April 14, 2021

How does one create organic bridges between art and therapy?

At the beginning of the nineties, I was a young art therapist or expressive therapist, as my title from Lesley University was. A colleague of mine, Lilach Galkin, and I were bewildered about the process of art therapy in the studio. Both of us were artists and were also art educators for about ten years. Thus, we had much experience managing studio processes from these two points of view.

Both of us worked as educators and then as therapists in an open studio setting, which means that clients, as students before, were expected to choose the materials they wanted and the table to work at. Then we could assist each one of them individually.

Lilach worked in a mental hospital, and I worked in a learning center for children and adolescents with learning issues.

We did not work privately yet.

Being an art therapist brought with it much more responsibility and knowledge we needed. Of course, we studied, had supervision with psychologists, but it was not enough.

We asked ourselves:

How does a patch of color, a pencil line, or a lump of clay express an emotional, functional, and spiritual state?
How can we connect the emotional processes and the meaning of materials to psychology?
How do different materials affect the emotional development that we wished to assist?
How do we bridge between a creative artistic act that is concrete and nonverbal with the language of psychology?

So we met once a week and shared what happened in our studios. Mainly we were trying to translate psychology into art materials and processes. There was not much written about this transition at the time.

We collected and analyzed the basic procedures we used in art classes and the ones we loved from our art therapy studies. We analyzed them through the parameters that reappeared in a table: The primary material used, a poetic metaphor, the procedure, Goals: technical, cognitive, social, emotional, observation and discussion, variations, self-supervision note, and a sort case study.

After two years, we had piles of information. We noticed how much we have learned about the emotional meaning of materials and actions done with them.

We now wanted to create order in all we have learned.

After placing them in tables, we needed to create a methodical order, otherwise, it was too sporadic and not useful. We looked for a method that will help us explore what is required at any point in time and for different clients.
We also needed an index to search for psychology and art terms as well.

We wanted to share how we learned to think about art therapy.

The journey metaphor to excavate the city was our solution for logical – metaphorical order.

All exercises found the most organic place in one of the journey’s stages. You can see in the image above that creating two clay portraits will be organically placed in stage 4 –as it is exploring deep issues. So if I need a deep intervention I will search stage 4: Exploring the City. If I need ideas for a group beginning I will search stage 1, etc.

Stage 1: Going on a Journey – basic guidelines, contract

Stage 2: The City Wall – getting closer to knowing the participants, hopes, and anxiety.

Stage 3: The City Gate – the crossing of an inner threshold. It is a dramatic moment of choice.

Stage 4: Exploring the City – the deeper issues of ones’ life immerge. This is the heart of the therapeutic-creative process.

Stage 5: The Exit Gate- the separation is almost here; it is the last opportunity to express oneself in this journey.

Stage 6: Departing – final departure.

The book opens with a crucial chapter -MEDIUMS

We asked ourselves:

What do materials mean in art therapy?
Why are the texts about materials deal mostly with technicalities?
What about their spiritual and emotional aspects.

We gathered all our experience for that. We delved into 17 basic art materials found in most studios, delineating their therapeutic and spiritual significance. The technical characteristics are presented, along with basic exercises that allow for an initial investigation of each medium’s therapeutic value.

This became a foundation for the magical bridge between Spirit and Matter.

The printed PDF