Career Vision Board

As I said in last week's post, while at Kripalu, I took several workshops; among them, one that was about following your dreams and another that included making a vision board. I have been all over working on the dream journal this week and decided to make a vision board about what I said I would do if I could do anything without the possibility of failure. What I said in that group was an idea that came to me as part of a project in my expressive therapy and social action class. It's funny, because it was my last class of grad school, an elective, so my main goal was getting my three credits and moving on with a shiny new degree. But the organization I made up, has stuck in the back of my brain, just kinda drifting around someplace near the occipital lobe. Just chillin', wandering to the front every now and then, saying hi. You know how it is.

So, what I imagined was a holistic center with office space for therapists, body workers, physical therapists, etc. who share a common goal of using the whole body and mind to create wellness. This place would be open to the community and offer yoga classes and expressive therapy groups of all kinds, depending on need, in addition to having individuals who do their own thing to help others, renting space in the upper floor or floors of the building. I want to create and work in that place someday.

So I made a vision board about it. It looks like this.

Making this has made me really excited about that idea. As I am driving to work, I imagine groups I would want to offer the community, exhibits we could have, benefits I would give people who were a part of the process. And I feel happy. In a way, this is not a plan that I ever considered impossible, because I invested my inheritance with this in mind someday. However, as I cut out words and images and simply collaged about it, it started to feel more real and possible. Although this idea has been with me for almost two years, I have officially transfer it to my seven-year career plan. This is what I am working toward.

For more about vision boards go here.

 

Posted with Blogsy

Altered Calendar and Gratitude

I have a confession. You know how medical students sometimes go through a phase of hypochondria when they are learning about all the things they may die from someday? Okay, I don't know if that is true, but I have heard rumors. I think psychology types go through the same thing. We diagnose our friends and ourselves. Mental illness is everywhere. As for me, I would give myself ADHD and I am kinda in a constant mild state of mania; not like spending all my money or running naked through the streets mania, but trying new things and feeling giddy on the regular mania. It's a gift really. Hallelujah. Blessed be.

The ADHD tendencies on the other hand, can be troublesome. I would like to be more organized and less distracted, so I was excited to start a new project with my calendar this year. I am making an "altered calendar" and I also came up with a plan that I have been using on work and personal goals. First, I underline one thing (maybe more for work depending on deadlines, but I try to keep it as minimal as possible) that I must do. I make one priority in my schedule and do not allow myself to move on to what I would rather be doing. In my personal life, this has made me study everyday this week rather than do a hundred other things to avoid it. At work, it has made me turn in large reports on time or early. It's been a productive week and I feel good about my self-diagnosed ADHD management. I tell you this, in case you also struggle with time management and doing what you are supposed to be doing rather than everything else possible in the whole wide world.

I have two agendas that I use. One at home for my personal beeswax and one at work for my professional self. As for the one at home, I have spent the end of each day drawing over the day with something about the day, so it becomes a visual art journal at the end of the year. This also means I am forced to create everyday.

My Personal Agenda, Week One

I love fresh beginnings, so I spent some time thinking about structure I can add to my group when the kids got back from vacation. I decided that for the month of January, and maybe beyond, we will spend the first five-ish minutes writing or drawing in a gratitude journal. I have a lot of guys who hate everything, so the rule is they must think of one good thing at the beginning of group twice per week and document it in their journals. Afterward, they may voice all of their complaints, if they like. To decorate their journals, I brought stamps. The guys were all over that. They loved stamps so much, I think I will continue bringing them for each day. We don't always have a lot to work with, so these are just a few pieces of legal sized photocopier paper, folded in half with staples. It was so simple and the guys were very pleased to make them. I started one, because I feel with my kids, it's important to set an example, because they often feel they have rules and demands others don't have, so when I make them work, I work. When they have to play and I am around, I play as an equal participant. These are a success so far.

The Journal I Started Working on During A Group

A Photo from Today, Just Because

Hey, I'm Back!

Life's been busy and it has been hard to get much art done, let alone blog about it, so my mission as of late has been to find time to fit creativity into my life.  Now that I have somewhat of a delicate grasp on that, I want to take a moment to tell you about it.

