by Glenda Needs,
BA, GradDip CAT, MDisSt, GradCertNeuroSc
 One question I am frequently asked in my role as an art therapist and teacher is “How does art heal?” As any art therapist will tell you, art making is a healing process, but our understanding about how this happens is not yet clear. Some interesting studies over the past few years demonstrate that art making is not merely a distraction technique, but that it can be a significant mood regulator...
Editor's Note from Karen Adler: This article looks at some of the research which illustrates the effectiveness of art therapy as a mental health tool.
Arts & Art Therapy
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Jerry Wennstrom
Artist |
Jerry Wennstrom is a New York born artist who after producing a large body of work, at age 29 set out to discover the rock-bottom truth of his life. For years he questioned the limits of his creative life as a studio painter. After destroying all of his art and giving away everything he owned, Jerry began a life of unconditional trust, allowing life to provide all that was needed. He lived this way for 15 years.
This interview, given by Marié Sakai, ATH Co-Editor of Arts & Art Therapy, explores with Jerry why he destroyed his work and how that act changed his life, his art, and his relationship with himself and the world - and how his story has captured the hearts and imaginations of a generation.
This conversation is not to be missed... by coming into contact with Jerry and his soul-lived wisdom you could be moved to begin a transformation of your own.
Curator's Note from Marie' Sakai: Organic swirls that speak momuments for this artist, Oscar Barsurto with swirling colors and powerful intensities his ideal for his paintings is to speak to the healings of all concerned. Brilliant and beautiful brush strokes shows an artist a deeper vision of the world to come.
Ancestral Wisdom
Original Oil on Canvas
Arts & Art Therapy
Editor's Note from Marie' Sakai: For Estella Loretta, an artist who makes sculptures of mother earth figures, father sun motifs, and warrior statues, her home is a blessed place for healing and inspiration for all who enter. Go inside Estella Loretta's home and hear her words of wisdom, how her hertiage still speaks to her through her pueblo-like home. She feels as if she is in a sanctuary and is guided in her healing environment to create the pieces that bring the most joy and blessedness to herself and those that can enjoy her work. This is truly a woman who is interested in the healing aspects of art and in the power that is created by believing in the ones who speak to us and call us to be who we are asked to become.
Arts & Art Therapy
by Julie Hoyle
 As a child I would sit for hours creating detailed illustrations and writing stories of mystery and magic on long scrolls of paper. I loved the freedom of this expression and looking back I appreciate that this was an attempt to make sense of my world. I sought ways of bringing ‘other-worldly’ experiences into a concrete, tangible form...
Editor's Note from Marie' Sakai: Julie Hoyle expresses in her article the depth of what it means to be in the moment of art and in the moment of listening to the 'divine hint' as she calls it where we can step beyond the criticism of the mind and into the heart of knowing the deepness of feeling at one with all there is. She ends her article by saying, "When I get my small self out of the way, I am able to become empty enough to create a vehicle to express the inexpressible and to give form to the formless." Beautiful and moving, her words and her painting, The Merging, speaks volumes to her practice through art, yoga, and her guidance of the deepness of spirit, the Divine Hint.
Arts & Art Therapy
Editor's Note from Marie' Sakai: There is a certain type of artwork that embodies both the concepts of traditional painting while at the same time embodies the current art concepts of graffiti artwork on the body. Since the beginning of time, art has been rendered through looking at the human figure, now for the first time art is not only being drawn on a person, but then photographed to keep its timelessness. Some body artists talk about the ideas of traditional values and ceremonial meanings for each symbol that is painted on the human being. In this trailer, you will discover the inexhaustable resources that art can be and the healing of the artwork itself that lends itself to a new era that is dawning in the art world, The World of Body Paint.
Arts & Art Therapy
from Art Enables
 In the Nation's Capitol is a studio and gallery for emerging artists with developmental disabilities. Their chance to make art comes through Art Enables. Their reasons for doing it are their own: to have something to do, to make money, to feel important, to tell the world who they are, or to become famous. Very often people with developmental disabilities are better able to express themselves in images than in words...
Editor's Note from Erica Curtis: Adults with developmental disabilities find the support, tools, and structure they need to become professional artists at Washington metropolitan organization and studio, Art Enables.
Arts & Art Therapy
by Joel Levitt
 What happens when your ability to execute your art is challenged by health issues? Where do you go from there? How do you adapt and make the transition to a new situation? How can you continue to create?...
Editor's Note from Erica Curtis: Impaired by a rare spinal condition, artist Joel Levitt struggled to create art as he once had. He not only fought to regain use of his hands, but reached out to others and founded a nonprofit organization where artists can find support as they work through physical, mental, and other health impairments that impact their art-making.
Arts & Art Therapy
Editor's Note from Erica Curtis: Deborah Koff-Chapin, creator of Touch Drawing, demonstrated this unique technique of drawing with your fingertips. Touch Drawing has been used in therapeutic, educational, and general settings.
Arts & Art Therapy
by Allison Havens
 When I first met the youth group in El Nance started by the previous ArtCorps Artist Monica Gutierrez, I asked them to brainstorm the topics and activities they were interested in working on this year. Out of this first session, we came up with the idea to make trashcans for the community to help combat the problem of waste in the streets...
Editor's Note from Erica Curtis: Creativity, environmental education, and necessity collide when a group of youth in Honduras come together to clean up their community, with a little inspiration from re-purposed trash turned into art.
Arts & Art Therapy
by Deborah Koff-Chapin
from the book Eyes of the Soul, by Phil Rubinov Jacobson, forward by Ken Wilbur
 While growing up, I held the artist as my highest ideal. In living close to the source of creation, the artist was close to the heart of God. During the tumultuous upheavals of the sixties, my involvement with art served as a stabilizing element...
Editor's Note from Marie' Sakai: This is Deborah's art journey as she finds herself drawn to abstractions within the beauty of the figure. Timeless and imaginative, her writing tells it all! From going to art school and then having her 'ah-ha' moment and through this she found her voice, her desire, and her dreams to fulfill the beauty of art through the human figure.
Arts & Art Therapy
Editor's Note from Erica Curtis: Seena Frost, originator of SoulCollage®, takes the viewer through a step-by-step process of making a SoulCollage® card. Frost advocates for letting collage images speak to you during the process and tapping into your inner wisdom to learn more about the different parts of yourself through those images.
Arts & Art Therapy
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Art can be used to heal a psyche or express parts of that psyche that have no other avenue of expression. Sonia Weiss Durga's art is a good example of this. She was a deep, complex person with many aspects to her being.
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dedicated to informing and educating people on topics relating to alternative healing of mind, body,
spirit and the planet at large.
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