GWU Columbian School of Arts and Sciences Features the Art Therapy Program!

The Healing Power of Art Is Focus of Expanded Art Therapy M.A. Program

Dec 07 2009

Painting, drawing, and sculpting as means to express what may be verbally inexpressible are at the heart of the increasingly popular field of art therapy. At GW’s Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, the healing power of art is fully realized through an Art Therapy Program that boasts modern new studio spaces, a counseling center for hands-on immersion in therapeutic techniques, and an expanded 61-credit curriculum to facilitate professional licensure upon graduation. In sum, the graduate program—which was one of the first in the nation—adds up to an unparalleled learning opportunity for prospective art therapists.

“Our graduate program is, at its core, clinically-based art therapy in which students are trained to be professional clinicians, working with a range of diagnoses, ages, and diversities,” said Professor Heidi Bardot, MA ’99, the program’s director and a registered, board-certified art therapist whose past work includes helping hospice patients and their families deal with grief and loss. “Within this training, there is a strong emphasis on the artist identity, making a bright, airy workspace and gallery—in which students, faculty, and clients can express themselves artistically—an integral component of the work we do.”

The program’s new location at the Alexandria Graduate Education Center includes state-of the-art classrooms with "smart boards" and other multimedia equipment, an open art studio space for student and faculty collaboration, an extensive art therapy library and a gallery for student and juried exhibits. The facility is also home to the GW Art Therapy Center, where students work with clients under the direct supervision of licensed mental health professionals.

A Profession Born on the Battlefield

The outbreak of World War II marked the beginning of a profession first practiced in hospitals to treat soldiers dealing with “shell shock,” now clinically termed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Since then, practitioners have espoused the benefits of art therapy as an outlet for expression of feeling. Concurrently, evidence-based art therapy research focusing on the neurological implications of art-making to address trauma and loss, depression, and anxiety—as well as the efficacy of psychosocial interventions for cancer survivors—has become the trend and means to validate the profession. In 2007, art therapy was named one of the top 10 “hot” jobs by CareerBuilder.com, bearing out the need for such services during times of war and economic uncertainty.

The University’s Art Therapy Program, one of the first to be accredited by the American Art Therapy Association, was established in 1971 based on the teachings by the founders of art therapy—Edith Kramer, Hanna Yaxa Kwiatkowska, Bernard Levy and Elinor Ulman. All of the program’s current faculty are registered, board certified art therapists who bring with them professional expertise and the latest in clinical practice and research. Two new faculty members were added this year to mentor students on developing proposals to conduct original research from different paradigms as well as write grant proposals to implement program-related research.

Facilitating Professional Licensure

Thanks to the M.A. program’s recent expansion from 49 credits to 61, students now graduate prepared to seek professional licensure in counseling and art therapy. The traditional master’s program has been combined with additional coursework in trauma training—a huge growth area in the art therapy field to integrate the latest research on neurobiology and trauma treatment with expressive, art based approaches. Also offered are international opportunities, clinical training and a combined five-year bachelor’s and master’s degree option for exceptional students who are majoring in fine arts or psychology.

Students are required to participate in internships with children, adolescents and adults in a clinical setting for approximately eight to 20 hours per week. The intern program is one of the most extensive in the country, with more than 100 sites located throughout the Washington, D.C., area. These include the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Whitman-Walker Clinic, Children’s National Medical Center, Children’s Inn at NIH, Miriam’s Kitchen, and the D.C. and Fairfax County public school systems.

“Internships allow us to spread art therapy to new settings,” said Bardot. “And interns often become so invaluable they are offered a job after the internship is completed.”

The curriculum also offers courses on international social and cultural competency to prepare students for work with ethnically diverse populations. Last summer, art therapy students traveled to India as part of a three-week summer course called International Social and Cultural Art Therapy. A series of short internships with local organizations immersed students in the Indian culture so they could experience what it was like to be a minority. Students visited schools, a women’s shelter, a rehabilitation center and helped residents with disabilities, working on art projects at each site. The students received valuable training and needy populations in India were introduced to art therapy.

As director, Bardot’s goals include implementing trauma research within the art therapy center, creating additional collaborative research opportunities and continuing coursework in international and cultural diversity. And, of course, she remains committed to producing top students. “Many of our alumni have gone on to become leaders in the field, in the national association and in the educational sector,” Bardot said. “We are providing a breadth of experience, knowledge, and important connections within the field of art therapy, and I want to build upon our strong foundation.”

For more information about the Art Therapy Program at GW’s Columbian College of Arts and Sciences, click here.

Here is an article in the school newspaper (The Hatchet) of my alma mater, George Washington University. It features some of my GW colleagues and intern who went for the Muliticultural class the program took to India. Enjoy!