In addition to studying for the licensure exam, teaching yoga (including a new hybrid Yoga for Athletes class that I started from scratch), taking on new certifications in Piyo, Turbokick and starting AFAA certification, I have also completed a full marathon.  It sucked.  Doing a training run for a marathon, takes a whole day out of one's schedule, at least for me.  It seemed for awhile, I had to be all about the physical when I wasn't actually in work working.  Now, I have resolved myself to the half-marathon, which allows me to have more of my life back, thank you very much.  But I still need to train and training takes time.  Both worlds started to collide once I started packing my phone for training runs.  I have been photographing where I run.  It slowed me down, and it's hard to take photos on a phone outside while one is trying to stay at a certain pace, but it felt good.

This is a view from one of the bike paths I like, taken on my iPhone.

Taking pictures, even hastily, using the instagram app, made my runs enjoyable and made me feel more creative, so I started drawing in my sketchbook again.

This is a spread from my journal.  The right side is based on that image.

This is from a park in the city where I run sometimes, taken on my iPhone.

A couple of drawings that sprung from that run.

A gift I made based on the drawings.

Drawing is not my forte, but it feels good.  It's transportable, requires very little expense and slows down my thought process so that everything happening in my world and racing around my head can be observed and make more sense.  It's a kind of meditation.

I feel good.  More has come from running.  I will tell you about that next week!

Crocheting and Store

You know what would be the coolest?

If everything we did could earn money.

I think about this sometimes as I am doing a morning run, making some art, taking a bath...  Why won't someone pay me to mow my lawn and brush my teeth? These are the things poor people think when student loans are high and the chosen profession is notoriously shit pay. At least it is what I think. I have been teaching yoga 4 days per week, which is awesome, because it feeds right into that fantasy. I should do yoga anyway, so why not talk through my practice and get paid?  Plus, it's true that we really know a subject through teaching it. Now if I could just supplement my income through riding my bike and going on my morning run.

Artwise, I taught Mallory to crochet and we have been crocheting felted yoga bags.

My yoga bag in progress

 This thing takes forever! So, in the meantime, I also made Mallory some lobster amigurumis.  Get the free pattern here. 

There's something about mindless repetition of stitches that is soothing to me and when I am stressed or undergoing life changes as I have been recently, it's a sure way to manufacture calm.  I have a couple of kids I would like to introduce to crochet.

In an artistic attempt to pay off my massive student loan, I also reopened my etsy shop: Punky Monks, where I am selling my sock monkeys very cheaply right now in order to strum up some business and get rid of my stock.  I still have more finished items to add over the weekend and will likely add some photography soon as well with other items to follow.  My etsy store includes a twitter account and a blog. Right now I am hosting a free monkey give away to subscribers: go here for details.  Not a lot of success in sales so far, but I feel good about it. There is something about feeling kicked down that makes one find solutions.  I'm not starving by any means, but my new debt makes me creative in the methods I will take to get rid of it. I have claimed Sallie Mae as Enemy Number One and am determined to wipe that bill away. These are my current rookie problems.

Sock Monkeys for Sale!

Blog Restart and Updates

One of this year's birthday resolutions was to blog every Sunday and three weeks later, I am making that happen for the first time. One of the tough things about starting over on this blog is organizing my thoughts and having a coherent topic, so screw that. Here are some random updates.

First of all, as my graduation gift to myself, I went to Kripalu for an Art and Yoga Teacher Training with Hari Kirin Kaur Khalsa, which was fantastic. I was initially intimidated by the traditionalness of Kundalini Yoga, but Hari Kirin has a certain glow or an aura or something of welcome and kindness and I loved it: chanting, meditating, yogaing (kundalini is really hard, by the way), singing (!!!) and art-making. On the last day we made our 40 day art and yoga plan which I have tried and often slacked on, but it is in my heart and I will keep working at making art and yoga a regular part of everyday. Expect to read more about this. Here is some artwork...

