Robert Latchman is a 37 year old man who has suffered from learning disabilities and schizophrenia for his whole life. At the age of 19 he was enrolled in an art therapy program called the League of Education and Treatment Center, a nonprofit day program for adults with neurological disabilities. In 2011 Latchman got hit by two cars and had to undergo multiple surgeries to fix the physical damage that was done to him, but what about his psychological damages? With the help of the art therapy program he became an example of someone who represents the disabled. Also the arts have the power to heal and inspire (Art Therapy Saves Schizophrenic Hit By Two Cars by, Susan Donaldson James). Furthermore the contributions that art has had on the mentally…
While taking a study break at school, I saw a news article with the smiling face I could recognize anywhere. After over a year in the hospital and a second heart transplant, he was heading home. This patient and his health care team showed me the artistic nature of medicine. Medicine is truly an art form because as a physician you are tasked with channeling your emotions and combining it with your knowledge to come up with a personalized treatment option for patients. At a time when hope was dwindling, his health care team worked together and pushed for a novel treatment.…
As individuals in this world, we are all affected and captured by different things. There will be moments in which we get a grasp of who we are or for a moment we let go of the thought of ourselves and fully appreciate what is in front of us. Czeslaw Milosz states that “art liberates and purifies, and its tokens are those short moments when we look at a beautiful landscape forgetting about ourselves, when everything that concerns us disappears, is dissolved, and it does not matter whether the eye that looks is that of a beggar or a king.” Milosz describes how impactful art may be and it should not matter whether the viewer is of a certain class, race, gender, etc. Art has the power to fully capture us and in that moment we obtain an experience we have never felt before, one in which we are…
Art Therapy acts as a release of emotions for individuals. Creating art reflects daily lives, if practiced everyday and displays various events or other aspects of life that left an emotional…
W.E.B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk, a collection of autobiographical and historical essays contains many themes. Themes such as souls and their attainment of consciousness and the theme of double consciousness appear in many of the compositions. However, one of the most prominent themes is that of "the veil." The veil provides a connection between the 14 seemingly unconnected essays that make up this book. Mentioned at least once in most of the essays the veil is the stereotypes that whites bring to their interactions with blacks. African Americans are prejudged as incapable and thus not given a chance to prove themselves. This can become a self-fulfilling prophecy if one is told they can't do something, they may internalize that belief and think they can't, when in fact they can. Du Bois puts it as, “this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others" (Du Bois 2). The veil is a metaphor for the separation and invisibility of black life and existence in America; also a way to represent the idea of blacks living in a “white world”.…
It forces the audience to live in the moment and expose them to new perspectives. These new perspectives allow onlookers to challenge the norms or break stereotypes and even change their own perspectives on social, religious or political issues. This force of perspective can be seen in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, whose author explains how the main character is seen to be invisible by the more superior “white society” and whose book challenges the divide and stigmas of racial stereotypes (107 Nussbaum). However, art does more than just expose people to societal issues they may have been ignorant or unaware of, but it also can be the solution to these same issues. Mollie Stone, a choir conductor in Chicago, saw how the art of singing brought together a plethora of people from different backgrounds and upbringings. As she explains, “…since the choirs sing music from many different cultures, they learn about other cultures, and they learn that these cultures are available to them; they transcend barriers that expectation and local culture have thrown in their way, showing that they can be world citizens” (115 Nussbaum). Through art, these kids despite sharing very little in common were able to see each other’s perspectives and respect each other as people. Art provides a commonplace for people such as these choir kids who share very little in common. It allows them to come…
Mask by Lucky Dube says “behind the masks of a clown lies a trail of tears”. When you’re being someone you're not, it can hurt you badly. When you take off your mask, you are back to being yourself and if you're not happy with yourself you become sad and/or mad. Masks by George Ulrich says “masks allow us to pretend”. When you are wearing a mask, you are allowing yourself to be whoever you want to be. You can pretend to be someone you’re not. Wearing a mask may transcend your feelings about yourself. When you’re wearing a mask you are not being your true self.…
Melinda begins to express herself positively in various ways in her school environment as the year progresses. Through her art assignment, Melinda conveys, through painting, her growing process of healing. In order to heal, she must grow out of her deep emotional shell that she has built around herself. The healing process can be very difficult for some because the wall they build up (from the original source of pain) was built to protect them. Unfortunately it is usually an unhealthy way to cope… so within time healing, in this case speaking up, will come a little easier and easier.…
