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Winged
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Sculpting the Heart with Art Therapy
Hi, my name is Joyce White. My nickname is Winged. I have through the decade searched for joy and identity through creative self-expression. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt. Any kind of creative expression requires us to walk in the footsteps of others, using our imagination. In other words, humorous writing doesn't come randomly, it requires a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. Most humans excel at recording memorable humorous mishaps. Most of us love recording them by camera, video, journal or diary. Now, we have U-Tube, MySpace and twitter. Hearing or reading jokes and riddles may "wake up" our brain, but it is the art of writing with humor that really exercises our brainpower. Sylvia Plath write says, "And by the way, everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise." I can't wait to get to down to work in the mornings. I never know what I 'm going to write about. To keep my humor up-to-date, I watch comedy sitcoms on television. I also joined several blogging sites to daily exchange thoughts with other writers. If you chuckle at the New York Times Cartoons or the essay of Erma Bombeck, you know the pleasure of creative expression.
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I personally believe being happily engaged in writing and art making is better than not; and secondly, living without depression, pain and anger is better than living with them. If you're doing something artful, and smiling, look out, you're probably having fun. I would like to meet others like me, who have much to say and need a way to say it. I also will be adding some poetry and photography. I specialize in taking pictures of my own ceramic art. Between the pages of my book, Sculpting the Heart: Surviving Depression with Art Therapy, I raised my grandchildren. Thank you for reading me and hope to create a bond with you all. Every word written is a victory against dysfunction. Writing and making art put me in touch with my inner artist who was choking to create a new me, a happy, self-achieving me. I've been slowly and quietly growing and changing into the person I've always wanted to be, a writer, a poet and an authority on surviving depression with Art Therapy. It is my hope this web site and my book will help others as much as working on it helped me. I'm Winged for Art Therapy.
Some say Americans are over-worked and unfulfilled. Maybe, we can look at unemployment as a way to change our lives for the better by becoming the person we were always meant to be. There's no doubt about it, we're a war-torn nation. The economy sucks, businesses are losing money, and scammers are like greedy wolves, ready to pounce on the challenged, desperate and unemployed. With a tanking economy, up-and-down stock markets, ever growing unemployment, all this doom and gloom leaves us broke and depressed. If we look at unemployment another way, it just might be the solution to the over-worked and unfulfilled of us, who for the first time have some open time to look around for other ways to earn a living. The fastest way to bring change, is to accept change. You probably already noticed that worrying spikes your anxiety, anger, rage, panic and even your resistance to doing anything at all to help yourself. Another way to go would be to just accept that you're not sure what to do, so you do nothing. There are many infinite reasons why we think the world is going to "crap" around us. The most common complaint heard by most of us is, "I'm really worried. I don't know what to do!"
When I'm faced with indecision and anxiety, I allow myself these three options "Love it" which means peacefully accepting whatever's happening. If that's not possible, I think "Leave it," or simply walk away from the whole dilemma and turn my attention to what I can do rather than what I cannot do. My third option, is "Lead it," which requires me to use whatever power I have to device a solution on my own. I've found these three L's are invaluable when trading volleys with the fates. Humans were created with a clever mind, resourceful nature, and the will to survive. It is our choice how we react to unforeseen circumstances.
Since we live in a democracy, we have a duty to have informed opinions and to challenge the opinions of others while having our own challenged. The solutions we come up with when facing adversity are infinitely personal. It is my hope we be fair, respectful and civil as a matter of fact, it would be a kind thing to do this new year to forget about ourselves and help someone else. "Unresolved issues, unspoken anger, unhealed hurt. Unless we get rid of them, they all hinder our happiness." says the outspoken and always combative, Dr. Phil.