Connecting cultures, one art project at a time
by Matt Rist
Hatchet Staff Writer

Issue: 8/27/09 Life

Media Credit: Courtesy Heidi Bardot

GW graduate students and staff of a local Indian school stand around a piece of classic Indian art they created together using traditional methods.

In the midst of a bustling city in India, with streets full of cars, rickshaws and even cows, 15 GW graduate students washed away cultural and linguistic barriers this summer with little more than paint, brushes, chalk and a passion for the visual arts and psychology.

For the past two summers, GW's art therapy graduate program has distinguished itself as the only one of its kind in the country to send students abroad as part of a three-week summer course called "International Social and Cultural Art Therapy." This year, the program traveled to India.

"The focus of the program is psychology and fine arts," said Program Director Heidi Bardot. "The idea is that you use art to express yourself as opposed to just verbalization."

When Bardot sat down to plan this year's trip, she decided it was time to take the group even farther from the comforts of GW than they had ever gone before - to the far reaches of India.

After the students arrived in Chennai, a southeastern coastal city, they immersed themselves in everyday Indian life - interning at three schools, a psychiatric hospital, a shelter for the homeless and other locations across the city - all in an effort, Bardot said, to examine social and cultural diversity.

"The idea was to look at your own biases, stereotypes and feel what it is like to be a minority," Bardot said. "So often most of the clients we work with are minority populations, so I wanted the students to feel like they were in a situation where they didn't understand the language and were a minority in the country."

Some students shared their photographs and experiences on a blog created for the trip.

"This morning, after riding down the bumpy roads full of trees banging the roof of the van and enduring traffic jams greater than the 495, I realized that even worlds apart I can complete a mission so dear to my heart," wrote graduate student Lindsey Vance.

Bardot added that moments like that were what made the trip worthwhile.

"That was one of the most interesting experiences for the students, because [the people we worked with] couldn't speak much English and we didn't know their language, but we were able to interact through creating art together,"

While Bardot said students enjoyed their time at many of the job sites in India, others showed the harsh reality that many of the country's poor experience on a daily basis.

At one of the sites, Bardot said the students were shocked when they witnessed children being abused by facility staff members.

"It was very difficult for them to observe because the kids were being hit with sticks," Bardot said. "The people who were in charge of these kids had just not been trained yet; there are many things that were difficult for the students to observe with corporal punishment."

With the encouragement of her students, Bardot contacted a human rights lawyer in India and laid the foundation for affecting change at that particular job site.

"I think it was a really good learning process for the students, because they could actually witness what the situation was like and how we can go about changing that," Bardot said.

Lisa Garlock, assistant professor of art therapy and clinical placement coordinator for the program, reflected on what the students had accomplished in one of the last blog entries for the group.

"Art was able to reach deeper than words - art enabled the words to flow," she wrote.

The Power of Art Therapy Featured on CNN

Heartbreaking art helps kids with inmate parents

updated 6:02 p.m. EDT, Mon July 27, 2009
By Dana Rosenblatt
CNN

HOUSTON, Texas (CNN) -- The drawings are macabre, especially because they're created by children: stick figures writhing in pain and confusion, a knife dripping with blood and a broken heart.

Next to the heart, the child artist has written: 'My heart is bleeding, my heart is a broken bleeding heart." Another child has drawn a red bubble, inside of which is written: "I want 2 die."

All of these young artists -- members of a program called No More Victims -- have at least one parent who has served time in prison.

The powerful drawings communicate their experiences with pain, hopelessness and confusion as clearly as a thousand spoken words.

Many of these at-risk children were raised in unstable environments, which could lead them to make the same mistakes as their parents, sending them to prison or worse.

But Marilyn Gambrell wants to break that cycle.

In 1993, she founded No More Victims Inc., a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping children of incarcerated parents.

A former Texas parole officer, Gambrell saw firsthand the need to help children and teens who were left behind by one or both parents serving time.

"My goal is for this child to feel healthy enough and healed that they didn't want to take their own life or someone else's. Just give them what they need, love them, support them, provide basic needs. They will fly," she says.

The statistics on prison parents are staggering. According to Justice Department estimates, 2.3 percent of children under 18 in the United States have at least one parent in prison.

Together, 52 percent of state prison inmates and 63 percent of federal prisoners reported an estimated total of 1,706,600 minor children, according to the Justice Department.

In 2000, Gambrell brought No More Victims to the classroom at a local high school where a large majority of students had experienced the effects of incarceration on their families. Sound off: How can we reverse the cycle of incarceration?

Soon after, she opened a community center where teens could take care of basic necessities such as getting food and diapers for their own kids, doing their laundry, and getting, from Gambrell, the love and support they never had.

Some of the teens had fallen victim to sexual assault as children and later received help from No More Victims.

