We did an installation piece yesterday in a combined class (our 2013 fall cohort joined the 2012 cohort in Intermodal Therapy). We focused specifically on community. Each of us was given a tile and twenty minutes with an array of art supplies to craft our idea of community and what we bring to community.
Y’all, mine looked like a three-year-old did it. In fact, I’m pretty sure the 13-month-old that I work with could have put together a similar piece of art. (While I love photos, I will spare you a photo of this particular monstrosity.)
I had forgotten that a lot of the people I am in this program with are legitimate artists in their own right. Artists who want to take their talents into the therapy field. I’m not an artist.*
I’m sort of backwards. I am a person who [has been through a lot of therapy herself and] believes that creative expression can be valuable to the therapeutic process. Therapist first, moonlighting as an artist.
*But I don’t really believe that I’m NOT an artist. One thing I picked up last summer in Utah from our recreational therapist is this: EVERYONE is an artist. That was her first rule, actually. (1) Everyone is an artist, and (2) because art is an expression of an individual, no art is “good” or “bad,” and (3) your art shouldn’t be compared against others’.
So you can see how setting those conditions made me a bit more comfortable in the art room, when I swear, all I could do was draw a circle. Every expressive art group ended with me labeling what I created as “crap” and throwing it away immediately. Then Leigh challenged me to keep a piece of art. It took weeks, but I finally did it.
It was the May 15, 2012 and I think I created something like 10 pieces of art that day. Van Gogh it was not. But I found my rhythm. I found my medium (at the time, oil pastels). And I found out what was in those recesses of my heart and mind – both good and bad. Things that I couldn’t quite explain with words came out on paper. Most of my emotions that summer were communicated not through words, but through the work I did in the art room and brought to therapy sessions.
Through time, it has become easier to label my emotions with words. Which, as it turns out, is really helpful to friends and family, because if I tell them, “THIS IS HOW I FEEL!” and show them a picture of random melting colours (yes, I have one of these) they’re not as likely to understand as if I say, “I’m feel overwhelmed.”
My art now is calmer, tamer. Often times, it not even used to express what I can’t say, but it’s used to cope with what I KNOW is anxiety/shame/anger. I draw or paint or doodle to calm myself down before I decide how to react. Meaning, instead of doing something rash, I draw or paint for a while and let myself consider my options.
So, I’m not an artist.
But Leigh taught me that I AM an artist.
I can’t wait to teach other people that they are artists, too.
And it all started with a tree.
…and it did.
Shattered Jars of Clay 