Malchiodi, C. (2005). Using art activities to support trauma recovery in children. Trauma & Loss: Research & Interventions, 5(1), 8-11.…
Art therapy uses imagery-specific techniques that are among the most effective in reducing PTSD symptomology (“Calm through creativity”, n.d.). The art materials serve as a medium towards exploration. The art making process, with the guidance of the therapist “helps the [client] to learn from the experience as well as the product” (Rubin, 1999) and reflecting on the emotional or behavioral outcomes can help create awareness of a trauma. Some people who experience the trauma find it difficult to verbally express the experience due to the emotionally overwhelming associations. The nonverbal methods of art therapy provide a comfortable means to address the trauma. Art therapists use the Media Dimension Variables (MDV) alongside the Expressive Therapies Continuum (ETC) models to “think about media and activities according to specific objectives for people” (Rubin, 1999) and intentionally plan sessions according to where they stand in terms of expressive interaction with the…
Moon, B. L. (2007). Dialoguing with dreams in existential art therapy. Art therapy: Journal of…
By delving into new media, I realized the process of creating art was just as therapeutic as the work itself. In printmaking, for example, I designed a silkscreen self-portrait which illustrated my mental disorder. The first print was the most emotionally difficult to make because I struggled confronting my disorder. However, the more copies I created, the more I could accept the face looking back at me. Because of this process, I could present the piece in my classroom critique. Additionally, my ceramic pieces each had a definite conceptual backbone, but working the clay with my hands promoted a sense of wellness and satisfaction that I had not yet achieved with another medium. The combined therapeutic capability of art itself and the process of making art are now tools of healing and self-expression that I can use as an artist and in my future…
Cyber Bullying is the modern way to bully. Cyber Bullying is a growing issue in America. Cyber Bullying affects both genders and all culture groups. Due to the onset of suicides and homicides America is taking a stand against cyber bullying.…
In U.S. People thought minimalism was the end to painting. That painting is an exhausted medium. In France however, minimalism was viewed as something to be dealt with within painting. Is does not represent the end of painting. At the forefront of this movement was Simon Hantai, a Hungarian. He is known for inventing Pliage (to fold) in France. From 1960 to 1982, he works exclusively on canvas that is off the wooden frame and wadded up, crumbled up. He then paints the canvas like this and opens it up. He sums all his painterly ambitions as an attempt to make painting exceptionally banal, ordinary. Intially very poor, looked at geometrical abstraction and gestural abstraction. He is interested in making painting that exceeds his conscious control, his conscious intention so that what is reveled is a surprise to him. He takes several features from Mathieu's work. The aesthetics of speed and painting in an altered state are ideals of Mathiew which Hantai takes interest in. Hantai tried to take over Mathieu's ideas while building a mechanisms that allows the work to surprise him. Hantai's answer to Pollock was the creation of Pliage. A new way of getting paint on the canvas. In Meun he alters his technique using knots in the canvas and flattening it out, creating mushroom shapes. This results in larger paint ares and also larger non-painted areas or white space. Ewventaully the white space becomes the most important part of Pliage. In pliage the non painted areas are no longer a neutral space, the white parts become a critical component of the work. The white areas lets the painted areas breathe. Hantai's Meun share great similarities with some of Matisee's work which place an emphasis on negative space. Additionally, the non-painted spaces are placed where he did not touch and thus could not compose them. Hantai's lifelong aspiration was to free painting from its author. He wanted for painting not to be only for the notionally gifted invdividuals…
Towards the end of WWI, Ladd opened up her shop called “Studio for Portrait Masks” through the Red Cross to help with the war effort, one of the first and most renowned mask shops of the time. “As director of the Red Cross mask-making studio in Paris, Ladd worked with mutiles de la face, men who had taken shrapnel, bullets, and flamethrowers to the face. Ladd studied dozens of those disfigured faces, then sculpted masks made to resemble the soldiers’ former selves” (One Sculptor’s Answer). Ladd used her shop to invite all soldiers, each with their own individual and unique damages, into her care, free of charge. She sent them home with custom-made masks, making them look brand new, and did it all out of the kindness of her heart. Not only did her shop have the most inviting and safe environment, it also produced some of the best and most detailed work ever created in her time. “In Ladd’s studio, which was credited with better artistic results, a single mask required a month of close attention” (Faces of War). Out of the few other mask studios in business, Ladd’s came out on top, changing the medical field that we now call anaplastology. Her dedication, skills, and techniques created pieces that outshone most other methods of prosthetic rehabilitation in the early 1900’s, due to her considerable exertion of effort and devotion to improving the lives of these veterans.…