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.

Group Intervention and Other News

Successful intervention of the week is Play Doh Charades. Once a week I try to give my guys a group that is just about self regulation and integrates some sensory work. Last week's sensory group was a success. I brought a small Tibetan Singing Bowl from home and had the guys start by listening to me ring it 3 times and pay attention to the point they noticed the sound vibration stop. This "mediation" technique was a success. The guys were mellow, but alert, which is my favorite of their states. They were very interested in the bowl, so I allowed them to pass it around and have each person ring it once. To my surprise, they were appropriate with my bowl and passing it to their peers. They had lots of questions about it and I was impressed by their attention and interest in the new object.

Next I passed out small containers of Play Doh and had written random nouns on index cards which they took one at a time. I asked them to shape the clay into what was written on the card and the other guys had to guess. No prizes were offered, but they loved it. The only problem was they got a little too happy. Some of my guys are easily dysregulated and potentially dangerous and at one point one of them screamed with excitement and brought staff running, thinking something was wrong. It was good to see them all taking turns, enjoying group and feeling happy though. I had them settle down with some ending yoga postures and they all left feeling positive and saying they liked group, which makes me feel good.

And last weekend I finished my table.

Paper Mosaic Table

I am between projects now. I want to mosaic my dresser next, but feel a little overwhelmed with the thought of it. I may just revive my etsy site and make a few monkeys for a while between furniture projects.

I have been dealing with one of the stresses of being a rookie, which is cash. My student loans have started coming in and therapists really don't get paid so well when the cost of being one is factored in. It's freaking me out. So I have been exploring money-making options. I have a few ideas in mind to supplement my income, but I have one thing I can check off my list: I will be teaching yoga again. So far I have been offered one night a week, but my schedule may be rounding out over the next couple weeks as I am going into a large gym chain desperate for teachers and different locations are currently working on their spring schedules.

Lastly, my girlfriend and I have started a new blog about all of our adventures with some very cool stuff planned for this summer. If there is no chance you are a client past or present and would like to see it, email me or comment and I will send you a link.

Sometimes I am a Music Therapist

Things I hate about my job: Catching every weird illness kids get, my loans are bigger than my paycheck and doing groups.

Things I love about my job: I love those kids individually and I love that I get to work with them individually and see amazing things happen sometimes.

I find that on this job I am not exclusively an art therapist. I am a whatever-works therapist. Sometimes play, movement, music or just talk. I know art best, but I follow the lead of whomever I am working with. The most recent dramatic success has been in music and it was the simplest, most natural, easy thing that led to a great opening of one of my guys.

Photo from another career.

One guy got a keyboard as a gift, so for a couple of sessions, I taught him how to read music. Nothing miraculous, just middle C and the surrounding keys so he could play basic songs. He started making up his own rhythms, just playing around, and we would talk about what kind of emotion the sounds portrayed or movie scenes we could imagine played out to his sound effects. Then one day I asked him to sing along and give words to his sounds. Suddenly, a kid that has kept it superficial for months cracked wide open and told me about his life, his hopes, his emotions and he loved doing it. It could be the saddest thing that ever happened to him or something horrible he regretted doing, and he was so proud to put it to music. It made talking easy. It immediately carried over into other aspects of his treatment: he became more engaged, more motivated, more positive, more focused and he started having conversations with his family that required a lot of courage. It was seriously amazing. Sometimes I don't know where individual sessions are going, but just going with the flow has been showing some good results and makes this job worth doing.

And my table is coming along...

INTENSE!

This week I had one of those days. You know, the kind where one wonders what the hell one was thinking when choosing a career path. I consider myself pretty tough, but an event in group shook me up pretty badly on Monday. Hello Rookie, this is your wake up call -- you're not as hardcore as you think and (bubble burst) your job is actually a little dangerous.

