Why I’m
Passionate About Facilitating Community Art
Today, August 19, 2017, I swam in the pool at the gym! I
have been trying to remember the co-ordination of my limbs for moving through
the water reasonably smoothly for years!
Today August 19, 2017, my body somehow RECONNECTED the full length of my legs
to the activity of kicking! Ahhh yes! This is what it is like to experience the
felt sense of smooth, long propulsion through the water with my whole body! Joyful surprise of whole
body functioning filled me. This somehow newly found, remembered ability,
meaning I CAN, is mine again!
On February 14, 1999, I was in a horse riding accident. On
that day, I experienced the crushing and twisting of my torso and spine from my
tail bone to my skull, a redistributing of abdominal organs, and the destruction
of neurological pathways from my brain to my body especially my limbs. I also
sustained a brain injury that left me without many years of memory, unable
to manage emotional flooding, with altered visual capacity, a thick muddy experiencing of a felt sense of life, and a newly expanded pain scale
unlike anything I had ever known. I felt like a shattered glass window barely
held together by its frame, in a posture of intense vulnerability and
excruciating self-protection. Sheer determination to experience as little loss
of connection with my husband, children, extended family and profession as
possible somehow propelled me through my day-to-day life for a few years.
After the accident, I could no longer integrate information
or function through left brain pathways in clear fashion. Intellectual
and embodied intelligence remained locked in me, in chaos and unable to be refined,
reshaped, accessed or developed through regular thought processes. For a highly
functioning woman, this was an extremely painful part of my experience.
Three months after the accident, I graduated from Lesley
University with an MA in Clinical Mental Health, with specializations in
Holistic Practice and Expressive Arts Therapy. The specialization in Expressive
Arts Therapy became such a place of grace in my work with others and my own
life. As my body was literally being reconstructed by physical therapists, massage
therapists and chiropractors, my soul, my heart and my brain were being
re-imagined into functioning through personal and community art making.
Expressive Arts therapy as low skill, high sensitivity embodied work emerging
through the senses, was a healing process which met me right where I was, in my
own place of being remade, and even newly made through imaginative play. My laughter was restored along with neural pathways,
the ability to breathe more fully, and newfound abilities for sharing life with
others that were Oh So Much Bigger, Fuller and Freer!
A
turning point in my Expressive Arts Journey came in the fall of 2001/2002 I
believe (I am still a bit memory impaired). I attended a series of EXA
workshops with Shaun McNiff. The shards
of myself were reheated in the alchemical process of embodied art making and repetition in
this peer group setting as Shaun guided us through. Together we engaged sensory based, intuitive, multi-modal,
embodied work that was held by following the emergent, engaging repetition,
trusting the process, and experiencing the vulnerability of seeing and being
seen. I was aware too that our process seemed
held by something larger than myself and larger than the group. I sensed a
warmth, comfort and safety that truly comes in the presence of love. The
courage came to live into healing moments of soul-filled singing and moving
which re-enlivened my sense of being originally formed as living artistry in my
mother’s womb. The group with Shaun as facilitator created together a container
safe enough for delving deep and excavating hidden beauty within ourselves.
Beholding,
bringing forth, and sharing Beauty has been the way of my mother’s family and
Maltese Italian heritage for generations. As my training and self healing
continued, body memories awoke in me of old habits of engaging visual art,
dance, movement and music as practices of resiliency and hope in my youth and
young adult years. The muse, the spirit of Creator/Creating was once again
alive in my psyche and soul. I could
sense myself once again as an integrated self in the making, always seeking
Beauty amongst us.
In 2005 I returned to Graduate school seeking an MDiv. Sensory based artistry re-made in me
flourished as I facilitated Collaborative Community Art in Worship in the
Seminary. A multi-ethinic, multi-lingual, gender inclusive, multi-national,
intergenerational group of students came together with the hope of creating
artfully engaging worship experiences for the entire seminary community.
Together we explored themes of liturgical life through a frame I developed for Collaborative
Community Art Making. We stepped into liminal space, a time out of time where
social constructs of who we were defined to be were left aside. We engaged
various modalities of visual art making, sounding, dance and movement to
explore themes, ideas and imaginings. Weavings extended upward in two-story
tall Chapel windows, stories formed telling us what mattered, movement and
dance brought forth the sense of Spirit, and sacred presence and performance
led to ways for the entire worship community to be gathered into artful expressions of love. Collaborative Community Art making became the opportunity to form a
community full of dignity in diversity in a Seminary setting. It was also a very difficult space as diverse people were invited to
share this exploration in an atmosphere of mores and folkways profoundly shaped
in colonialist, patriarchal, white western male dominance. Through Collaborative Community Arts based
Worship, Hope grew in me that the divides of oppression could be transformed. I
also came to understand that I would need to go beyond the seminary to engage the human community
more fully.
On Friday August 11, 2011 (I looked it up) Shaun
McNiff and Paolo Knill co-facilitated a one-day conference, “Liberating
Creativity: Courage to Lead.” From Alaska to Boston I did go! Such sacred space
it was indeed. I was introduced to Paolo’s way of expanding the range of play, and
the possibilities for engaging the art emerging among people gathered. We
created a parade! As my group worked to become an offering to be witnessed by the
street crowd, the synergy of us made space for a new experience we could have
never have created alone. We were different from each other in so many ways and
similar in our potential for participating in the incredible craft of bringing
forth an emerging art piece. Paolo led us through our senses, rather than
words, and through embodied presencing rather than habituated thoughts, to
be present with each other. Paolo fostered our willingness to be enticed,
interested in the process and surprised by what would come, and we were! We
found a way to live into the humility and generosity of making space not only
for each other, but for “the third,” the art as its own entity developing with us. For a little while, I was
flying as a Hawk, sounding the call of fully experiencing and Joyously
belonging in the parade of musical, dancing, finger-snapping float form of my
group. That day, I learned to trust the
Community Art Practice process as pathway for bringing diverse people into
shared space of dignity as human community. This was joyous to me!
Since this workshop in 2011, I have gone on to receive a
Certificate of Advanced Graduate Studies in Expressive Arts Therapies and
Community Art and am currently working on my dissertation in Community Art
Practice as pathway for peace-building. I have facilitated Community Art
Practice in the form of low skill, high sensitivity work in five countries, and
taught in three. I have facilitated Community Art in groups as small as 6 and
as large as 260. Facilitations have sometimes focused on theme-close work such
as exploring gender oppression, cultural humility, bridging socially
constructed divides of race, class, gender identity, and the anguish of collective
trauma and transitory existence. Other Community Art facilitations were about
holding space for friendships to grow, laughter, vulnerability and trust to
become normalized, imagination and hope to flourish and community joy to expand
exponentially. In all these circumstances, I have experienced the power of
Community Art as an opportunity for imagining wholeness and bringing forth a
foretaste of what we can live into in community wholeness embraced by beauty.
What
began as a very personal journey of rediscovery and newly imagining my own life
has emerged into a lifelong exploration of imagining human community in dignity and diversity. In Community Art Practice, we joyfully engage in forming emerging works
of art with others in a process that is open wide to the collective imagination
and Beauty inherent in both the process of being together and experiencing the art that comes! It is an artful practice of
forming dignity in diversity for the sake of bringing forth the beloved
beautiful human community.
In
Community Art Practice we together become, Living Artistry.
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".
