Drawing Characters into a scene

I think that this activity was one of the most resonant for me in the class. When I led the activity with my family and friends and we did the share back at the end, I also shared with them what I had done for mine in the class. The two characters I chose to depict were called "invisible observer" and "righteous judge" - two roles that I do take on, which interestingly contain some opposing traits. In some ways I think these two characters (within me) try to compensate for one another's extreme natures. Perhaps if they both trusted that components of each other were okay and could exist without a fight, they could both tone down. I drew the characters into a courtroom with each other- with the righteous judge being a literal judge, and the silent observer sitting in the back corner. I really enjoyed drawing this image in black and white- it was one of those limits that ends up feeling expansive. Since doing this activity I have been imagining taking the direction of drawing a third character that combines components I'd like to keep from each of the others. What comes to mind is drawing in reddish/orange in the middle of the page a figure that stands tall, confident, and relaxed, calmly aware of it's surroundings and dynamics happening around it, but centered and grounded in its own experience, with a loving but clear sense of its sense of what is right.

Reflection on the Dancing/Movement therapy

In the last class, we had the dancing therapy which I am most interested in. Although the introductions of its history and development part was a bit boring, the activities in the latter part was fun. The funniest part I think was that we were required to say our names and create a posture of our own in turns and all the class would say the names and imitate your posture. I was in the middle of the circle but I was still nervous. When I was waiting for my turns, I came up like thousands type of postures. But when it was in my turn, I was blank out. (Totally no idea why.) But after I finished my round, I felt that it’s fun. It’s a good activity that can be used later in the first group sessions for ice breaking.

Practicing Art Therapy

I brought my notebook and some art supplies to Thanksgiving with my immediate family and another family we grew up with. One person in the other family, who is a visual artist, was very excited to try out some art therapy activities with me. I was planning on just doing it with her, but others became interested, and I ended up doing it with her and her sister, and my two sisters. So it became a group of  them. This was fun, but probably kept things a bit more like a class dynamic as opposed to the depth that can happen one-on-one. It made sense to try to keep it somewhat light, given the intensity of the people in the group and the context.

We had colored pencils, oil pastels, and plain white paper, so activities were limited to these materials. I tried to stick to exactly what we did in class. We started with the activity we first did in class - drawing the first letter of your name as a bubble letter. I told them it was a kind of warm-up activity, but then the way I gave the prompt made it more challenging. I ended up saying "fill in the letter with anything that represents you right now", instead of just saying "with whatever you want". I think this direction moved it out of the realm of a "warm-up", and created too much pressure and self-consciousness for a first activity. I tried to back peddle by saying it could really be anything, but the tone had been set. It was interesting to me to notice that a lot of the images that came out of this were abstract. I think this is reflective of the way I asked the question:

Everyone shared what they drew with the group, and also reflected on what the process was like. One person shared frustration with drawing as a medium, sharing that she didn't feel she could really communicate through drawing, felt bad at it, and remembered deciding she was bad at drawing as a young child after comparing her work to others. This is interesting since her sister is a visual artist. A lot of doodling  happened on the pages during the sharing.

Then I decided to try a partner activity since we had a group. Siblings spilt up so each person had a partner who was not a sibling. They made this choice, not me. We did the mirroring exercise with each person taking a turn as a leader and follower with the prompts of making sure the follower could follow you, not worrying about the follower, and then trying to lose the follower. Here is one of them:

People seemed to enjoy this and had a lot of feelings and reactions. I asked them to share which role they were most comfortable in and which most uncomfortable. Everyone had different answers. Some people shared enjoying the first prompt, finding synchronicity and connection in trying to stay together -experiencing it as mutual. Some people expressed being unable to let go of worrying about their follower. After discussing for a while the conversation took an unrelated turn, and some people seemed like they wanted a break.

We were going to end, but then the person who was originally interested said she'd like to do another individual activity. As I started doing this with her, two of the others decided to re-join. We did one of my favorite activities from the class: making a list of six characters representing different roles you take on in your life and then putting two of them in a scene with each other. I really let people take their personal time with this one. I wrote out reflection questions, and then asked them take the additional prompt of writing/drawing a third character into the scene that represents components from each character that you would like to keep and build upon. Everyone was excited to share, although also a little self-conscious. As we began to share some other people started coming into the room- it was important to people that we wait until they had left and closed the door to do the sharing. I think this sense of a closed group was mainly pre-existing (we were all of one generation who had grown up together, and the parents were all in the other room), but was interesting to notice regardless.

Two people chose to write instead of draw - although one of them drew mini representations of the characters, and then of the traits she wanted to pull out of each one. One person drew the scene, but didn't want to draw the new third character in it. She explained it though, and shared about how she is already trying out that new, third character role in her life. One person chose the two characters she liked the best of the six, so in a way the third character prompt was challenging because she didn't select material that she wanted to change, instead chose the characters she most wanted to bring to life in her own life. I really enjoyed doing this. The one person who had originally requested to participate said she loved it and would be excited to do more with me.  She has since asked me to share more of the activities from the class with her.

Final Response - Race and Art

This was what my 18 year old male student created in response to an individual session we had where we were processing his feelings surrounding the recent uproar against police brutality and the failure of the 'justice' system. He is a West Indian boy living in a neighborhood where gang violence and encounters with the police are not new to him. He was personally very affected by the murder of Eric Garner and more so by the lack of accountability by the larger system. We had been talking a lot about race and his feelings of rage in the sessions leading up to this one and I thought that art would be a perfect segway to transcend words and express his emotions. A way of subliming the rage perhaps. 

