Experientials Vol. 25

Another week down, and just one more week til spring break. I can't wait!! Tomorrow the incoming class is interviewing, I can't believe how much has changed in one year for me... It really is amazing.

Today we created art pieces to explain articles that we were reading in class. The article that I was assigned was about art therapist working with children after a disaster. I created the first one as the therapist and child working in the aftermath of the disaster. The disaster is the red turmoil on the right, while the therapist is able to bring a calming affect on the right. The therapist is empathetic to the child with his hand on their shoulder. The second piece is about the art therapist feeling unprepared or empty-handed when faced with this challenge. It speaks to the need for more research and more understanding.

Experientials Vol. 24

These are some pieces we did from our group class. We were to pretend that we were in a real group setting and then make pieces about boundaries and were supposed to create one piece for us and one piece for the group. I made my piece be a nest to represent the holding environment of the group. To represent the nurturing and caring that the group provided. Then in the nest are 5 "eggs" to represent the 5 people in our group. Each is unique and has its own strengths and weaknesses, yet they are able to come together and be unified.

This is the piece we did as a group. We each contributed and maybe didn't think about the symbolism as much when we were creating it though you could certainly attribute symbolism to it.

Experientials Vol. 23

So I think that I am blaming all the wacky stuff that happened this week on the lunar eclipse ;) Although it was really beautiful. This semester is flying by. I can't hardly believe how fast it is going and how much stuff there is to do.

This first piece is something that we did in my multicultural class last week actually. We were supposed to collect photographs of our culture/heritage and bring them to class and then we created photo pages out of them. There was a very intimate and emotional discussion that ensued from the photos. It was very enlightening and always intriguing how photos can tell so many stories...

And then today in the child class we were talking about sublimation... which is the act of transforming negative behaviors or drives into something positive and fulfilling. Art is especially powerful for sublimating and today we were supposed to examine a time in our life when art helped to sublimate something. I thought about a particular painting that I did in high school that was a self-portrait using a broken mirror. At this time in my life I was going through a rediscovery and redefinition of myself. It was like I was trying to put the pieces of a puzzle together. It wasn't until much later that I realized what this painting was about, but this image was about the broken mirror and how that helped me reemerge in a more positive light.

Experientials Vol. 22

So this has been a really difficult week. Lots of ups and downs, and sometimes it felt like way more downs...

First I wanted to share this personality test that I took... It was humorous the whole way through, with wacky questions that I was sure it was going to come up with something completely ridiculous and bogus. So what personality quiz was it? Qdoba's! I know! I know! But here is what it said "You are a taco salad. Don't let that crispy outer shell fool you, because what it holds together are the ingredients of a truly wonderful personality. You are so easy-going by nature that by comparison you could make a stuffed teddy bear look like a vicious and cold-blooded killer from the wild. Not only that, but you are a truly well-adjusted person who can see yourself clearly even in the face of heavy-handed and overly dramatic metaphorical comparisons. Possibly your greatest trait is your capacity for empathy. You truly know how to understand others, to feel their joys and pain. It is this quality that makes you an ideal spouse, parent or friend. People just want to hug you. They do." So yeah, completely ridiculous yes, but maybe not so far off. Then again, maybe people don't want to hug me.

So this first set of drawings had to do with memory, and a discussion about how memories change and how two people can have different memories about the same event. We were supposed to think of an event in our adolescence that influenced use or we remember that other people also witnessed. I remember being young at the lake with my cousins. And the younger cousins went to feed the ducks and the older cousins went somewhere else, I don't remember where now but I do remember that I hated being one of the younger cousins, I wanted to be big. So we go to feed the ducks and I step off the dock and into the water. What I remember is being eye to eye with this fish. And then I remember getting pulled out of the water, and being cold and them wrapping me up in blankets waiting for my mom and aunt to come and pick us back up. And to top it all off, I lost my pink jelly. It was very tragic! I am not sure now if there was really a fish, but that is what I remember.

This one we did in our research class while talking in small groups about our thesis. We were supposed to put things out there... all kinds of things, things we can control, things we know, things we don't know, what is in our way... I think by talking about it and working through it, I know my next step which is trying to start gathering literature.

Experientials Vol. 21

So yet another week down. It is hard to believe that we are a quarter through the semester already. We have our first test next week. Fun times... And a lot of work is starting to come together. I am putting my request in for practicum's over the summer and starting to plan the course of the rest of my masters degree. Kind of scary. But it is getting done.

In research class we were asked to make a representation of a researcher and the subject. The subject is this big ball of mess and the researcher has a magnifying glass trying to figure it out, to unravel it and untangle it. Let's hope I am able to untangle the mess when I get to that point.

Experientials Vol. 20

Wow this has been a long week already. Today I planned out my next two semesters and really made a tentative plan for the rest of the program. I talked a little bit about what I want to do for my thesis, and it was well received which make me happy. So continuing to prove how artsy, or something, I am my thesis came to me in a dream. Yep, I am dreaming about thesis questions and practicum sites. I think I might be under a little bit of stress. Anyway, I think that I am going to do a heuristic study on therapeutic boundaries, specifically looking at the therapist's emotional boundaries. This would hopefully allow me to be more creative in my process and create a body of artwork as well as a thesis paper.

The next two pieces were part of a dialog in my Multicultural class. The first one was supposed to be about a time in our lives where we first realized differences in people. I really couldn't think of an early time, but I did mine while thinking about racism. The second one was a response to what we talked about in class in regards to these dialogs.

And this piece is one that I did in response to a conversation that I had with a friend. It was a pretty deep emotional conversation and an image similar to this came to mind, but as I continued to think about it, the image contnually evolved.

Experientials Vol. 19

Sometimes I feel like the boy from American Beauty... you know how he videotapes the plastic bag in the wind and talks about the beauty in it. Well I see things that captivate me for their beauty on a daily basis, but when I try to tell people about them I feel strange, or like they will never quite understand just how beautiful it is to me. I had just this experience the other day. I was driving along and was at a stoplight and I saw this white bird and black bird in what appeared to be a dance. I was memorized. They were twisting and turning and flipping and twirling through the air. I initially thought of how poetic this was, the dance of good and evil. But then it became apparent to me that this was not a dance at all. The little white bird was chasing off the black bird. And it appeared that he had chased off several others as the little black bird joined a small flock of other black birds. Victorious the little white bird flew off. I then continued my metaphor of good being victorious of evil, even when outnumbered.

With that little story being told, today in class we were asked to do a drawing in response to what we are learning in our multicultural class. I still had this image of the birds and their dance, and so I realized that the metaphor could be modified to represent race issues. This makes it take on a more rather sinister tone with the one white bird being able to push out several of the little black birds... but here is the image none-the-less.