Painting from the workshop: "A New Relationship"

From my Art and Yoga Sketchbook

Watercolor after a yoga - run - yoga - meditation combo

My art life has been slacking recently and my physical life has been intense. There was a time before grad school that I was pretty hardcore into my physical life and that must be some sort of natural part of who I am, because now that I have the time, it's back. I am training for a half marathon and a trapeze show! Yes, a trapeze show! I am the least experienced person in it, so I feel compelled to work extra hard to get things as right as possible and not look like a big goober. This is not quite getting things right, but it is so fun and freeing and I cannot get enough of swinging and flying. This is my idea of self-care.

 

Back End Straddle

Work continues to go well. I've had some learning opportunities and successes to share in future posts. Currently, my guys are working on a strengths-based film. We just started, but they seem pretty interested so far, as is my director, so I hope that intervention goes well... More on that later.

I made my resolutions for this year of my life and the list is ridiculous!!! I was looking at past lists and I normally hit almost all my goals each year. I am okay with having intentions that aren't quite reachable, because even if I only get to 50%, I'm still growing. Even as I write this, I am trying to decide how much I should make my goals public, because it's a pretty demanding list I have created.

Alright, this is the gist:
1. Keep space neat.
2. Be proactive about getting things done on time.
3. Organize the basement (I'm still working on that studio space and it is in bad shape right now).
4. Take counseling exam.
5. DBT training (if I can afford it; work doesn't pay for trainings they don't provide).
6. Read at least 20 of the books I own.
7. Practice yoga at least 6 days per week.
8. Get job teaching yoga again.
9. Run 20 miles per week.
10. Art (visual, music or writing) daily.
11. Fly unassisted.
12. Develop a budget.
13. Pay off my credit card.
14. Clean up my etsy shop and try harder to sell stuff.
15. Donate an afghan in my mom's honor.
16. Write in my blog every Sunday.

This was my birthday list and I am making progress so far and feeling good about hacking away at this thing.

If you got this far, thanks for reading my update. Next time I hope to make the post more relevant to art therapy. Please stay tuned.

Living with Intensity

This post is brought to you by serendipity. This weekend I have been thinking about the potential value in living an intentionally dialectic/bipolar life as well as questioning how to give the guys I work with an intense physical outlet for intense emotions. These thoughts are coming together based on a series of conversations, emotions and events.

The past week at work included hearing some tough stories and playing a role in some tough decisions as well as a boost in awareness of the seriousness of my job. While being a kind of "holder of horrors" is by no means boring, it's also not really all that pleasant. By Friday last week, I was toast: burned and a little sad.

Coincidentally, I had an amazing weekend planned that happened to be far outside my normal methods of blowing off steam: pure physicality, adrenaline and a hefty dose of absolute terror. First, I did this...

My First Trapeze Lesson

I was shocked when I saw this video, because this didn't feel like it looks at all. It felt a little awkward and very scary. I shook. I felt dizzy. I thought I might throw up and it was all amazing. I dropped every other stressor I have ever had. There was nothing else in the universe but my body, fear and the rush of pushing through extremes. 

On Sunday I trained with the local roller derby team. The last time I wore quad skates, they had Cabbage Patch Dolls on the sides, so again I was awkward, a little scared and forced to focus on nothing but my body and not smashing my teeth in. It was awesome. I don't actually do roller derby, but what I think is great about it is the release of an alter-ego. One can do her yoga, her human-services job or volunteer during the day, be of a gentle-mind and carry the weight of others' trauma then come derby time become someone named Sadie Masochist, wear a helmet with skulls and blood, elbow other women in the ribs while moving at high speeds, laugh and compare bruises later. We don't get a lot of appropriate outlets for rage and the giant emotions in our culture. Maybe we should... Maybe intense emotions call for intense sensations and it's just a matter of finding something that allows a release without making things worse. Intensity can be a good thing.

Therapy-wise, I have been trying to notice when my guys have the roughest times as well as noticing the intensity of coping tools don't usually match the intensity of an emotion or behavior and therefore really take a whole lot of self-awareness and control, which my guys don't often have, to work. I'm wondering about finding activities, artistic and otherwise, that lend themselves to huge feelings. Something that is safe and doable but big.

