Money Box

Oh my goodness, life is tough lately. Full of happiness and progress on one side and intense stress and change on the other. I have not been a "good" artist under these conditions and by good, I mean at all. I haven't done much. It's sad, because I could use some quiet creative blowing off of steam now as much as ever.

However, I have not been a complete slacker, because I did make my girlfriend a money box. She is a runner and had the bright idea of paying herself a dollar for every mile she runs this year (which I immediately imitated). She had her cash in a bucket, which is perfectly fine, but called out for something more. I wanted to make us both something that fit the money right, so I built her this box out of foam core and covered it in paper mosaic and a little paper filigree. 

Outside of Box

Inside with false bottom that opens to a note.

Bottom with little filigree legs.

Meditation "Cigar" Box

Box Lid
Wood Burning and Watercolor

Last summer a somewhat local yoga studio was offering a 40 day yoga workshop based on Baron Baptiste's 40 Days to Personal Revolution. It involved daily yoga practice at the studio and weekly meetings and trainings with fellow yogis and yoginis. The theory behind the 40 days part is that it takes 40 days to create a new habit, so if one were to practice yoga and meditation for 40 days, a new healthy habit has been created. I wanted to attend this workshop, because I had been a poor yogini for months.

The problem was the yoga studio was only somewhat local, which meant driving 45 minutes to an hour or more (traffic depending) each way for 40 days in a row. If part of being a yogini is environmental consciousness, as I like to believe it is, then that was pretty counterproductive to yoganess. So, instead I invited a friend and a couple of pre-adolescent and adolescent local people to do 40 days of meditation and yoga on our own and meet once a week at my house.

In an attempt to keep the younger members into it, we made boxes and tools for our practice. The boxes were made from wooden cigar boxes and included mala beads, journal (the program includes reflective questions), candle, origami crane and polished stone. We made each of these things, candle excluded, although it would have been easy to do as well. No cigars were smoked in the obtaining of this box! These boxes are available through your local Michaels.

 The Open Box with Supplies

We used a wood burning kit to heat transfer photocopies from design and/or mandala coloring books onto the wood and then burned in outlines. I used watercolor pencils to color in designs and then painted the remainder of the box with stain and finished the whole thing with enamel. The kids were able to use all of these techniques as well.

Inside Bottom of Box

Inside Top of Box

Since being in grad school, I have continued to be a rather crappy yogini (notice the judgment?), but this is a habit I need to continue to try to redevelop. Hence, I just pulled this box out again today, hoping for some motivation.

In other blog news, I think the blog may go down to a post a week for awhile so I can focus on my final semester. We'll see.

Coping Skills Box for Baby Art Therapists

This year’s internship is 95 parts group to five parts something else. I am working with adults. Last year’s internship was 20 parts group to 80 parts individual work and I was working with teens. When I started this “new” (not so new anymore) internship, sometimes my supervisor would say something like, “Hey, do you want to lead an art therapy group later today (or in half an hour)” and somewhere inside I would begin to hyperventilate psychologically, because although my favorite population is of the grown up world, figuring out what to do and how to keep this population engaged scared me.

I am still trying to figure out what art therapy means to me personally and where it fits into helping patients/clients/the entire world, but one thing I have noticed in my own corner of art making is that I use art to create what is missing. What was missing when my supervisor used to say, “Wanna lead this one?” was 1. A plan and 2. Familiar tools. Therefore, I made this…

The Art Therapy Coping Skills Box
(So that I can cope with pulling a group out of my back pocket at a moment’s notice)

This is the outside. In time, I hope to completely engulf it in art, but for now I've only done the lid. The quote is from No More Secondhand Art by Peter London. "The artistic process is more than a collection of crafted things, it is more than the process of creating those things. It is the chance to encounter dimensions of our inner being and to discover deep, rewarding patterns of meaning."

The inside looks like this...
I have supplies in here for cards, flags, worry people, mindfulness beads, seed packets, masks, body scans, collage and a stress ball.

Most importantly, I have this!
This is my group notebook. I take this with me to my internship everyday and keep it with me pretty much all of the time. (What is that Marine rhyme? "This is my rifle..." It's like that.) I spend time researching possible group themes and activities and write down everything I think I need to know to run it like I know what I'm talking about. I write down the groups that I watch others do in case I need to repeat them. This makes me feel safe. The spiral binding is additionally awesome, because I can fold the cover over nice and just have this small thing in my hand while I am doing a group. It's like a blanky or binky or thumb sucking for A.T. rookies.

So, anyone need a group leader? Bring it on!