It is my hope instead of looking at unemployment as bad luck, the unemployed turn their gristle to muscle; push their limits so as to exceed their expectations; use their time wisely to learn a new skill, overcome a fear, or learn to cook from scratch. Who knows where a favorite past-time can lead? We're like buildings, cunningly made and crafted to fit together perfectly and without waste so we can perform with absolute precision. Each of us has one chief purpose and our life experiences are the building blocks that lead us to our inborn gifts. Many of us are interested in work-at-home ideas. Search the internet. Use your computer for more than game-playing. Open and build yourself a website. Anyone can be famous on the web. Check out photography or music on You-Tube. Most of us would rather be charred to ashes from over-excitement than turned to dust a failure before our time. I agree with Jack London, a well-known artist, who says "I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet."
Has your life been a series of unfulfilled jobs? If so, it is never too late to be what you might have been. Maybe being laid off was a blessing in disguise. Maybe, it is time for you to conquer your fears and go for broke. Find joy and self-fulfillment by following your dreams. Sometimes these kind of drastic transformations are better-assisted with the help of a professional of some kind, a therapist, a counselor and/or your spouse or special friend. We all have an inner voice leading us in the direction of our true gifts. If we want to go from sad to glad in a non-doing sort of way, try sitting, doodling and/or scribbling. If you're smiling, Having fun is what Art Therapy and creative expression is all about. Here's a great art quote by Pierre Bonnard that speaks to the therapeutic nature of art. "Painting has to get back to its original goal, examining the inner lives of human beings." Introduce yourself to your inner child who wants to talk to you and play with you. Sculpting the Heart in the arts can turn the unemployed from sad to glad.
EBooks can be electronic friends. They teach us and guide us in new and challenging directions. They are really HOT right now...My eBooks are a combination of instruction with down-to-earth hints and tips in combined body, mind and spirit. My eBooks are all about the every-days of life and love and how to have a workable, satisfying relationship with your inner child. My books are about making dreams come true and how to do that with the very inborn gifts you were given. If you like my writing, you'll love my eBooks!!!
My stories are like a walk through my mind while searching for joy through self-expression. You can find at my website blogging, written articles and poetry that will surprise and entertain you. Though it was never my original intent, my concern quite naturally turned from the idea of me "feeling good" to the idea of you "feeling good." I personally believe being engaged in writing and art making is better than not and living without depression, pain and anger is better than living with them. I thank you for your comments to insure my own growth as a writer and artist.
I have through the decade searched for joy and identity through creative self-expression. I personally believe being happily engaged in writing and art making is better than not; and secondly, living without depression, pain and anger is better than living with them. If you're doing something artful, and smiling, look out, you're probably having fun. I would like to meet others like me, who have much to say and need a way to say it. I also will be adding some poetry and photography. I specialize in taking pictures of my own ceramic art. Between the pages of my book, Sculpting the Heart: Surviving Depression with Art Therapy, I raised my grandchildren. Thank you for reading me and hope to create a bond with you all. Every word written is a victory against dysfunction. Writing and making art put me in touch with my inner artist who was choking to create a new me, a happy, self-achieving me. I've been slowly and quietly growing and changing into the person I've always wanted to be, a writer, a poet and an authority on surviving depression with Art Therapy. It is my hope this web site and my books will help others as much as working on it helped me. I'm Winged for Art Therapy
LOOK FOR THE FOLLOWING TOPICS:
Living in the Moment
Journaling My Heart
Creative Journaling
Spontaneous Imaging
Forgetting & Forgiving
Assembling Found Objects
Living & Loving
The American Art Therapy Association advises "Art Therapy is an established mental health profession that uses the creative process of art making to improve and enhance the physical, mental and emotional well-being of individuals of all ages. It is based on the belief that the creative process involved in artistic self-expression helps people to resolve, conflicts and problems, develop interpersonal skills, manage behavior, reduce stress, increase self-esteem and self-awareness, and achieve insight.."
