The formulation of approach to the problem of helping people with special talent and who live with persisting mental illness developed at the Anchor House of Artists was articulated and published this period in an article appearing in the Winter issue of the Psychiatric Rehabiliation Journal (Tillyer MD, Accordino MP. Painting with a broad brush: Professional careers for artists with psychiatric disabilities. Psychiatric Rehabil J 2002; 25:265-272.)

Tillyer had started a consulting relationship with the Fountain House in New York City in the Fall of 1999 leading to the launching of the Fountain Gallery, 702 Ninth Avenue @ 48th St.
in New York City in the summer of 2000. http://www.fountaingallerynyc.com  This experience combined with working relationships with other organizations that were service outlets to persons with mental illnesses helped to feret out the problems of distinction in the way the AHOA would reach out and develop the relationship with the artists who would become part of the gallery/studio stable

In the fall 2000 AHOA put out a call for artists who were residents of MAssachusetts living with mental illnesses for an exhibit entitiled Untapped Massachusetts.  This exhibit coincided with the studio and gallery taking up new residence on the first floor of the same building, a move that increased the space fourfold. The exhibit hosted fourteen artists and presented music from the Boston based group, Tune Foolery and from Dann Vazquez with his Low-fi Experience. Vazquez is an accomplished new media artist from AHOA.

In July 2001, Michael Tillyer on behalf of AHOA was invited to speak on a four person panel to the Americans for the Arts convention in Times Square, New York City. This was the annual convention for this national organization that seeks to lobby on behlf of the arts and arts orgainzations on a governmental level. The panel participants each had a role to play in the multi-venue exhibit in Northampton marking the closing of the Northampton State Hospital that took place in the winter of 2000.

In the winter of 2002, three artists from the Anchor House of Artists were featured in an exhibit at the aforementioned Fountain Gallery. This season was also marked by the inclusion of several of our artists at the internationally acclaimed Outsider Art Fair held at the Puck Building at New York University off Washington Square.

In the early part of the fall semester of 2002 AHOA collaborated with the Taber Gallery at Holyoke Community College to launch a show called "Orchestration". The exhibit featured the work of five artists and was funded in part by the Holyoke Arts Council.  All these activities focused a sense of identity in the name of the orgainzation and led to calls for consultancies from other orgainzations