the lovely anne-marie from donotfaint twittered me yesterday and asked about my feedback on a project that she is starting. and of course, i love what she wants to do. in the spirit of "the sisterhood of the traveling pants", she is embarking on a journey to make a traveling red dress. the art therapist in me is thrilled, because i know how therapeutic the creative process is and i think that the idea of sharing such a dress is fantastic. because she describes what she wants to do so eloquently, i am going to quote her here:
"There is a magic dress. A magic dress that is usually red and travels to women who are struggling with illness (including mental illness), weight, low self-image in general. When a woman receives a traveling red dress, she puts it on and the magic helps her remember who she really is, the woman who has not and will not truly be defeated, the woman capable of love, the woman who deserves to feel beautiful and to do something that helps her feel beautiful. The Red Dress need not be red, but it must be stunning, impractical, eye-catching–a ball gown, literally or metaphorically. Then, someone take beautiful photographs of her in her stunning gown, so that she can always remember the magic of self-care."
anne-marie is hoping to raise $300.00 so that she can make this dress and then be able to send it's magic to other people who need it. you can check out her blog post (and her link to WePay) here.
eons ago, when i was in art school, i used to dread critique days. after weeks of working on something, we would have to pull it together and get ready to present in front of our class, our professors, and whoever else decided to drift in to listen to us get "critiqued". i used to feel more like we were on the chopping block. being branded an "ARTIST" always made me think of pretentious, skinny, pale snobs, smoking cigarettes. painfully, i wanted to be one just as much as i hated being associated with them. sometimes, listening to the haughty drivel that some of my classmates came up with made me feel slightly nauseated - seriously, most of the time, i had NO idea about what they were talking about. it felt like a competition of how many big words people could fit into their 10 minutes of presentation time. and in the end, i'm not sure it really mattered, because the esthetic usually won out anyways. (seriously, art school is overrated.)
flash forward to now... i look at art in a totally different way now. perhaps it is the art therapist part of me, perhaps it is the mellowing that almost inevitably comes with age, but i realize that what is REALLY important in the art of self-expression is the perspective. the person behind the paintbrush, the pencil, the clay, or the viewfinder is showing the world how they see the world. (why do you think parents love any and all artwork that their kids do?) and that in itself gives credence to the art making process. it is how YOU see things. where YOU see beauty. and in having the courage to share that perspective with the world, to nudge someone into thinking about things just a little differently, makes it even more beautiful.
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i woke up this morning to see that the lovely SelloholicMom featured my ever evolving blog playlist in her Daily li paper - scroll down to her Arts & Entertainment section! music really does speak to everyone - what started a little collection of new favorites is hopefully making it's way to random iPods. (hey choirboy, i will be thanking you properly in person when i see you.)
(now if i could only figure out how to pull a screenshot (new toshiba laptop be damned, where the heck is the prt scn key) we'd have a proper graphic for this post.)
funny enough, i just finished reading Jodi Picoult's latest novel, Sing You Home - which tells the story of a music therapist and her journey amidst life's challenges. while the book is true to Picoult's formulaic template (if you read/saw My Sister's Keeper, you'd know what i'm talking about - engaging characters, courtroom drama, legal jargon, twist at the end) i was more interested in how she describes the way music provides a soundtrack to life and how music therapy - or really, any art-based therapy - works. it got me thinking about what i was listening to when i was trudging my way through school and how the songs from that time period in my life brings me back to who i was and what i was doing.
15 years ago (yeah, 15. holy cow. where were YOU 15 years ago?) i was working on my MA in art therapy in a very small department at a huge metropolitan university. being the wanna-be goth cheerleader in high school, and the alternative, i-dress-only-in-black fine arts student during my first round at university, it only made sense that my final research master's thesis was going to be about death and dying. i packed up my art supplies and headed off to the palliative care unit of the hospital i was interning at.
well, that was an eye-opening experience. quite a blow to my self esteem as well as a definite challenge to my work as a clinician. as Picoult describes in her book, it is hard to try to convince people that they should be doing something as insignificant as drawing pictures or participating in a resounding version of "the wheels on the bus" while they are struggling with astronomical doses of pain medications (anyone up for a lethal dose of dilaudid with lunch?), saying good bye to their loved ones, and just plain old LIVING. i worked very closely with a music therapy intern as well and i know that she struggled with the same dilemma. seriously, the LAST thing i probably would want if i was in the hospital is some know-it-all student coming with her crayolas, wanting me to make a picture.
Picoult effectively outlines the principles of music therapy - which i feel pretty much sums up any creative therapists' work. even though people might think that it's airy-fairy, bohemian, new age garbage, there are strong roots in psychology and the science of psychotherapy with all the creative therapies. (i know. try stumbling your way though Abnormal Psychology 101 and The Fundamentals of the Structure of the Brain) it's about accompanying someone on their journey, alleviating their pain, giving them an alternative way to "talk", and honouring who they are and where they have come from. it's about establishing and maintaining the therapeutic relationship, giving someone a safe place to be, to talk, to dream. i remember covering an elderly cancer patient's room walls with images of her childhood so that she could look at them every day. i remember drawing pictures with a small child in the waiting room as her family spent their last moments with their loved one. i remember spending hours with the music therapy student in her music group, giving people the opportunity to forget where they were, just for a moment.
in the years since i graduated, i always seem to find myself incorporating my art therapy background into the work that i do - whether it's running a craft group, designing a logo, using a sketch to help someone work through an issue, or being the artist i think i am in my private life so that i don't get crazy stressed (the gocco printed notebook to the left is by me!) - and i am thankful for the insights and the experiences that i have had. the music almost always follows as well - i never run a group without having some music on in the background. the "soundtrack" of my life also provides a thread that i can follow back to those times, and i can see how the songs i was listening to also helped me.
so don't hesitate to be creative or to take the time to dance to the music in your head. it's good for you.
that being said, here's a favorite from my school days. (yes, i know i'm treading on vintage territory. and sorry for the boring youtube video.)
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