Just as nature is cyclical in its seasons so is life. Sometimes endings bring with beautiful new beginnings and this is truly so of creative expression. My website has been this last year blooming and blossoming. I'm hosting many guest websites for you. Over the past year we've all grown and learned from each other about Art Therapy. There is nothing like using our computer as a vehicle for new ideas much like a painter uses a canvas. Don't just look at the surface, dig in and study the many layers of what is offered at my website and in this eBook. You will notice that my "visual and virtual" layers consist of all that is pleasing to our inner child. Creative expression is about growth, change and enlightenment and reinforces the power of life and how special it can be. It is my hope, for one brief, breathless moment, you will experience the feelings of awe and wonder much like that of a small child with my eBooks.
If we're going to be spending time together, you may want to know a little more about me. I come from a family that is prettily packaged and talented but somewhat dysfunctional for many reasons. We grow addictions like weeds and dream when we are awake. We have sensitive ears, noisy fingers and loud mouths. We all suffer from the disease of depression but don't let it stop us from living creative lives. In the best of times, we are eager to live up to our own expectations. In the worst of times, we are lost in self-pity. As for myself, I define myself as a struggling Christian, especially on Sunday, just a vessel doing God's work. I'm a mother, grandmother, a clay artist and a photographer on other days.
I always start my morning with a 30-minute jog around the bedroom. Sometimes I have to stop and think, and forget to start again. I'm not a scientist-type who insists everything can be mathematically examined, related and accounted for. As a matter of fact, I'm more like a curious child playing in the garden between the two houses of God and Science. Picking flowers from both makes me happy. I can remember as a child, planning on living forever and so far so good! I didn't know what I do now that when we get older, we wrinkle, shrink and don't have many good hair days left. We pamper what hair we have left that isn't gray. The grays we'll torture by tugging, plugging and/or dyeing. Our keys and glasses take to hiding from us. Sometimes our nerves make our limbs begin jumping and jiving when there is no music. We keep repeating, repeating, repeating, what we know. We also have to contend with gravity. It's the idea that "I am a writer" that keeps me pounding my computer keys for our mutual wellness. I am not a teacher or doctor. Forgive my editing errors. I'm just an ordinary woman living in an extraordinary imperfect word. I've always trying to find a balance between joy and sadness in my life. I don't think of myself as an expert about what is right for everyone. We're all teachers for one another. Even Martin Luther King once said, "Not everyone can be famous. But everyone can be great." So I've learned with good intentions and some hard work, all of us can be great by staying true to our values, integrity and our own Creator.
My own beginning journey with clay, photography and writing brought me more than joy. Expressing myself creatively has been good medicine for me. The ancient Greeks knew this when they appointed Apollo as the god of both poetry and medicine. Even Jesus reminds us "If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. What you do not bring forth from within will destroy you." Some even think headaches are really poems waiting to be written. So get rid of that nagging pain of tension in your head, and start writing a poem about writing:
The Pen
I can be quite quaint or curious,
Smear the best or run quite dry,
Many ride me in their pocket,
Or sit me on their ear,
I could make them cry,
I could make them laugh,
I can be black and blue, and/or
Clear and Read, Pride and passion
Honor me, yet, I am ghoulishly flawed,
I sometimes run out of ideas,
Of course, my worst fear is mediocrity
Spewed from an undisciplined pen,
So I practice, practice, practice, again!
Words are healers whether we are writing them or reading them. Of course, a loving friend can be a healer, also. A song can be a healer. A celebratory greeting card can be a healer. An image that empowers you can be a healer, much like a photograph, a sculpture, painting or a simply-glazed clay pot. Sometimes I feel like I'm way out there in Never-Never Land, a strange observer from a strange land. But in truth, poets and artists like me are very much of this world. We just make everything a game. We play connect-the-dots with words and feelings, paying close attention to the sound and flower of our memories, as well as their arrangement on the page. I play connect-the-dots with sentence4s, images and/or word pictures. I always have a copy of a poem book in front of me when I write. I look for ideas, metaphors or topics that interest me. I'm always looking for an initial thought burst, a memory or a feeling I can blow out of proportion and use in a grand over-indulgent way. "You may discover your best poems while writing your worst prose." Says Joyce Carol Oates, "As soon as you connect with your true subject, you will write." As soon as you connect with your true emotions, you can sculpt your heart with the unexpected.