For the program members, the community center feels like home and Gambrell is a lot like a mother. She makes herself available to the kids 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Her approach is simple but effective. Since the program's onset in 2000, only 22 of the 700 kids who've enrolled have ever gone to prison, says Gambrell, and many of those kids graduate high school.

Child counselors say that for getting young people to open up, art therapy can be more effective than traditional forms of therapy.

In the classroom, it could take months or years for her students to share what they've been through. But with art therapy, Gambrell has created a safe outlet for them to express their innermost thoughts.

"Kids reflect what's going on in their life in their artwork," said Mary Ellen Hluska, a child life specialist at Johns Hopkins Children's Center.

"I think it's effective because it helps them have a safe place to express what they've been through without using words," said Hluska. "It becomes a tangible object. It's there, and they don't have to say it."

In class, Gambrell instructs the students to use red pencil to express pain and anger they felt, and blue to reflect calmness and peace.

"I knew it would be deep because ... I had red and blue pencils for them, and no child wanted a blue one," said Gambrell.

"In the first exercise, everybody requested red," Gambrell said. "And some children had four and five red pencils. They drew so much and colored so hard that they actually broke the lead."

Longtime program member Shante Weaver often used red pencil to illustrate the struggles of her life. Her mother has been in and out of prison most of Weaver's 20 years, and she's never really known her father.

Drawing delivered a key breakthrough at age 15, when a quiet and withdrawn Weaver finally revealed all that had happened to her.

Shortly after Weaver drew the picture, she found the courage to talk about her troubled childhood, inspiring other members of the class to join her in speaking about similar experiences.

With the support of her classmates and Gambrell, Weaver gathered the courage to press charges against a man who had abused her for many years. Today, Weaver lives with her grandmother and works two jobs to help support her family.

She also takes classes at a community college and plans to continue her studies to become a nurse.

Weaver is still an active member of No More Victims and is a role model to newer members, helping them get on the right track.

Looking back, Weaver said she feels like a different person from the traumatized 15-year-old girl who drew those red pictures five years ago.

Thanks to No More Victims, Weaver says, she can use a blue pencil to best illustrate her brighter future.



Children of Inmates
State inmates with minor children: 52 percent
Federal inmates with minor children: 63 percent
Estimated number of minor children of inmates: 1,706,600
Percentage of U.S. residents under age 18 with at least one inmate parent: 2.3 percent

Source: U.S. Department of Justice

Mandalas!

On the weekend of February 27-March 1, 2009, I attended an excellent training led by Carol Cox, MA, ATR-BC, LPAT and Alysa Muller, Psy.D., FAMI, covering the theory of the Great Round of Mandala created by Joan Kellogg. It was a very informative training with theory based on years of research and experience as they taught the 13 total stages in the Great Round. We drew our own mandalas for each stage, which I have included in a slide show below.





Our training was at Bon Secours Spiritual Center in Maryland, which is a very peaceful retreat center. Though we didn't have much time to explore, and it snowed on the last day so I drove home to beat the bigger storm, I saw some very nice views through the windows. I hope to go back in October to Part 2, and plan to explore more then!

Color Career Counselor

I came across this article and career testing based on color preferences, which as an art therapist intrigued me. Here is what it's all about:

Can Your Favorite Color Determine Your Perfect Job?

Rachel Zupek, CareerBuilder.com writer

Do you ever wish finding the perfect job could be as easy as 1, 2, 3? According to new research, it might be as easy as red, yellow or blue.

That's right; by determining which primary, secondary and achromatic colors you prefer most and least, you can figure out a successful career path based on how you approach work, the types of workplaces where you work best and how you handle work tasks.

The Color Career Counselor, powered by The Dewey Color System -- the world's only validated, non-language color-based career testing instrument -- uses color preferences to determine successful career paths. Dewey Sadka, author of "The Dewey Color System," says using colors instead of a questionnaire eliminates the chasm between self-perception and self-truth and reveals your core motivations.

"What if you misinterpret a [career assessment] question or the choices don't reflect your personality?" Sadka asks. "Color preference indicates your personality's best career fit. Preferred colors indicate passionate career pursuits; non-preferred choices establish workplace skills you least enjoy."

How it works
The Color Career Counselor is simple. First, you click your preferred primary color (red, yellow or blue). From there, you choose your preferred secondary (green, purple or orange) and achromatic (black, white or brown) colors.

"Your preferred colors determine how you attack each task. They indicate your talents -- what you prioritize first in order to be successful. They also highlight what you overdo, especially when you feel great," Sadka says.

