ARTIST-THERAPIST STATEMENT

            I love shape and the way it affects how you perceive a space. In many ways, I stopped creating art because I didn’t know how to sculpt space and that’s what I wanted to do. Objects in an arrangement worked for me for quite some time - Then I didn’t have the energy to make all those objects and I wanted to arrange and rearrange the actual shape of space. What materials could I use to do this? How could I change the rectangular edges of all those American rooms? How could I touch light?

 

            I want my art to transport us to this shaped space and I want to be able to float there and have others float with me.

         

            I swim in the unconscious with other people. I listen. I hold. I remember. I lose sight of where we’re going and, like the boy with the blue crayon, I put my patch on my eye and sail off with the wind, into tears, fears, losses, joys. The storyline tries to grip us and my therapeutic task is to swim underneath the wave and watch the current. Sometimes I lose my breath - mostly I am in awe of the largess of our exchange. I swim in the unconscious with other people. I listen. I hold. I remember. We sculpt the spaces between us and try to stay afloat.

 

Thoughts on Creativity and Health

            Creativity of the future will be songs of the collective experience because this is how we build relationships. Collective imagery allows one to experience a kind of life cycle or formative process. Just as an older person has had enough experience collectively to act as a keeper of the culture of his or her own family or community or the times, our imagery is the language of our sensations, and these languages have not only individual truths but collective ones as well.

 

• The body in pain is always a reminder of mortality even when the threat of death is absent

• Illness changes the way we see or experience healing

• When our bodies are sick, we fear rejection on so many levels

• There is a big difference between grief, depression, and sadness, yet they may appear in similar ways

• For most of us, it is overwhelming to face the inner psyche full time

• Support in our suffering reconnects us deeply.      

• Our health and our creativity are altered states of consciousness where we SEE (things and people) differently

• We change at a cellular level, and our cellular levels change

• Imagery and health create a biofeedback loop through the gift of deep introspection  where we look together at things from a slower pace