Often when my guys are less than perfect in group, I feel partially responsible. I think if only I could find the right directive, the right level of energy, the right pace, they would be too interested in group to act up and just maybe they would learn something. So, today I came with a racing heart, shortness of breath, sense of terror, props to engage them and a bag of prizes to bribe them. I hoped for the best, but had a big male staff, an intern and new respect for the paging system to back me up in preparation for the worst.

I started with the warning of prizes: participation, respect and safety would result in a prize at the end of group. The guys know my basket of prizes. Hot Wheels and notebooks are big motivators for short term good behavior. I don't use bribery often, but you know what they say about desperate times. Then I showed the guys a modified version of an old mindfulness group. They named off the five senses and I had a prop and activity for every one.

Touch - One object for each kid (stress balls, Play Doh, beads, Slinky, for example) and asked them to spend a few seconds with each one and share what they notice. They passed all the objects around so everyone had a turn with each object and could name their favorite.
Taste - One Swedish Fish (Thank you Mallory). They were asked to become connoisseurs and smell, feel, describe before eating in one minute or more. Then say something about the taste.
Smell - A small drop of lotion on their hands. What does it smell like? Does it remind them of anything?
Sound - I had them draw abstractly to music and then discuss what they noticed in the sound.
Sight - They held up images and had to say what they noticed about their own and what they noticed about each others.

Every kid was fantastic in group today. I don't know if it was the prizes or the engagement of their senses, but today was better. Something worked and they noted improvement to their moods and learned a little about using their bodies to pay attention and be connected to themselves and their environments.

In personal art news, my art life has been very slacky and that makes me feel a little brain dead, disconnected from myself and like a craptastic art therapist. Life is busy! But, I have been working on the long term project of paper mosaicing my bedroom furniture. This is great for someone with small moments for art making, because I have slivers of paper and everyday I sit down and glue a few onto my nightstand. It makes me happy. My mind wanders to combining this with sewn papers... quilted furniture... hmmmm....

The top of my nightstand, in progress.

Art Journal

One consistent assignment throughout several classes in my soon-to-be-finished (whoop! whoop!) graduate program has been the art journal in which we are asked to visually respond to readings and things going on at our internship. I have kept both written and visual journals for years, before I even started the art therapy program, but I have only recently felt inspired about the one I keep for school.

Allow me to introduce you...

This is my art journal.
It is made from a brown cardboard moleskin sketchbook. The outside is based on one of my untested A.T. theories (feel free to explore this for a thesis of your own. Idea theft is encouraged at The Art Therapy Rookie). My theory goes like this: people are more likely to feel a benefit to art-making when they feel competent and like what they made. I could be way off on that, but it's my experience people at least seem to like art therapy more when they learn something new and create something they appreciate. Maybe it's just a good way to get people committed to the work and the hard stuff can come later. I don't really know and I'm getting off track. Anyway, going with that idea, I decorated the cover with paper mosaic, because it requires not a lot of skill, can be adjusted for all ages and can create clean and structured patterns or images. Also, while doing it I discovered the repetition is meditative. For how-to information check out Perfect Paper Mosaics by Susan Seymour. There are several books on paper mosaic, but this one is the best I've seen. Her website is here. A super simple wikihow paper mosaic description is here.

Inside my art journal, I explore whatever is going on in my head, readings and internship site. The latest example is here.

Technically, I tend to use a lot of watercolor, but along the making-art-feel-more-accessible stuff I'm exploring, sometimes I use stamps or other techniques I discover at my local Michaels or Joann Fabric and Craft stores. With this spread I tried flocking for the first time, although it's hard to tell in this scan. Next week my goal is to try sewing stuff in here, since I've had so much fun sewing postcards for the postcard exchange. After I am done with exploring whatever visually, I try to take some time to put some words to the thoughts, which often comes down to writing on top of my work. This spread is about me trying to figure out the role art plays in therapy. I've been chasing that question around my head a lot lately.

In summary, art journals are a good time, allow a space to process stuff as well as try out techniques on self before introducing to others. Get one. Make one. You'll be glad you did.