Arts in Human Development - Creative Practice - Week 7

For my week 7 creative practice blog, I tried for my first time creating a vessel with paper clay, using the pinch pot technique, as a developmentally appropriate product for someone who is an older adult. Being a ceramic sculptor, I recently expressed in one of my discussion posts my desire to work with my patients using clay. My instructors suggested paper clay, because there is no dust, safe for the patients, can be painted and dries to a hardened surface similar to thin wood.  I purchased 2 small rectangular  packaged blocks of paper clay, which will fit perfect on my art cart. I have been interested in trying clay with my older adult patients, because I think it may spark their interest, help them with movement in their hands and overall lift their spirits to make them feel better.

Since I had not worked with paper clay before, I thought using a simple pinch pot technique would be good to see how similar it was to regular clay that I am used to.  I tried to push the paper clay's limits by making real thin edges, pinching lace on to the outside for texture, etc.  I really liked the clay and the way it felt, it molded nicely and it was very soft and easy to pinch, which would be good for an older adult patient.  The clay did not dry out while I was working on it and my hands were left clean instead of dry with clay on them. There was hardly any clean up. After I started getting comfortable with the paper clay I realized it reminded me of working with porcelain clay, which I absolutely love!  Once my vessel dries I plan to explore painting and carving the hardened paper clay.

I am so excited to try paper clay this week at the hospital with my older adult patients. I had a patient express to me how she did not like creating art however she had always wanted to try making something out of clay. I plan to have the patients make simple Christmas ornaments, tiles they stamp and paint and pinch pots.  One idea I had would be for them to create a “Life Memory Vessel”.  This would be a pinch pot with a lid that they would make with the paper clay and paint. It would have a design of their name on the outside.  Next I would have them on a piece of paper write or I would write for them a special memory of their life and roll it up like a scroll and put it inside the life memory vessel.

Arts in Human Development - Creative Practice - Week 6

For my week 6 creative practice blog, I have learned how to make a basket as a developmentally appropriate product for someone who is in adulthood.  Since I am in the adult stage of development; established in a career, family life and under the age of 60 years old, I decided to create a product that I would enjoy.  Being a potter, familiar with vessel forms, I have always been intrigued with basketry but never had the opportunity to learn how to make them.   I have for a very long time wanted to make basket vessels and have often thought simple basketry and weaving would be a good tool on my art cart for adults.  Last week in Jamaica, I met an artist who makes baskets. He had a sign that said, “Learn to make a basket”.  I was so excited for this opportunity to finally get to learn how to make a basket, and be able to use it for my patient bedside art.  So I let him know I would love to make one. He grabbed a chair for me to sit next to him and began to teach me how to make a basket.  This was a very special time of creating and sharing artist to artist.  He taught me all about how he prepares the “five finger vines”, how to start, weave and finish a basket. We sat together for a while making baskets and visiting.  He shared about being an art teacher and his culture.  I shared with him about my arts in medicine studies and practice. 

  

When we were finished I purchased some of his baskets for future basketry ideas since I could now look at the baskets and know how to make them.  He gave me a start to another basket so I would remember how to start them and also gave me a rolled bundle of the vines to complete it later at home. 

Later, just for more fun, I decided to add color to my basket using crayons and working with the natural weaved design of the basket. 

Learning how to finally make baskets brought a feeling of fulfillment in my adult stage of life. I am looking forward to exploring creating baskets of different sizes and shapes out of a variety of materials. Basketry can be appropriate for all the adulthood groups; ages 25-35 who are in an established career but don't have a family, or moms with small children.  I have been showing my basket to many of the mother’s of the young children I teach and my adult friends of various ages. With excitement they have said, “You made that basket, I would love to learn how to make a basket”. My response, “I would love to teach you, it is so much fun”.

Arts in Human Development - Creative Practice - Week 5

This week as I have been contemplating my age appropriate art for the creative blog assignment and reflecting on this week’s reading and videos, I have been inspired to experiment with creating an expressive memory journal. The cover would be a collage of drawings, photos taken by the young adult patient or found on the internet, specialty graphic paper and other materials. The idea of the book would be to create a collage on the cover that represented who they are: memories of their life, their family, things they like to do, how they view themselves now, questions they have, what makes them unique. They would use colors, textures and graphics to create an expression of them self.  The inside of the journal would have a combination of lined pages for writing and blank pages for drawing or adding more collage through the course of time.  This would be an ongoing journal they would add to daily or weekly. So they would stay active with this journal, snapping photos with their phone, drawing, writing stories, poems, letters, etc. in their expressive memory journal. Schneider says in the book, Writing Alone and With Others, why keep a journal? Your life has significance. A journal helps you remember, it saves the perception of what you have this day as you are living it (pg.66-68).