For example, if you're partial to yellow, you're information-driven; blue preference people are idea-driven and people who prefer red are results-driven. If you favor green as your secondary color, you realistically evaluate situations; purple indicates you like fact-finding possibilities and orange signals that you scrutinize feasibility. Finally, if black is your choice from the achromatic colors, you consider value above all else; white shows that you like having options and brown confirms that you like implementation and accomplishing tasks.

On the other hand, your least preferred colors determine tasks and issues that you tend to forget.

For example, if your least favorite color is orange, sometimes you over-commit yourself by trying to do too much at once. If you dislike the color green, you try to fix everything for your colleagues rather than making them do it themselves. Or, if your least favorite is teal, you feel a deep need to prove you are competent and you don't care what other people think.

In managing these areas head-on, Sadka says you won't miss the incidentals that could impede your success.

Put to the test
To see for myself if this "scientific" test was for real, I took the test three different times and got the same results each time, affirming that I am, in fact, in the right career.

I'm a "creator," says the Color Career Counselor. I'm "nonconforming, impulsive, expressive, romantic, intuitive, sensitive and emotional." It says I enjoy working independently, being creative, using my imagination and constantly learning something new.

For my suggested "creator occupations," I was given an extensive list of careers that included jobs I've considered (architect, interior decorator, English teacher), jobs people told me I should pursue (author, creative director, public relations) and jobs that I currently hold or aspire to in the future (reporter and editor).

What about you?
So are you a researcher, creator, social manager, persuader, doer or organizer? To find out what career path you should be following based on your preferred colors, here are a few examples of what certain choices say about you, and the careers and skills that compliment them.

If you prefer: yellow, purple and white: You're the communicator.
You create profitable perspectives -- how to break into new accounts or be heard by other employees. By simply identifying a client's point of view, you develop strategies that open doors, even if they had already been shut. Your excellent communication skills can create problem-solving forums. Careers in corporate communications, marketing or religious occupations work best.

If you prefer: red, green and black: You're the investor.
You know the value of money and resources, as well as the intrinsic worth of each co-worker's contributions. Your supportive, yet analytical personality works best in finance, accounting, banking, manufacturing, property management, production analysis, investment, money management, consulting, product sales or teaching.

If you prefer: blue, orange and brown: You're the activist.
Your strong community beliefs and no-nonsense approach improves services for those around you. Occupations where you can improve existing specifications or impact social values work best for you. Consider careers in engineering, building, or developing new programs, companies or products. Also consider law enforcement, firefighting, social or government work.

These are only a few of hundreds of different color profiles. For your own free career evaluation, please visit: http://www.careerpath.com/career-tests/colorcareercounselor.aspx.

Rachel Zupek is a writer and blogger for CareerBuilder.com. She researches and writes about job search strategy, career management, hiring trends and workplace issues.

I took the test myself, and as an art therapist, I'm glad that the results came out the way they did! It's nice to know I'm in the right field.

BEST OCCUPATIONAL CATEGORY

You're a CREATOR
Key Words: Nonconforming, Impulsive, Expressive, Romantic, Intuitive, Sensitive, and Emotional

These original types place a high value on aesthetic qualities and have a great need for self-expression. They enjoy working independently, being creative, using their imagination, and constantly learning something new. Fields of interest are art, drama, music, and writing or places where they can express, assemble, or implement creative ideas.

CREATOR OCCUPATIONS

Suggested careers are Advertising Executive, Architect, Web Designer, Creative Director, Public Relations, Fine or Commercial Artist, Interior Decorator, Lawyer, Librarian, Musician, Reporter, Art Teacher, Broadcaster, Technical Writer, English Teacher, Architect, Photographer, Medical Illustrator, Corporate Trainer, Author, Editor, Landscape Architect, Exhibit Builder, and Package Designer.

CREATOR WORKPLACES

Consider workplaces where you can create and improve beauty and aesthetic qualities. Unstructured, flexible organizations that allow self-_expression work best with your free-spirited nature.

Suggested Creator workplaces are advertising, public relations, and interior decorating firms; artistic studios, theaters and concert halls; institutions that teach crafts, universities, music, and dance schools. Other workplaces to consider are art institutes, museums, libraries, and galleries.

2nd BEST OCCUPATIONAL CATEGORY

You're a PERSUADER
Key Words: Witty, Competitive, Sociable, Talkative, Ambitious, Argumentative, and Aggressive

These enterprising types sell, persuade, and lead others. Positions of leadership, power, and status are usually their ultimate goal. Persuasive people like to take financial and interpersonal risks and to participate in competitive activities. They enjoy working with others inside organizations to accomplish goals and achieve economic success.

Free Hugs!

Just as an example of the many things that can come out of art therapy, this piece was what one client created when given some Model Magic clay and allowed to make a sculpture of anything she wanted. She responded with creating one of the characters from a favorite cartoon of hers, Pon and Zi. [posted with permission] Hope it makes your day happy!