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