During this week I have been on a cruise ship and have had very limited access to technology resources. All week I have been taking photos with my phone of scenery, signs, art, painted graphics on walls, carpet etc.   Inspired while reading Schneider’s, chapter 4 The Journal, I decided to create the journal to be appropriate for a teen male ages 13-17yrs. This project can be altered for young adult patients, by having them use more age appropriate graphics that have meaning for them. Since I was limited on the ship, I used on board photos I took from the teen section of the ship. There were daily arts and craft workshops on-board, so I learned how to make paper craft cards and scrap-booking, to help with my journal collage. I decided to make my own scrap-book male teen adolescence kit from my photos. Some of the photos were used like specialty paper and some were used like photos and stickers. I used the paper cutter scissors and other tools and ideas I had learned at the workshops. 

Arts in Human Development - Creative Practice - Week 4

Scribble has been highlighted to me recently, in the wall paper in hotels and even in the metal of bathroom stalls as a design. 

I have been contemplating the idea of what scribble is, the idea that everyone is able to scribble and is scribbling the same as doodling? One usually does not have a preset idea of what they are going to make when they begin to scribble, however once you begin scribbling an idea for a drawing can emerge from the scribble. Or one can color or pattern the different shapes created from the scribble, to make an abstract drawing. To scribble is so easy and simple, anyone can scribble, young to old, even all the patients and students that tell me they are not artistic when I invite them to create. 

Artists use scribble to create works of art.

Lowenfeld’s Scribble Stage; 0-4 years, scribble is the first form of artistic drawing in development.       

I believe young children can learn to communicate/express themselves creatively through scribble drawing before verbal language develops.  I believe this is why scribble is known to children and is easy for a person through all the stages of development.  

I have created a 2 works of art using an art scribble process that I believe would be developmentally appropriate for a child. The Scribble Art Card is appropriate for a child 3-6 years and the Scribble Art drawing is modified with geometric shapes, circles, appropriate for a child 7-9 years.  Both were first painted with watercolor paint and then color pencils and markers were used to scribble and color.

Creative Practice Blog - Art and Human Development - Week 3

From the childhood stage of development, my earliest and most significant childhood memory was at the age of 4-5 years.  I remember lying in bed at night and being fascinated with my hands.  I would stare for hours at my hands, making gestures.  But what I remember the most is how I would think about how the art I loved to make came out from my hands.  I can remember contemplating the thought that all I had to do was think (meditate) about the art idea I wanted to make, the idea would go through my body and come out through my hands and I would make it.  I would lie in bed thinking about this, think of art ideas and could feel the creativity go through my body and to my hands waiting to be released into a creation.  To this day when I receive a creative idea, I can feel it go through me and out my hands when I am creating art.  At that young age I did not know that I was going to be a potter/sculptor that requires a sensitive touch and I would work with clay on a potter’s wheel and make sculptures. 

Here is a drawing of a brain and my hands connected by creative idea brain waves.  We have been studying about creativity, childhood and the brain this week. The drawing was created with black scratch art paper and a wooden stick.  I love working with this paper, it is fun to draw with and reveal the rainbow of colors. I use this paper in my tool kit for patient bedside art, it appeals to all ages and it is a favorite with the male patients.

Arts in Human Development - Creative Practice - Week 2

This week while reading about Urie Bronfenbrenner’s economical perspective of human development  I read how “The ecological environment is conceived as a set of nesting structures, moving from the innermost structure, outward. The idea of a set of nesting structures inspired my week 2 creative blog assignment; Make a work of art titled "Human Development." 

The art piece I created is called “Nesting Vessels in Human Development.” 

I have created 5 vessels out of clay using the pinch pot hand building technique.

Each vessel represents a stage of human development starting with infancy vessel as the inner vessel moving outward through the phases of human development. This is the order also that I created the piece. Below are pictures of the creative process and stages of the nesting vessels. I tried to capture side views and direct front on pictures. When it was finished I found it interesting that the all 5 vessels nested inside each other looked like a flower.

Infancy - This vessel I created it to look round with a small opening, just beginning.

Childhood - This vessel I tried to represent a child by a triangle symbol, thicker straight walls that were cut at the top.

Adolescence – This vessel was created thinner a less structured with bumps and in places broken through for the road bumps and challenges in this stage.

Adulthood – This vessel was created thin and flared out to represent reaching going through the other stages and reaching an expressive peak in our journey to give out in our daily lives.

Late Adulthood – This vessel was pinched from a slab of clay instead of a ball to keep it low and wide to represent entering the final stage of development and also to hold and contain the previous 4 stages of human development.

