Experientials Vol. 7

Man I have a lot of catching up to do. I have had 3 tests in the last 2 weeks, and did very well on all of them, so that is good. I had a paper and two presentations. With all that, we didn't have as much time to do artwork (well until today, and that sufficiently made up for it!).

This first piece is one that we did after talking about Jung. He believed in dream exploration and visually painting dreams. So, we listened to some chant type music and stared at images for a while to put us into a dreamlike state while we were awake. We were then to paint any images that came to mind. We were directed to use watercolor because of its dream-like properties.

This is a really neat piece that we did today. We were talking about interpretations and interpreting other people's feelings. So we were all given a sheet of paper and then everyone went around the room and wrote on an accompanying paper what they thought we were feeling (without knowing who did what piece) and this formed a sort of poem. I will put that after the piece, but it was neat to see how right they were, and how sometimes opposing views were both accurate. It was also interesting to see how certain things that I was not aware of came up in the piece, but that are very relevant—art is really amazing!!

"Poem"

divided
bold
balanced, suspended
mother & baby = protector & something special
back and forth, to and from
light, beauty, alike & disconnected
you are my sunshine, my only sunshine
something heavy in mind
separation
avoidance
domination, release
shift in energy
solid
leadership

This one is one that I actually presented in class to discuss self disclosure in a helping relationship, basically what you would and wouldn't tell people. This was a learning exercise. We took a piece of paper and folded it in thirds and then on the outside drew what others know about us, on the middle we drew what we would share with people and then on the most external what we would not share with people. Mine became more of how I want people to see me on the outside, what I am open to people about and will share in the middle, and what I try to keep people from seeing or how I don't want them to see me.

Folded:

Outside:


Middle:

Inside:

And this last one was also a really neat experience. We had a guest Jungian art therapist and this is her directive that she gave us. Again it is about the unconscious mind. So for this one we had a black sheet of paper in front of us and we had to close our eyes for the whole thing. She then gave us each of the objects and we had to arrange them with our eyes closed. It was a real lesson in the senses for me and how much we rely on our eyesight, especially as artists. But it was really neat to see how different things looked than what we perceived them to look.

So that is my week in a nutshell (well I guess like a week and a half really). This weekend we have a conference here on campus with an art therapist from canada and we are going to make puppets. That should be fun. and then I have 2 tests again next week and a paper. But after that hard week, I will have another long weekend at home! YAY!!