A New Art Journal Begins

For the past several weeks I have intended to be intentional about artistic processing, but that's only been going on in my mind... briefly. Who is this working person who works? Who comes home and sits around? Who feels tired at zumba class, tired at yoga class, tired at Michael's and Joann Fabrics and Ultrecht? This person who works and sits right here in this very seat and sleeps down the hall a few feet away? How quickly routine can make one boring.

Well, maybe it's not routine. I think it's an unbalanced routine. It's the all-work-and-no-play routine. I am a few weeks into a job and missing the routine of past jobs when I included other events in my life rather than being consumed (but happy, make no mistake) at work and then feeling too tired to care about anything else. It's summer and summer is far too brief where I live. It needs to be celebrated, nay worshiped,  before one must wrap oneself away and huddle in front of a space heater for what feels like eternity.

Therefore, this week's artistic processing is about all the things that should be growing in my garden, so to speak. It's intentionally simple, because I just wanted to figure out what is important to me and what fits. After this stage, I also wrote on it, because that is how I roll when I am processing, but that's sorta private, so I leave you to guess what everything represents. I'm not sure what to call it yet.

Also, I have a new "art journal." It's in the form of a little binder so if ever I feel the need to make an artistic response in the moment while working with someone, I can just have one sheet at a time, so I can honor the person I am with and not have all this other stuff connected to it. Plus, adolescents are pretty into getting all up in one's business and having a book of drawings may result in requests to exhibit said book of drawings. Artistic responses may be therapeutic on occasion, whipping out all my business however, not so much.

The Sock Monkey ETC Assessment

This is one of my bags of monkeys in progress. I have piles of monkeys in various stages of assembly which is a very odd way for me to work. At first, I thought I was working several monkeys at a time for etsy store convenience, but then I noticed I have been drawn to my least favorite part of monkey making: cutting, sewing, stuffing and assembling. Usually, I work one sock at a time and I keep my eye on getting to the final touches and figuring out the monkey's story. I'm like a sculptor looking for the monkey in the sock and giving it a voice. I approach sock monkey making on a cognitive level. I know that sounds ridiculous -- I'm talking about SOCKS here, but that's how it is.

This past week, however, I am just a monkey-making machine and not so into thinking. I'm all kinesthetic in the monkey making, just getting into a rhythm of stuffing and stitching and that's all I want to do. I think I have 8 or 9 monkeys sitting around waiting for me to do my favorite things to them, but I haven't had the desire. Instead I grab another empty monkey and stuff some more or reach into my sock stash and start another one. My last supervision teacher would say, "That's diagnostic." I heard her voice in my head today while I was hand stitching a monkey crotch and realized how extra weird it is that I don't know why I am doing this.

It's not narcissism that makes me need to examine myself. I just think it's bizarre that people like me who are trained to make sense of artistic behaviors and have insight into creative choices can have moments of not knowing the meaning of their own need to make a pile of faceless sock monkeys. I don't know if it's just me being a rookie or if it's a necessary part of a therapist's job, but I find myself a great practice patient, because I can't help you if I can't help me and also I get some of my best ideas from experimenting with what works to keep me on target, so to speak. So, this is why I questioned myself about the odd monkey-making behavior today.

So, I am working with repetition and not a lot of thought. This seems to be a self-soothing thing to do, but I don't feel especially anxious even though I am about to start a new job next week. On the same day I start training at my new job, I also volunteered to teach a yoga class for families staying in town while their children receive cancer treatment and somehow that scares me more than anything right now, but not enough to change a lifetime of creative habits. I pondered over myself quite a lot today and as I traced the passing thoughts and emotions that have been running through my mind this week, I think I got why I'm stuck on creative self-soothing.

I just experienced the first father's day without a father, eleven months after my father died. Triggering, but I feel at peace with my father's death somehow. However, in addition to the holiday and anniversary, this time of year has not been my emotional favorite since my mother died; June is a month of regret. The end of June was when my mom received the fatal dose of chemo that destroyed her digestive system and caused her to suffer a long torturous medically-induced death. That wasn't supposed to happen. Her cancer was treatable. Therefore, this is the time of year that things could have gone very differently if only we weren't a family that trusts authority and doctors so easily. If a time machine fell into my yard today I would go to Junes past and save my family. Regret is not one of the most enlightening emotions in grief and it would make sense that self-soothing would be in order. This might also make my fear of teaching yoga to families of kids getting chemo feel a whole lot more scary than it really is. But, I am a facer of fears and experience so far has proven performance nerves are really good liars but poor fortune tellers.

