedrich Nietzsche was plagued by illness and was a mental invalid the last years of his life.

With this in mind, an art exhibit on pain doesn't seem all that out of the ordinary. The Web site painexhibit.com is an amalgamation of different art with themes that stem from suffering.

However, Mark Collen, an artist and the Web site's founder, didn't start PAIN Exhibit to romanticize the notion of the suffering artist. He wants to create awareness about those who suffer from chronic pain.

"Our mission is to give a voice to those who suffer in abject silence," he said.

Myrna Spicer is one such survivor, who was forced into early retirement because of an accident. She now has pain so severe she needs a morphine pump in her stomach that continually supplies relief to her spine.

Her piece featured on PAIN Exhibit is called Morphine Magic, a ceramics piece in the visions of a broken plate, sprinkled with bright colors and chaotic patterns.

Before her accident, Spicer never had much time for art, but she now finds ceramics as a useful medium for expression.

"When I'm having a lot of pain, I find that I use darker colors and do weirder things," she said.

Spicer, a resident of Abilene, Kan., became interested in ceramics because of a local pottery shop, and in addition to suffering, her work reflects her interest in multicultural issues.

"I find myself portraying people more often," she said.

Spicer is just one of many artists featured on Collen's Web site. Other artistic themes on the Web site include "God and Religion," "Isolation and Imprisonment" and "Hope and Transformation."

Collen started PAIN Exhibit in 2001 as a response to the years of undertreatment he endured for a peculiar infirmity. He suffered a herniated disk in a work accident, and a series of unsuccessful surgeries accumulated scar tissue around nerve endings in his spine, leaving him with an ailment that is incurable: pain.

He said people sometimes give him disgusting looks when he parks in handicapped spots. People don't understand because chronic pain isn't a visible affliction. He said this is why the artwork on PAIN Exhibit is important.

"Having chronic pain is a very isolating experience and finding other people who understand chronic pain is very comforting," he said.

This is the first time in history an exhibit of this nature has been organized. The California Assembly of Local Arts Agencies (CALAA), a non-profit organization, is serving as an umbrella agency for the Web site. The immediate goal is to gain sponsorship to create a material exhibit that would tour the United States.

The mission of PAIN Exhibit is to educate healthcare providers and the public about chronic pain through the affective quality of art.

According to Collen, somewhere between 60 and 120 million Americans experience chronic pain, which disables more people than cancer and heart disease and costs the U.S. more than $90 billion per year in medical costs, disability payments and productivity.

In a perfect world there would be no suffering and no need to create awareness about it, which is all artists like Collen want: to legitimize their pain, which is such a prominent part of their artistic inspiration.

"The whole process (art) is very cathartic. It diffuses suicidal feelings and other destructive emotions," Collen said.

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Article courtesy of dailynebraskan.com

Printed in the Sacramento Bee on Thursday, June 5, 2003

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People
Show is creative response to pain
Bee Regional Staff

Mark Collen wants to show something that can't be seen. Words fail to describe it. Only art can convey his idea -- his knowledge -- of pain.

Collen, a Rosemont resident, is assembling artwork for a traveling exhibit portraying pain.

"It's an invisible problem," he said. "If you can't see it, most people don't believe it."

Collen said undertreatment of pain is a major problem that goes undetected. He cited statistics from the American Chronic Pain Association stating the U.S. economy loses about $90 million each year in lost productivity and medical costs related to pain.

Collen has wrestled with pain since October 1995 when he injured his back lifting a box. The day before, he had won a national sales award for accomplishments at Nationwide Insurance.

Since the injury and surgery, he and his wife divorced, and he hasn't worked because of the pain, he said.

After four years and thoughts of suicide, he found a pain specialist who helped him function. Now he meditates 90 minute each day, swims and sees a pain specialist and psychologist.

He invested himself more deeply in art after the injury, he said.

"Making art helped me get through the crisis," he said.

In a partnership with the California Assembly of Local Art Agencies, Collen has been recruiting artists, locally and internationally, to submit work for his exhibition. He's received about 100 packages so far and met quite a few like-minded people.

"You don't feel as isolated when you meet other people in the same situation," he said.

He hopes to raise the funds to stage a 75-piece exhibition in Sacramento and then throughout the world. This will be the first exhibition he organizes but his second chance at showing his own pain art. Last August in San Diego , he displayed his work at a gathering of the International Association for the Study of Pain.

"The bottom line is: I want to end unnecessary suffering," he said. "For doctors, family members, society in general -- so they won't be sneering at people who park in handicapped spots because they look healthy."

To contact Collen, call (916) 362-0363 or e-mail Mark@painexhibit.com.

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Article courtesy of sacbee.com