I provided a large sketchpad, black charcoal pencils and a palette of paint with brushes. My directive to him was to create something that portrays or is inspired from our discussions about race in America. Given the heaviness of the topic, and the emotions with which I was also sitting with - it was really hard for me to be 'distanced' from him while he created this image. I found myself wanting to distract my thoughts by looking away and I eventually pulled a paper and started to doodle and painted on my own as it was hard for me to observe his process and not say anything. I also thought that I wanted to give him his privacy and personal space to create his art and sit with the emotions he was having. So for half an hour, we both sat in silence - he creating his art while I painted on my own. During the times that I looked at him, I noticed that he was very intent, and seemed to have a clear idea of what he was creating. His sketches were very purposeful and he hardly changed his mind about what he drew. He used red paint to fill in the spaces as shown in the drawing. 

Processing the art: 

When he was done, we both looked at the final piece and there was a heavy silence. I broke the silence by asking him to talk to me about the face staring at us. He began by describing how he liked to sketch faces and liked the easiness of the charcoal to do that. He also wanted to split the face into 2 as that was how he felt he and the rest of society is not split into - whitewashed/white Vs Black and pained. He went on to talk about how he feels sometimes people choose not to see or feel even if they have eyes, which was why he chose to not draw in any features on half of the face. In the other half, he said he chose red as it meant struggle and blood. It was also very bright and could catch the attention of anyone looking. He said that people who have been oppressed feel as such. That they are screaming out to be seen and often are, but never acknowledged. I asked which half he related more to. He said that it was the pained side with the eyes and red paint. But he did say that he was moving towards indifference and wanted to be empty like the other half but didn't know how to. I mostly listened intently to his interpretations of the drawing and pointed out observations about his drawing that struck me (eg. the red eye). 

Our time was up before I felt we had sufficiently wrapped up the topic. He had to return back to class and I felt torn between wanting to finish processing the exercise and keeping to time. I asked him how he felt about it at the end of the activity and he said that it felt good to draw it out and he wanted more of this in future sessions. I also remarked that he seemed very comfortable with the materials (esp sketching) and would definitely bring it in more. I reflected to him about my own feelings of anger and helplessness in light of the recent events and wanted him to know that I was a witness to his emotions in the hour that we had together. I thought that it was really important that I validate that for him as he had felt silenced in so many other areas in his life. 

I am going to bring back this portrait the next time I see him and plan to further our discussion about the man in the 'paper'. If he could bring him to life, what would he say? What would he want to tell him? I was thinking of even imagining a dialogue between the 2 halves of the face and acting it out in session. I am open to more suggestions on how I can further this from you'll too! 

I remember leaving this session feeling very heavy and needed to physically walk out of the room and tune out in order to shake away that feeling. The class on vicarious trauma came to mind and I acknowledge that working with this population, especially in a time like now where tensions are high, supervision and support are so important. I did get a chance to talk to my supervisor about this session and felt somewhat glad that this boy had a chance to create something out of his pain that he could feel proud about. 

A response to drama therapy

The drama therapy class was really fun and relaxing. It was sort of different from what I had thought. I had thought that it was something like the broadway show. However, the class made me realize it could be really flexiable. This session reminded me of my childhood role-play game with my cousin. When I was a little girl, I had a fantasy of becoming a princess and marring a prince. (Maybe I read to many fairy tales.) We wrote scripts together based on princess’s fairy tale then play them. We had a lot fun together through acting.

After this class, I noticed that drama is everywhere and can be casual. When I was volunteering at an afterschool program, I saw two kids were playing role play. One was acting as teacher, the other one was student. No one asked them to play or imitate their teachers, they just played spontaneously. They were imitating what exactly happened in their class that day. How interesting it was! Drama is such a wonderful form. Talking or words can be difficult and complicated for children. But drama or imitating  might be easier and more interesting.

A response to class

 I really enjoyed this class and learned a lot. I appreciated each art practice that we had in our class. After collecting all paintings that I drew in class, I found out that I like black so much and used it a lot in my paintings nearly every piece. I also noticed that I do not like my own paintings. When I compare my art pieces with other people’s, I dislike my art pieces and think they are ugly. I realized that it is my feeling toward myself and it’s related to my low self-esteem. But I feel comfortable drawing and using art to express my feelings and thoughts. As an introverted person, drawing really helps me a lot to express my thoughts. I believe nonvebal forms like drawing, drama and music are really good ways to work with shy and introverted clients. I hope I could apply what I have learned from this class to my field in the future. 

Final Blog: Couple's Activity

The art exercise/activity I chose was the couples one done during our Creative Arts Therapy course, which I found very interesting and useful in practice with relationships of different dynamics. The materials consisted of 6 large pieces of paper and 2 different color markers. My partner and I took turns being the leader or follower during each set, and I replicated the same order in which we did this activity in class. First, we started with the leader ensuring that the follower was creating the same image. Second, the leader was to be partially involved in whether or not the follower was keeping up with the image. And third, the leader was to not check or pay attention to whether the follower was recreating the image.

The process was interesting and fun with my partner. The first set was easy and both of us drew our figures slowly to ensure that we were on the same track. Additionally, they were much simpler shapes created in the first set. The images became more complex and the process became quicker as the activity moved on. There were only few mistakes made by each of us during the first two sets. We did not find it challenging to keep up with one another. The third and final set, however, proved to be a little more challenging. Several mistakes were made and things became a little more confusing. When my partner was the follower, he stated that he found the image I created to be difficult for him to reproduce because he feels he does not draw well and because of how quickly I was drawing it.

Overall, neither he nor I exhibited any communication issues or other difficulties. This is not surprising because we have a relatively great and healthy relationship in which be both work together and help each other with different aspects of our lives. I did explain to him that this exercise would have perhaps gone differently if we were having issues, or that there are other relationship dynamics for which this activity could be used, i.e., father and son.