Friday, March 2, 2018

Introducing Isabelle

Introducing Isabelle!

In this world of ours so broken by misuse of power,  I find such relief and HOPE in raising artful expression through teaching Expressive Arts Therapy and Community Art.  The work itself invites everyone into equanimity as teacher and student lean in to our responsibilities and our innate abilities in service of artful expressions emerging.  Whether in Nepal, the US, Central America, or Europe, teaching for me is a work of humble attentiveness to the artists, the  process and the energy of art emerging. Most important for me is finding way to teach which frees everyone to stand in equal dignity and ability in the art-making. In multi-cultural settings, where diverse understandings and experiences of power, privilege and hierarchical authority are present I practice letting go of power, transferring ascribed power of position to the energy of the art arriving and the art makers gathered.  My hope is that in modeling standing in just my space of responsibility for empowering the sense based process of art making, students can fully present themselves as diverse artists with distinct abilities needed in forming art. While teaching in Nepal recently, it was the art emerging through Isabelle which helped us all stay in tune with our diverse abilities and responsibilities for bringing forth the art arriving in the room.


I share with you Isabelle!





Yes Isabelle is flute presence, setting the tone of the place and shared presence of our Expressive Arts Therapy course.  It is the voice of Isabelle that called us to the work as we began each morning and session.  When I have sunken into the deepest listening place with students it is also Isabelle who is given space to hold us in liminality, the magical, imaginal space of time away from ordinary time, where our senses lead.  It is Isabelle who encourages the flow between the art which comes and the senses of the students to receive it. As the teacher/witness in the room, I listen for Isabelle's artful way moment by moment as we, Isabelle and I, hold the space and guide the process within the frame of the EXA session.  We are a team Isabelle and I, opening up the space for "what art may come".

When working in multi-cultural, highly diverse settings, it is the "lifting" of innate qualities of our humanity that bring us into ease.   In western traditions of psychology hierarchy of the expert over the one in need is deeply entombed as the grounding expectation of the work of healing and learning.  In the liminal space of Expressive Arts Therapy, it is our shared humanity which is the foundational expectation of sharing space, and the inspiration of the art arriving in the presence of relationship.

Isabelle knows somehow, even when I don't, a way to speak to the heart and ease the strain of being open, vulnerable, and trusting of the process.  In liminal space we leave behind the soci-cultural landscape of habituated, systemic, intersecting oppression's and bring forth our art differently, remaining supportive of each other and the diversity present in our artful renderings. In this world divided by race, class, religion, gender, sexual identity, age and anything else people can find to bully one another through, YES the liminal space of teaching and providing Expressive Arts Therapy is opportunity for reprieve and resurrection of our common humanity.  Yes, the art of Isabelle in the lead, levels us into our humanity as common ground for being in and bringing forth, artful expression.

I am so grateful, so grateful indeed for my Isabelle.


Saturday, February 3, 2018

Love letters remembering- Art Making in Nepal.

Love Letters Remembering - Art Making in Nepal



Teaching and practicing Expressive Arts Therapy and Community Art in environments of cultural diversity ethically requires letting go of the idea that I am "the expert" in the room.  As a teacher I bring a particular expertise in concepts and guiding principles shown to be effective in this work as I know it.  However, Art making is intrinsically human.  Our innate artistry is deeply entwined with our cultural, communal, geographic and generational history. We are Living Artistry, all of us! Remembering and re-engaging the art maker within us requires moving out of everyday, acculturated patterns of engagement.  We work to enter the world of playful surprise which naturally sets free our inner artistry! Art making happens where inspiration has room to enter and imagination has breath to fly.  Routine life often stifles the creative flow within. Everyone is the expert in the room in Expressive Arts Therapy, especially the ART.


In Nepal, moving into learning Expressive Arts Therapy, began with exploring who we brought ourselves to be in the art making, in the artful exploring.  We first found our place in the rooms which would serve our artful exploration.  Somehow the interior space and the exterior place, must become friends, and so we create interaction through the breath, exchanging air between our inner selves and our outer place, which carries us into moving.  We move through the air which is our inhaled, exhaled exchange with our place and with one another.  As we move we begin to find the others involved in sharing breath with place, in innovative ways.  As we move, we let our knee lead us and then we follow our nose, our shoulder  and even our left hip, and we begin introducing ourselves to others through the meeting of knees, shoulders, elbows, and yes lol... sometimes toes. What wonderful, playful perspectives from which to meet and begin seeing one another.


And we move to colors, boxes of pastels arrive to help us explore who we are becoming in this art space already. Which color chooses us? We worked until we found just the one that called us!  And we let the colors move on our papers and give us our names that day.  The name by which we wished to be called.  And we formed our presence, individually as part of our community of artists for the week.