Arts in Human Development - Creative Practice - Week 1

For many years during Christmas time, I create ornaments out of clay for my family and friends. A couple of weeks ago during my self-care creative time the idea came to me to make clay ornaments for my patients to paint during my bedside art visits during the holiday season.  The idea was inspired by the white cardboard 3 dimensional butterfly ornament project on my art cart, that the patient paint and color.  Many female patients, I have discovered, really enjoy this project because they like butterflies.  I do too and how they are slit to become 3 dimensional (see picture).  As I was making the flat clay ornaments with cookie cutters, for my patient art cart, the idea came to try making some of the ornaments 3 dimensional like the butterfly project.  So I tried it with a few different shapes: angel, tree, star and heart.  The concept worked however clay is much more pliable then cardboard; soon my 3 dimensional Christmas ornaments became healing angel sculptures. 

For my creative practice blog assignment this week; introduce myself through a work of art, I really felt since I was all ready in this creative flow, I was to make a healing angel reflective of me.  I started contemplating on what would this healing angel look like, what did I want this angel to express about me and what shape would I use to create the angel.  I knew I did not want to use a Christmas ornament shape.  The butterfly came to mind because they are similar to angels, I love butterflies, but why are they special to me? What is it about them that reflect me?

 

I began reflected on all the things I knew and liked about butterflies and what they represent; new beginnings, life transformation and hope. I remembered once reading the Greek myth definition for the butterfly: hopelessly in love with the other.  I started thinking about my patient bedside arts in medicine practice and realized all these things, I aspire to be. To transform the atmosphere when I enter the patient’s room, to bring life transformation and hope through art and creative activity.  I want to be that butterfly/angel of hope that walks into their room. That watches their pain leave, blood pressure and breathing become normal, smile return, all while their engaged in creativity, painting their butterfly.  New beginnings and hope restored.  I am so passionate about this, because just like the butterfly I too am hopelessly in love with the other.

Final Creative Practice Blog

The final art piece I created is a reflective collage of my creative practice blogs for each class and my recent pastel landscape piece which is a culmination of my journey in the Graduate Certificate program. Blogging was brand new to me when I started my first class, Arts in Medicine in Practice. I quickly discovered that I enjoyed the creative practice blog assignments and began to create blogs reflective on the material I was studying and learning. The ceramic healing wall projects began during my creative practice blogging while I was learning about healing environments. I began creating the ceramic healing tiles for my blog which eventually led me to propose to the hospital, a ceramic healing wall project, Tiles of Compassion, for my practicum. During my practicum I was inspired to draw healing angels for my blogs which culminated into sculpting out of clay the healing angels during my Professional Seminar blog assignments. Creating my work on a consistent basis helped me to stay in a creative flow with my work, which became a means of self-care for me which in turn helped me maintain the creative flow in my practice during bedside art. I learned during blogging and discussions, reflection, which aided my writing and deeper sensitivity in my own work and arts in medicine practice. This week I am on a cruise in the Caribbean, while packing for the trip I realized I needed to pack art supplies so I could engage in creative activity during this time. My desire for creating art has increased. While in Labadee Haiti, I was sitting on the ship deck looking out at the landscape and the desire to engage in creative activity with the oil pastels and paper I brought, came upon me. This was very different for me because I usually create in 3 dimension with clay, but I have found a new freedom and release from what I have learned and experienced in my Graduate Certificate program. I realized that I could try this pastel drawing, because for me it was not about a great work of art, it was about engaging in creative activity, just like I do with my patients in bedside art. So I did it and what was really great was the whole time I was drawing, a group of local Haitians were drumming so I created to the rhythm of their culture, I loved it! I have only worked with pastels 3 times before so I was pleased with the time I spent creating and my result. I am finding a new found interest these past few days in creating landscape drawings with pastels, which flows with my arts in medicine practice. I plan to introduce landscape drawing at the patient’s bedside. I realized through this experience that I am excited to try new mediums of art for my own art and in my practice. I feel so liberated and new confidence in my practice which I realized has developed from all that I have learned and experienced in my practice from the Graduate Certificate program this past year. The program has been life changing for me. I have so many new creative ideas for my arts in medicine practice and my own art. Most of all I have learned in the Graduate Certificate Program is that I am determined with all my heart to pursue my calling as an Art in Health Practitioner so I can help to enhance others quality of life.

