A common ice breaking project for those in art therapy is making a collage. A collage is a cluster of visual images painted, drawn, or glued onto a paper. This is something probably all of us have done at one point, but to do it in a therapeutic way you have to forget about whom you are, you have to forget about what you enjoy; and most definitely, you have to forget how others perceive you, or how you'd like to be perceived. The project is to make a collage that tells a side of you that no one knows. It can just be a cluster or it can be a bunch of images used to make a very image of its own. Write two sentences for each picture. Sentence one; write how it expresses you for who you are. And for sentence two write why you think it's something you keep in the shadows. You will need a general piece of copy or construction paper. Cut out images or draw some, add some poetry if you feel the need to, try to remember to stay true to who you really are. If you’re into dog races and everyone knows you’re into dog races, and you put images of dog races on there, we’re going to know you didn’t really search hard enough inside.
Try to be unconscious and aware at the same time. Good luck, have fun and remember to be honest with yourself.
Thursday, September 24, 2009
A Project.
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Art Therapy vs. Eating Disorders; a true story.
Eating disorders a battle of which 1% of the American Society faces, to the best of our knowledge. This statistic is one that I’ve heard in classrooms, I’ve read in books, and I’ve seen on TV. So if 1% of this country is diagnosed with an eating disorder, therefore, who is to say how many go un-diagnosed? How do the undiagnosed cases stay that way?
A story I can tell you is one of which a very good friend of mine had battled a shadowed and secret eating disorder for 5 years; classifying herself as an anorectic with bulimic tendencies. She was mortified of weight gain, intimacy, new friendships, and ultimately being outside of barriers that she had made for herself.
One day she sat me down, explaining her battle and how she wanted her life back. I didn’t know what to say, I couldn’t fix this situation and I told her to go to seek an institution. However, she didn’t want to be “The girl that was in the Looney-bin for being crazy and thin.” I asked her how she felt about art therapy, something I learned through the therapists who worked with my three autistic siblings. She said she knew little of it but she would give it shot.
The therapist she had found wasn’t the type that had her sit on a black leather chair and asked her how she felt about abstract photos. He was an art therapist, who told her she would find the strength to make a new direction in life visually. And step by step, drawing by painting by drawing, she had found that new direction.
She told me they were like classes that you got lost in, not because you didn’t understand. She explained her new ability to express her emotions and her fears through creativity as a piece of her that she wasn’t ashamed of .That by simply drawing and painting pictures had helped her see her eating disorder as not a vice but a disease.
After a year and a half of therapy she was fully recovered. She has gained about 20 pounds and loves her new life. She has sold 12 of her pieces from therapy, which in the end was more income than what she spent on therapy itself. She is hoping to work teaching fine arts.
A story I can tell you is one of which a very good friend of mine had battled a shadowed and secret eating disorder for 5 years; classifying herself as an anorectic with bulimic tendencies. She was mortified of weight gain, intimacy, new friendships, and ultimately being outside of barriers that she had made for herself.
One day she sat me down, explaining her battle and how she wanted her life back. I didn’t know what to say, I couldn’t fix this situation and I told her to go to seek an institution. However, she didn’t want to be “The girl that was in the Looney-bin for being crazy and thin.” I asked her how she felt about art therapy, something I learned through the therapists who worked with my three autistic siblings. She said she knew little of it but she would give it shot.
The therapist she had found wasn’t the type that had her sit on a black leather chair and asked her how she felt about abstract photos. He was an art therapist, who told her she would find the strength to make a new direction in life visually. And step by step, drawing by painting by drawing, she had found that new direction.
She told me they were like classes that you got lost in, not because you didn’t understand. She explained her new ability to express her emotions and her fears through creativity as a piece of her that she wasn’t ashamed of .That by simply drawing and painting pictures had helped her see her eating disorder as not a vice but a disease.
After a year and a half of therapy she was fully recovered. She has gained about 20 pounds and loves her new life. She has sold 12 of her pieces from therapy, which in the end was more income than what she spent on therapy itself. She is hoping to work teaching fine arts.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
An art therapist has a purpose, as does this blog. This blog was designed with intention to provide optimism necessary in order to help others through the messages and meaning of art. This blog also is intended to provide hope in the art of art therapy itself, to raise awareness on the growing feild and to put a little bit of my input in. Art therapy is no longer in the shadows of a psychiatrist's office. There's a piece of art therapy in everything and a piece of it in all of us. That's the point this blog is trying to make.
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