Each one an expert in ourselves; each one opening to the art emerging as expert directing the making; each one recognizing the other as fellow artist, a companion on the way.

And lets not forget the bumps.  The places where our knees introduced each other too forcefully, the moments when balance was lost, and my toes for a moment, stepped on yours.   These are incredible opportunities where the play might have been interrupted, that we might be students of the art informing us of the shadows within, and the struggles between, that in this container, can be transformed in and between us as the art comes!

We are All Living Artistry.

May peace within us and between us expand its depth and reach as we make art.

Next time: Isabelle, our surprise expert appears!

Until then... may beauty surprise you and art making call you!
Warmly,
Mary

Thursday, January 25, 2018

The Harvesting Begins!



Harvesting is the gleaning of the work, the locating of that which brings life and love and friendship through the art making we share. This is the work of Today and the next few weeks of Todays for Sadhana Thappa and I.  Fostering dignity in diversity through Expressive Arts Therapy and Community Art Practice is first and foremost fostered through a chosen posture of love.   Nothing less would be effective.  Too much interior and relational work is required in this endeavor for anything less than love to be an effective motivator and embrace of our effort.

Although love is undefinable completely, it is sensorially experienced and intellectually describable.  I(Mary) experience love "felt" first.  There is first and foremost a sense of being drawn towards someone or something.  My senses are tapped and move their attention towards the stimuli that has drawn them, my body posture is redirected towards  and opens to that which has called to me. My emotions are enlivened, and curiosity engaged. My whole being seems to open up to capture the experiencing of what has drawn me to attend its presence.  When this phenomena occurs, it is because I am in the moment before I am drawn in, standing in the posture of being in love with, open, vulnerable to my present experiencing.

When I am an effective facilitator of Expressive Arts Therapy, Community Art Practice and teacher of this work, it is because love is, as much as possible, the posture of my approach. It is this posture that Sadhana Thapa and I have witnessed in each other which has brought us to engage this work together and keeps us pressing into the call of bringing forth Expressive Arts Institute Nepal and Living Artistry: Community Art Practice as joint ventures of peace building work.  We are engaged in a labor of Love sometimes from opposite sides of the world and sometimes literally side by side.  Location hasn't mattered.  Love and choosing again and again to love, enables us to absorb the revelations of our humanness, our strengths, struggles, challenges and frustrations as well as our giftings, education, cultural distinctions and culturally embedded praxis and continue to reach towards each other for the sake of friendship and the work. The strain is possible because the work is embraced by the love and surpassed by shared joy!

We are so very deeply grateful to all have supported this work.  We thank you for your financial contributions, your shared gifts of art made and sold for donations, your words of encouragement, your time!  We thank most tenderly Prem and Joe our husbands, for their tireless effort and support of us and this project! 

Below is a short synopsis of the facts of our latest training in Nepal.  This will be followed by a regular stream of stories from the work.  The beauty of the people we were with, we want to share with you!  For All who partake in this project, are Beautiful!!!



Expressive Arts Institute Nepal: Fall 2017

Mary was on the ground in Nepal from October 28 through November 19. During this time,Mary taught two Masters Level courses: Expressive Arts Therapy: Foundations, Forms and Ethics and Community Art Practice: A Pathway towards Peace.  Sadhana and Mary led students through practicum experiences in 8 locations with a variety of populations.  Mary provided practicum supervision for all field work at all sites and Sadhana provided cultural mentoring and as a 3rd year Masters Student of Expressive Arts Therapy led a team of students at her site in the work.  In addition Mary provided Supervision to two other Masters Students from the European Graduate School for their practicum hours and training in multi-cultural ethics practice and cross cultural humility.

For both Sadhana and Mary, these were 16 hour days, 6 out of 7 per week.  It was powerful and exhausting and so very beautiful!  We have learned so much about what went well and what we will do differently next fall when we bring to life the next Expressive Arts Institute Nepal full training experience.

We will in these days, be sharing the stories of this past fall more fully than our facebook posts and time would allow last fall!  We share in hopes of honoring the work of the people in Nepal and the team that engaged this global opportunity. We share in hopes of honoring all who support us in anyway.  And yes we share to encourage everyone to continue with us, supporting this work and perhaps bringing others alongside us.  The project and therefor our need for support, is growing.

We share stories to celebrate the Love that grows and grows us when we gather in dignity, in diversity and in care for our shared humanity.

On Monday I will post Expressive Arts Nepal: Phase 3 for everyone to see and consider supporting.

Namaste
May we greet the love of God in each one, every time!

Mary Putera, LMHC, MDiv., CAGS, PhD candidate
Sadhana Thapa, MA (Social Work), Expressive Arts Therapies masters student 3rd year