Professional Seminar - Creative Practice - 4

I have been sculpting/cleaning up “Angel of Serenity” for a couple weeks and I still have at least a week more of cleaning and sculpting on the water in particular, the leaf wings are fine, I have not needed to touch them.  This cleaning/sculpting process had been a time of patience, slowing down and reflecting. The water clay strips I feel have messy edges and small globs of clay all over from my finger prints when I first formed the water and the clay was sticky.   It does feel like the water to me because everywhere I look it needs cleaning, I just keep cleaning and cleaning, never ending like the ocean. I have not been in a hurry because I know in order to capture the expression of peace I have to encounter every inch of the creating experience. What has made this process challenging is that I left my pottery/sculpting tools at home in AZ while I am here in FL.  I literally have hundreds of these tools so my thought has been to get creative with other tools that I do have access to here.  At first after many hours and it still looked messy to me, I realized that I just needed to go buy the right tool so I could get it done quicker and correctly. However as I have been engaging in the process, I noticed that even though everywhere I looked it still needed to be cleaned, the angel was progressing to a more finished stage.  I also began to brainstorm on what tool to use to get it cleaned up how I wanted, and I decided to use a small dry semi stiff paintbrush to brush crumbs off, smooth the small globs and rough edges.  The paintbrush works well it adds softness yet cleans and because of its flexibility I am able to actually begin sculpting the edges and shapes within the clay strands.  I had a breakthrough in the sculpting aspect while using the paintbrush, I was reminded of what the waves look like when they peak and crash and I began to capture similar shapes and the feeling the waves have as they move within the ocean.  I am now seeing every nuance of the piece as I continue to go around smoothing and sculpting each shape of the water/body of the angel.  The angels character, expression is starting to come forth as I continue to mold and shape her.

Here are some creative pictures of the Angel of Serenity.  I also have included some pictures of a second angel I recently began and it’s process thus far. It is in its beginning rough awkward stage before it is shaped and leaves added.

Needing to be cleaned and shaped.

Top view of the back

Professional Seminar - Creative Practice - 3

“Angel of Serenity” has all its parts; water, leaves on wings and hair, so it is now time for me to sculpt. Basically I need to go around every part and sculpt it until it looks just right. Some reflections while I was adding the different parts were on how quickly the rings I made went on to the body of the angel to represent the water. However the small leaves that I cut out with a tiny leaf cookie cutter out of a thin slab were slow and tedious to make. While pounding the clay really thin to cut out the leaves I noticed how my hand marks made a natural impression on the clay that looked like the print on a real leaf. This reminded me of other times when I recognized how when creating with clay I catch a glimpse of how the actual object in nature was created.

I also noticed how I was in a hurry to try to make the leaves quickly so I could get them onto the wings and move onto sculpting. I was reminded that when real leaves were created that each one was slowly and carefully made just right. I could feel how I needed to slow down so I could embrace the creative process, not just for the leaves but for every aspect of the creation of the angel. So I slowed down and really began to embrace the process and began to bond with creating the angel of serenity. While in the flow of bedside patient art I realized how easy it is for me to embrace the creative process, but in my own creative experience, I was in hurry and rushing through the creative process trying to make the most of my time. The creative flow, embracing the process is just as important in my self-care as it is in my practice.

While embracing the process I started to place the leaves onto the body and onto the wings. It felt like I was placing a covering, clothing onto the angel. This reminded me of how leaves are a covering on trees, and how they were used to cover Adam and Eve for clothing in the Garden of Eden. I also reflected on how leaves and feathers look alike and are both coverings.

The pictures are of a test pinch pot I created out of the same clay the angel is created from. I plan to fire and glaze the angel in my own kiln using my underglazes that I am familiar with, so it was necessary to test the clay with my underglazes, glazes and fire in my own kiln. My shell pinch pot test turned out good, so now I know how to finish the angel. The other pictures are of the angel getting ready for its final sculpting, and then it will dry out and be fired and glazed.

Professional Seminar - Creative Practice - 2

This week I was so excited and thankful to have found 2 blocks from the home we are renting in Florida, Kricket’s Old Village Pottery Open Studio! I have been concentrating on my self-care and to find an open pottery studio that I can walk to each day and sit down at the pottery wheel to throw and sculpt my angels is just what I have needed. (see photo) So I joined the pottery studio this past week and began to create my “Angel of Serenity”. I decided since I now have access to a pottery wheel to first create the angel in 3-dimension instead of on a tile as originally planned. I still plan to make the angel on a healing tile by creating it in 3-dimension and cutting the angel in half for the tile, however for right now I am really enjoying working in 3-dimension again. During my practicum, making healing tiles I had been only working in 2-dimension. So first I worked out the construction of the angel in a drawing and realized I would need to divide up my lump of clay into 3 sections (see photo). I have place placed photos in the order the creation of the angel took place. The angel is just in its beginning stages because when throwing the forms and then sculpting, the form has to firm up some before I can begin to really sculpt the wings and parts so it won’t collapse. I will continue to post photos as I continue to sculpt the angel.