If I had to describe my inner poet, I'd say he looks at the world a little eschewed, but lives patiently in me, giving me fragrant hope where there was none. He inspired me to write although it never occurred to me I could write. Surprisingly, the more I wrote, the more I had to say. An author must be like God, present everywhere but visible nowhere. Somerset Maugham says, "If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write." Samuel Johnson says, "The two most engaging powers of an author are to make new things familiar, and familiar things new." When the right words come to me they are as beautiful and unsought as country wild flowers.
There are many ways of being artful. I like to sit spontaneously doodling and scribbling with permanent markers or gen pens. They are popular now. For other fun ideas, take a look into scrapbooking and revisit your youth when drawing was a fulfilling emotional experience. Try drawing on your computer in the Paint file. Don't forget to go to art galleries and art museums. Take friends or kids along. Make it a day out. Looking at art can be as restoring health-wise as making your own. You can also make yourself an image journey with all the special symbols that tug at your heart. Fill it with photographs, doodles and scribblings. Everyone can have fun making it and reading it.
To write poetry I sometimes start out with the words, "I am...or I am silly...or I am afraid...or, I am not like anyone else. You can also write a Pet Peeve Poem, by reacting to a common, everyday annoyance like the phone ringing when you're in the bathroom! Choose a subject that really irritates you enough to be memorable or humorous. Decide if you want your poem to be serious, playful or sarcastic. There is something about our milestones that beg to have their passes marked on paper even our annoyances and mishaps. Our only goal is to be truthful, and if we can fake that on paper, we've got it made. Mark Twain says, "Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore, are most economical in its use. Elvis Presley says, "Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out for a time, but it ain't going' away."
There are many ways of introducing transparency and spontaneous imaging to your art. Watercolors can amaze and delight all. Try dipping art sponges and soft brushes into watercolors lightly. Sparingly dab here and there on watercolor paper and see the liquid take form. You will see flowers, trees, grass, even faces as you shower your paper with unintentional wasps here and there. It might help to think of your images like living things. They have breath, purpose and a time to play and a time to evolve. Your only problem is stopping before you ruin them! We doodle and draw to communicate events and experiences we have no words to express. Try your own pen and ink image. Again, it may be easier to let your - non-dominant hand dab here and there with soft sponges and brushes, as quickly as you can, and see what your inner artist wants to show you. Then finish your drawings by playing connect-the-dots with your imagination. Don't be afraid. Even if you consider yourself to be a "non-artist" like I have most of my life, you can tape into your soul's palette. We humans were designed to need to express ourselves creatively.
My book is not a technical book on Art Therapy. I am no doctor and I write for fun and wellness, mine and yours. I hope you can appreciate what I say, the way I say it even if I break all grammar rules along the way. I'd like to recommend the following books to anyone who needs healing from the inside-out. If you need a more technical and varied look at all the accepted and suggested techniques of Art Therapy, read the following which helped me immensely in my personal journey and in my own book:
"The Soul's Palette" by Cathy A. Malchiodi/Art Therapy activities "The Secret of the Shadow" by Debbie Ford/Journaling "Creating with the Angels" by Terry Taylor/Unexpected help from the Unseen
Writing poetry, journaling and art making are wonderful and creative ways to turn the burning inside our heads into positive thinking, researching and recording. It's almost like celebrating or sharing ourselves without depleting our souls in the process. Cathy Malchiodi, today's leading authority on Art Therapy says, "The soul's palette is so many things: an agent of transformation, a therapy for the psyche, a salve for the body and mind, and a remedy for the ills of individuals, communities and the world. Visual images, whether made of canvas or clay, produce profound physical and emotional benefits and were an unending source of inner knowledge. They were a way to get to the soul of the matter, to go on a soul search Like an artist's palette that contains an infinite spectrum of colors and choices for creating, our soul's palette is a boundless source of wisdom and wellness?Expressing yourself creatively - through drawing, painting, sculpture, and photography - - allows you to tape into a source of inner wisdom that can provide you guidance, sooth emotional pain, and revitalize your being."
