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Events Thursday, Feb 3, 2022 - Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Growing Intersections: Process, Choice, and Discovery of Studio Art Therapy

Add to Calendar 2022-02-03 11:00 2022-05-31 23:59 America/New_York Growing Intersections: Process, Choice, and Discovery of Studio Art Therapy A virtual exhibit from the Fall 2021 Art Therapy Studio course, featuring work from students in the Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling: Art Therapy program.
The background is several large circles that slightly overlap each other in the colors red, green, blue, orange, grey, and black. Drawn overtop of these circles are planets and stars. Around the piece are silver sequins and pieces of coiled up string.
Above: When Dream Worlds Collide, Kanisha Pierre-Noel, 2021, watercolor on paper, pen, cotton string, flatback rhinestones, 9 1/2” x 10” 

On Thursday mornings during the Fall ’21 semester, low residency graduate students in the Master of Arts (MA) in Clinical Mental Health Counseling: Art Therapy program met virtually to explore and create personal artwork in the Art Therapy Studio course. In this unique class, students dove deep and focused on personal art-making that centered on ongoing, open-ended visual exploration.  

Process and product in art therapy are embedded in personal meaning-making. Through different experiences students came to understand the scope and depth of creative processes and to acknowledge the mystery of engagement. Witnessing in art therapy is a unique practice that embraces the known and the unknown. Students learn to "hold space" for self and others while guided by silent reflective observations. Not knowing is difficult to tolerate, however, risk-taking in art therapy parallels the therapeutic process and holds the key self-understanding regardless of discomfort or uncertainty.   

The process of art-making underscores how the art of emerging art therapists holds the potential for transformation: confused and uncertain, explore, process, discover, play, and witnessing the connectivity of intersectionality. While transformation is often simply referred to as an outward change, metamorphosis is a process of transformation based on the challenges of change. For art therapists, this includes the integration of self-understanding and identity through visual processing and risk-taking, witnessing deep artistic states, and embracing discovery steeped in inner dialogues of self-understanding.  

We invite you to scroll through this virtual exhibition— Growing Intersections: Process Choice, and Discovery of Studio Art Therapy — and to view the artwork of graduate students and course instructor, Denise Malis.