Imagination in Art Therapy

 

Ways to use your Imagination in Art Therapy

1. Turn your Fears into a Literal Monster

Sometimes the only way to lessen your fears is to face them head on. Think about something that frightens you, whether it's "spiders," "being a bad artist," "going broke" or "losing my way." Give this fear a shape, a color and a texture; it can be as abstract or symbolic as you wish. Creating the beast outside of you will strip your fear of some of its power, especially when comparing it to the (now often silly) fears we all had as a child.

2. Craft your own dream guardian

You've heard of a dreamcatcher. We're tweaking the tradition a little bit, thus freeing up the possibilities of what shapes your new dream guardian can take. Create a dangling sculpture to hang above your bed that will watch over you while you sleep. Feel free to use the traditional willow hoop with feathers and beads, or veer off track and get experimental with fabric, bells, photos, or whatever brings you peace of mind. Soon you'll have a new friend to keep an eye on you as your dreams sweep you off into another world.

Collage in Art Therapy

 

The Art Therapy of Collage

Collage as an art therapy technique is a versatile, engaging, and evocative (yet often playful) approach to working with clients. I have used collage with children and adults from all different backgrounds. It can be appealing to individuals with or without any prior art experience. When working with a group of more resistant clients or any group that is hesitant to start making art, collage is often a non-intimidating introduction to art therapy and creative expression. I believe that part of what makes collage an effective medium is that it utilizes aspects of free-association and play. Each person selects images based on what they are drawn to, even without a conscious understanding of why they select a certain image. I encourage my clients to use images that ‘jump’ out to them from the pile, rather than trying to select photos that fall under a certain category. In many ways, this type of collage-work has parallels to exercises such as free-association writing, where the person just writes without editing their thoughts.

In the past I would bring in piles of magazines and lay them out on the table, so that my group members could flip through them and cut or tear out the images that appealed to them. Over the years I have found that this approach often results in my group members spending more time reading the magazines and getting distracted by waiting for a magazine until someone else has put it down. My observation was that this held up the creative process and broke up that feeling of ‘flow.’ Now I have an ever-growing collection of images that I have pre-cut or torn out of magazines.

My clients have commented that they prefer this approach because they enjoy exploring the piles of torn out images just as much as flipping through the magazine and they still decide which images to select and how to cut them up. I encourage them to cut them or tear any way they choose. I’ve observed that their choices seem to be more spontaneous with this method and they approach the image treasure hunt in a playful and engaged way.

Ideas:

• I have found that photography magazines are an amazing source for powerful and diverse images. (Good thing I’m married to a photographer who lets me cut up his old magazine issues!) I also use my old art magazines because they are full of inspiring images and clients also enjoy exploring the work of other artists. Magazines such as National Geographic and Time work well too.
  

• Be culturally sensitive- try to provide a diverse array of images, especially when including photographs of people. (Another great reason to use photography magazines, as many of the photos will be from all over the world).

• Don’t shy away from intense images. I don’t include any images that might be insulting or overly provocative, but it’s important to include imagery that can represent the entire range of human emotions and experiences. As you can see from some of my client’s collages on this page, many of them gravitated towards ‘charged’ imagery, but it was exactly the collage they needed to create that day.

• The images can speak for themselves, however some individuals find it helpful to add a word, phrase, song lyrics, or poetry to the piece (see the orange collage above). I’ll often ask my group members what they would title the finished collage, and if they come up with a title I ask them to write it on the back of the piece. This helps to frame the experience and is a good way to wrap up the group.

Sculpture in Art Therapy

 

Creating Memory Jugs and Found Objects Sculptures

Memory jugs originated with members of Africa’s Bakongo communities, who believed the physical world was connected to the spiritual world by water. They often decorated graves with water-centric items like jugs to connect deceased spirits to the waterways that would lead them to the afterlife. The ritual was revived recently as a form of found art sculpture, or 3D scrapbooking. Use lacquer to adhere found objects to a vase, jug or pot -- whether they remind you of a specific person, recall a certain time in your life, or just make you smile.

Also, using everyday items, or “found objects,” in art can be a very meaningful experience. Found objects can include anything from old household items to discarded trash. By using found objects as an artistic way, the artist has the opportunity to take something seemingly mundane and turn it into a unique aesthetic entity. Found object creations are very valuable in art therapy because they allow the participant to attach their own unique meaning to items that may commonly hold a completely different significance to others. Making “found object art” can also metaphorically describe a transformation process by turning something from “trash to treasure”.

Children can be given an assignment to create a sculpture out of old tin cans. They can use discarded tin cans and smoothed and molded  material  to create whatever image they chose for themselves.  

A child who made a fishing boat out of old tomato sauce cans.

Drawing and Painting

 

Drawing and Painting for Stress Relief

Art therapy has been widely practiced for many, many years, both formally in a therapeutic context, and informally among those who simply feel better when they draw. Decades ago, psychologist Carl Jung recommended coloring mandalas (circular designs that can contain intricate patterns or symbols) as a therapeutic intervention to promote psychological health, as he perceived that drawing mandalas had a calming effect on his patients while facilitating their processing of thoughts and emotions. Since then, art therapists have long recommended this practice and have reported positive results, though these results were not demonstrated by research until later. While there is still room for many more studies on mandalas and drawing, in general, several studies have already shown us some important information about the effectiveness of using art for stress relief.

One study from researchers Chloe Bell and Steven Robbins randomly assigned 50 adults ages 30 and under to either create artwork or sort a series of art prints. Before either group was asked to do anything related to art, they were asked to engage in the mild stressor of creating a 10-item to-do list of their “most pressing concerns and worries,” which was designed to create a mildly negative mood and mild anxiety that the activities could then potentially minimize. Then, they were given assessments of their moods and anxiety levels. Finally, one group was provided paper, colored pencils, charcoal pencils, and oil pastels, as well as 20 minutes to create art. The second group was given a stack of 60 art prints and the instructions to sort them “based on their pictorial content” for the next 20 minutes. Both of these activities would expose the subjects to art, but only the first group was involved in the creative expression.

After three measures of negative mood and anxiety were collected before and after each intervention, the results showed that the group who created artwork experienced significantly greater reductions in negative mood and anxiety compared with the art-sorting group, showing that the mere act of creating art can significantly minimize negative mood and anxiety, some of the negative effects of stress.