When I write I understand myself a lot more. I'm always struck at how magical and unexpected the process can be. Writing really becomes satisfying when it reflects our best efforts. Writing is kind of like capturing what you know, what you think and what you have to say altogether in one place. Writing by its very nature includes detours, wrong turns, and repeat visits. While some of us work out ideas in our heads, others work our ideas out on paper also like me. Some writers need to talk about their writing, while others would rather keep their ideas to themselves. Writing is sort of like talking without being interrupted. It is like any other skill. It takes a lot of practice and patience to become good at it. Our dreams, hopes and inner voices are worth exploring no matter how ordinary they may seem. Some dreams even feel like on-off events while others feel more like a parallel world still going on even after we wake.
It is our past that often shows up in my dreams although rearranged and unrecognizable. I figure I'm on the right tract of translating them when my dreams are a perfect fit to a past or present situation. Those of us who suffer emotional or physical pain try to fix what is broken and/or heal what is hurting when we are sleeping. I imagine there are millions of sleeping heads pouring slat into old wounds not yet healed. Science use to believe the brain was always awake. Now they believe no part of the brain is ever fully awake. I wonder if that is why so many of us daydream.
After a life wrought of beiges, two divorces, and fifty years of depression, my self-expression turned towards poetry, prose and photography. All the while, I was taking a leap of faith by reclaiming myself as a valuable and talented person. I didn't change and grow all by myself. God and his angels partnered me in my work and instead of being angry at him for all I was not, I began to understand I was blessed with surprising innate ability nobody ever told me I had. Even if I quit in the middle of a project because I didn't feel the necessity to go on, my effort still evoked commendable response and self-satisfaction as much as any finished piece did. This was, after all, just one of the many gifts of artful expression, the journey being much more important than the finished product.
When I began studying poetry in college, I found some poetry can be understood while others, you can't hope to understand but that's okay, too. Both writing and reading poetry are individual arts. Both can be a study in thinking and relating to the world around us. To write poetry, we need to be able to look at our entire life history, including our traumas, our joys, our failures as well as rewards and achievements. We need to open our minds and step into our poems, tasting their ink and feeling their pull at our hearts. When that perfect comes to rest in a poem for me, I say, "Thank you God for giving me that!" I discovered that all we need to write a poem is an initial brain-burst - - a memory or nagging emotional feeling to get started. Many of us prefer the more simple old-fashioned kind of poetry, less negative, bent on healing open wounds rather then describing them. Simple, Short. You pause when they pause. You sigh when they sigh. Composing a poem is a lot like making love. Nobody sees the poem happening but it always arouses us and usually ends too quickly!!! Pictures can inspire us. Write freely in 5-minute spontaneous bursts while looking at pictures. Writing is a form of talking. Talk about your pictures in a poem! I wrote the following poem after creating my Bird of God sculpture. I like to begin by exploring the phrase I am?
I am a poet?but then I think "What is a poet?
Whateveritis, I think, It must have food for the soul, It must have generous Folds of thoughts, And Love,
Whateveritis, I think, It must be arrogant, To coach the sun to rise, To kiss the day good-bye, and Hope,
Whateveritis, I think, it's ecstasy remains intact, With the Birds of God For companions.
This is my own sculpture I call: Bird of God. There are many photos like this in my eBook and over 50 in my paperback.
Tracings, little book of Poetry BIG HEART
Tracings of Carolyn Howard-Johnson
8/11/2009 2:39:00 PM
by Joyce White
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