I don't know what good it does me to come to this conclusion about why my sock monkeys have no faces this week. But it does leave me wondering now what? I don't believe in avoiding negative emotions, but rather honoring them. So, Dear Regret, I don't know what to do with you, but I meet you at the door and welcome you with whatever you have to share. For now, Regret and I have some sock monkeys to stitch and stuff.

In the meantime, ETC stands for Expressive Therapies Continuum and if you want to know more, read this: Expressive Therapies Continuum: A Framework for Using Art in Therapy, by Lisa D. Hinz.

The Value of Structure

Now that I have a job and a start date, I am overwhelmed with all of the outstanding and amazing things I wanted to do during the months I thought I might be unemployed. I'm so overloaded with potentially super duper fulfilling options, I'm not very effective at any of the things I had in mind. I am trying to do all of them at once or worse, I am wandering around between them just trying to decide where to devote my attention and not actually doing anything at all. Time wasted. That's the unfortunate side of too many interests.

My cure for that is not adderall, but daily writing and it's pretty clear that needs to be a habit I renew real soon... as in the next time I wake up. Last summer I read The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. I didn't like it, but I did attempt some of the exercises just to see what would happen. Cameron suggests keeping your creativity flowing through writing "Morning Pages," as in 3 pages of free writing every morning. So, I did it. What I discovered was not that I was more creative, but that I was more focused and able to set priorities throughout the day if I started my morning writing whatever came to mind.

What comes to mind when I allow myself to hold still are thoughts on what I value, what worries me and all of the awesome things I need to experience in this short little life. That sounds like a longer thought stream than it is. The truth is, I run out of things to think within minutes. Really, if you pay attention, you probably just think a few versions of the same thoughts over and over and it's harder to maintain that pattern if you're writing wherever your thoughts go. So, if I'm writing instead of getting attached to the same little handful of my favorite mind stories, there isn't anywhere reasonable to take that but to break it all down into little manageable chunks that I can actually accomplish in the moment. Day and mind organized with very little effort. Voila. So this is where I need to begin again. Time to dust off the old journal.

It would be nice to start my new life as a real therapist with some structure in my brain.

And along those lines, please direct your gaze to your right and notice the small survey on the side of my blog. Any recommendations for future ramblings?

And for the sake of images, one of the things I have been doing is preparing a new etsy shop. I have piles of monkey parts all over my desk right now. Here is the first one I completed. Shop opens when I hit 10 new monkeys with bios.

Zee, the mohawked tagger

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.

Resolutions and Professional Responsibility

I'm a day behind on blogging and still trying to figure out where I want to go with this today. I have a schedule of things to write about in my mind and today/yesterday is a blank page. I feel like I should be writing about resolutions of some sort, but the mood strikes me not.

I am not a New Year Resolver. I see it as a set up for failure and disappointment. I am, however, a Birthday Intenter, which has worked well for me. Unfortunately, I have been forgetting to do that the past two or three years, because of this grad school thing. It's like a 3-year resolution that consumes all other goals and possibilities... a little... possibly... okay maybe not... it's really just been an excuse. I am still perfectly capable of other improvements. I forgot to set intents this last birthday too, but since it wasn't that long ago, perhaps a New Year Intent would be an okay exception.

And for visual appeal purposes, here are some randomly placed photos of an old expressive therapy class assignment about being/doing/understanding expressive therapy.

Here's how this relates to my art therapy journey. I firmly believe that all therapists have a duty to practice what they preach. And art therapists have an additional responsibility to also regularly feed their creative sides. I would not want to go to a medical doctor who smokes, never exercises and eats chili fries and valium everyday for breakfast, because if that doctor said, "Hey you really should consider blah blah blah for your health," I'd think something along the lines of "You're a stupid hypocrite" and that sort of thinking just doesn't foster a good doctor patient relationship. The same goes for being a therapist. If one is telling others how to care for their mental health and find fulfillment in life, one must be doing the same work. Along those lines, I often review anything that could possibly be lacking in my own self care and adjust as necessary.

