As an Art Therapist, I know that the art process is an important container. As a supervisor, I like to weave in art making and sand tray work in supervision, to articulate client and agency issues and express the multi-dimensional experience that a new therapist has.
Katelyn did her practicum and internship at a jail,…
Continue reading
by Debbie Schroder
I seem to need to continue the idea of a summer reading list. I don’t understand why, because my summer is always as busy as the rest of the year. The fantasy of a book and lemonade out on the front porch is just that – a fantasy. I don’t even…
Continue reading
by Debbie Schroder
The front door was already open and as I opened the sliding glass door to my patio, a fierce gust of wind blew through my house, lifting an antique plate and a figurine right off of the shelf they were on. They crashed to the floor in jagged pieces as I quickly…
Continue reading
by Debbie Schroder
As it got close to 6:00 on Monday evening I could feel my eagerness to begin painting. Every Monday evening the in-state art therapy interns and I engaged in amazing relationships with our canvases. We painted for an hour, then shared our work and talked for the rest of…
Continue reading
by Kat Dison
"Carl Jung realized that archetypes are not based on interactions and experiences between actual human beings, but on simplified characterizations. These simplified characters, or archetypes, perform roles that are essential to our understanding of the world. The magician archetype, for example, does not seek answers from external resources, but instead searches…
Continue reading
by Lisa Marie Paradis
Where do you hail from?
You and yours snug tightly
In between the dream
Awaken to five year old father's soul inhabited by butcher's
Chicken floating gently across
the room- enter the
back of the neck- boulders
upon the fleeing road-where
do you hail from?
barbed wire divisions in size-fait-memory-Is the
…
Continue reading
1998 Grad, Gretchen Wachs, M.A., LPCC
Having worked as a visual artist for most of my life puts me in a unique position as a creative psychotherapist, as I am no stranger to the deep psychological work that goes hand in hand with true creative investigation. This works in reverse as well, and I truly…
Continue reading
1996 Grad, Susan Boyes
I live and work in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I have a part-time position as an art therapist for traumatic brain injured adults in a rehabilitation center. I also have a thriving private practice, providing art therapy to TBI clients and others in their own homes, or in my office. I…
Continue reading
1990 Grad, Michele “Ama Wehali” Rozbitsky has developed a domestic violence program for the Eight Northern Pueblos called ‘Peace Keepers’, worked as a crisis counselor, art therapist and in outpatient mental health services at St. Vincent’s Hospital, and in private practice. In the last six years she has become a Shamanic practitioner and has written…
Continue reading
1985 Graduate, Rick Cotroneo
I started a part-time practice in classical homeopathy. My background in Education made me a candidate to serve as a commissioner on the Accreditation Commission for Homeopathic Education in North America (ACHENA). Just as Southwestern College has grown over the years through the process of accreditation, so now I am working…
Continue reading
My 2013 section of Current Trends in Art Therapy's Journey Shoes! Check out the directional video on Vimeo, which was used in Art Therapy Alliance's Six Degrees of Creativity 2.
The students seemed to enjoy the process of recreating the shoes that they brought in to class. Some brought old shoes, uncomfortable shoes, shoes with…
Continue reading
I love gluing things together to create beings. Broken toys, bits of jewelry, feathers, recycling, stones, pistachio shells.. the list of gluable-together items is infinitely long!
Crone Calm Observance and her sidekick Slowdown and Protect Snail
This is a common directive that I use with clients as well, we use pieces that I have collected,…
Continue reading
by Debbie Schroder
The idea seems simple, initially. When making a Genogram (kind of a family tree) use an image instead of a square or circle (how Genograms are usually done).
Each week in my Family Art Therapy course, one or two students shared their art-based Genograms. Never doubting our…
Continue reading
I worked from pictures I took of myself, and then used pastels and ink to explore these feeling states. Working large accentuated these places, so that I could look at them outside of myself.
…
Continue reading
Shadow Boxes created in my section of Current Trends in Art Therapy, Winter 2013.
After exploring a population that students have a form of resistance to working with (from lack of information to disinterest, to strong opposition) through a research and reflection paper, they were asked to look at how their resistance is a part…
Continue reading
I have been inspired by all of the crayon melting art that Laura Lansrud-Lopez has been posting on NMATA's Facebook page. I have a bunch of broken crayons that I have been saving to melt into a new project. The first project was to make new crayons. I went to Michaels and bought a few…
Continue reading
Painting by Laura Lansrud-Lopez, M.S., M.A., LPCC, LPAT, ATR-BC, ATCS, ACS
Words by Deborah John, Ph.D., ATR-BC, LPAT
I wrote this poem to explain the way that I experience all art forms as deeply connected.
The Arts
connect and move the soul
to places we long to be.
Ultra-blue or grape-dark sky
Drifting…
Continue reading
by Debbie Schroder
A few months ago I wrote about the importance of words. Today I’m having trouble finding the right ones to describe my experience in supervision this quarter. Not wanting to add to the old myth that art therapists don’t talk, I’ll try to summon some words to express what I’m very aware…
Continue reading
by Magdalena Karlick
I delved into this rag rug project at the beginning of the summer, wanting to recycle old, ill-fitting, and stained clothing to make a rug for my son’s new room. I imagined a place where he could sit comfortably while looking at his books or playing with his toy animals.
Here are…
Continue reading
Materials: Markers, Colored Paper, Scissors, and Glue
These days, most presents for family and friends are family creative efforts; Mama and Judah (2 1/2 years old) taking lead. My folks and my brother are all Scorpios, with their birthdays within two weeks of each other. This year we made a collage with spontaneous scribbles, hand…
Continue reading
by Deb Schroder
On a beautiful October Saturday, eight of us who teach in the Art Therapy Program gathered to share ideas, concerns and breakfast. I feel like I just want to say out loud that we have amazing, passionate teachers here!
I’m also going to say something else out loud in order to hold…
Continue reading
Capstone Project: Artist Statement
Suzanne Otter, Fall 2012
Making art as a way to work through complex personal issues was helpful to me during the many years I worked as an organizational development consultant. I continued this “self-art therapy” during my formal study of art therapy and counseling at Southwestern College. The image-making and journaling…
Continue reading
by Rush Cole
...blackness. Trapped. Overwhelmed. No way out. Tired, so tired. Sudden energy from the surge of self-hatred that roared through me.
“Get it over with, you don’t deserve to live!” The blade against my wrist.
The Voice, coming from a part of me I didn’t know existed. “Put down the…
Continue reading
by Deb Schroder
As we prepare for the beginning of a new academic year, I take inventory of our art supplies and start compiling lists of what needs to be ordered. From teaching and making art in the large art therapy classroom I became aware this summer, of the scarcity of the color black. Black…
Continue reading
Southwestern College Santa Fe, NM