But self care improvements make bad birthday/new year intentions, because they're not especially awesome. In fact, they're just plain BORING! Intentions are most possible when they are something you want to do anyway. Birthday intentions got me into yoga teacher training, riding my bike 150 miles for MS, taking drum lessons and even buying a house. They were things I already wanted to do, but might have put off without setting the intention. None of those things were necessary; they just made my year extra cool. Happy birthday to me.

As mentioned earlier, I believe art therapists have the additional responsibility to also practice regular creative expression. We're living The Dream after all. So today I ask myself, "Self, in what way will you be living The Dream in 2011?"

It's important to also keep in mind that I am graduating soon and hopefully (fingers crossed) getting a job, so my dream has to be doable and not of the buying-a-house caliber this year. So, five ways to live the dream this year...

1. Take a class at the junior college, adult continuing ed. group or somewhere in either ceramics or painting, because I've never had professional training in either and they're classics.

2. Restart my etsy store, because it helps keep me artistically active and provides minimal income (extremely minimal!).

3. Participate in this, because I just wanna.

4. Donate one quilt, because I just noticed these all sound really selfish and a little balance is in order.

5. Go on a trapeze, because Jung said, "What did you do as a child that made the hours pass like minutes? Here is the key to your earthly pursuits." I miss the swing set.

So I had this realization...

I recently read Pat B. Allen's Art Is A Way of Knowing for class and to my burned-out-on-school surprise, I read the whole thing in one sitting and felt pretty stoked about the experience.

I've been thinking a lot about what art in/as therapy means to me, as previously mentioned and I realized somehow while reading this (although I'm not quite sure where, when or how that light bulb turned on) that my best art therapy happens when I am not in the role of art therapist and this image popped into my head...

On one side we have the totally exposed art therapist and I wrote down some of the ways I use A.T. in my personal life (blurred out for the web masses) and then I have someone in a burqa to represent not a statement about womanhood but how I have gone about doing art therapy thus far, along with a randomly found quote from one of my group A.T. directive books.

This started sorta coming to me after I made this image.


I was thinking about what I want to give people when being in the role of art therapist. This is an image that just spontaneously came to mind as well and I couldn't figure out what the "magic" is at the time.

I'm thinking now that the magic is what art therapy does for me which isn't something I share when on the job. I have been the veiled woman, the blank slate if you will. Of course, being the completely exposed naked woman isn't quite good therapy either. However, when I am that bare off-the-clock self, that's when my creativity has been most contagious and people I know have been inspired to do their own things, taking some of my energy home. So what I need to find in myself is that place in the middle.

I think I already know that place in the middle. The paper under the nude is a folded up copy of a letter from someone I worked with, but not in a therapeutic role. It's about how talking to me about art inspires him to make some. This wasn't someone I poured my guts out to about personal work (I doubt he even knew my last name), but I did share some of my excitement and ways I work. That's exactly what I'm looking for in my professional identity.

I'm working on directives to give people a glimpse of that, rather than pull directives out of my education, and have gotten off the fence about showing some of my more personal work here. Stay tuned.

Rhahhhh!!!!

I had today off and spent it holiday shopping of which I am not so much a fan. No time for art, but it is time to go to bed. This all makes me very cranky.

Coincidentally, this is my latest spread in my journal.


I was thinking about a couple of things when I sketched this. The first being how rich and awesome my internship site is and the second how saturated I am with being a student. Learning feels like it takes time away from learning at this point. (If you've ever been about done with grad school, that last sentence might just make some sense to you.) I felt like this image in a yay-I-have-so-much-cool-stuff-going-on way on Tuesday. Today I feel like this in a damn-it-I'm-stuck-standing-here-catching-some-blue-liquid-and-not-doing-what-I-want way.

I wanted to make more postcards. My lesson for today is that not getting my usual scheduled art time makes me feel like shaking my fists toward the heavens and screaming a slew of cuss words.

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.