Coronahort 13: Art Interrupted

Artist Statement: “Life as I know it has only just begun.” These were the lyrics that I shared on the first day of my Arts Apprenticeship journey, and they have remained the guiding principle for the year. As a music therapist and lifelong musician, I both experience and communicate in the world around me primarily through sound. Because of this, I knew that in order to grow, I wanted to study an art form that was focused on visual communication, and photography appealed to me on both practical and artistic levels. Beginning my doctoral journey while sustaining a career and having a young child at home led me to reflect on the different and intersecting roles I experience, and led to my guiding question: How can I use photography to reflect and represent my experience of living life in several simultaneous roles? The photographs selected for this presentation provide visual glimpses into my different roles, as well as how these roles overlap and intersect rather than falling into distinctly separate categories. The accompanying music consists of three original pieces I have composed during my artistic journey: “Only Just Begun,” “Raindrops Fall,” and “(A Snowflake’s Chance to) Fly Again.”

Bio: Cathy Befi-Hensel is a Board-Certified Music Therapist, a Neurologic Music Therapist, and an Adjunct Professor of Music Therapy in San Antonio, Texas. In her 10 years of clinical practice, Cathy has worked with clients across a wide range of ages and diagnoses, most recently focusing on neurorehabilitation and eldercare. She serves on the American Music Therapy Association’s Music Therapy Informed Music Listening Workgroup, and co-authored the book Music, Memory, and Meaning: How to effectively use music to connect with aging loved ones. As a second-year doctoral student in Expressive Therapies at Lesley University, Cathy is excited to continue to expand her personal and professional growth through her research.

Artist Statement: Unexpectedly, I dove into a search for a voice I never had, with the help of a modality I never before ventured. Data was collected through this multi-modal study by utilizing the visual arts, movement, and journaling while learning a new form of self-expression, the guitar. I processed my guitar lessons by writing and painting, released emotions and grounded myself by flagging (waving flags through movement with emotions). Each painting went through a transformational process alongside my own. The paintings were assumed to be completed when the search ended, but the study entered a healing phase which included continued pouring onto the canvases. The writings brought out thoughts and emotions related to a hidden past inside the instrument I was building a relationship with. These reflections became a Spoken Word. The culmination of this study is presented in a film that illustrates the Spoken Word using cue cards from the genre of the silent film era. The last stanza incorporates Psalm 139, because it beautifully illustrated an experience I had no words for.

This study has enhanced my attunement with my clients/patients as well as an artist but mostly as an individual. When faced with a challenge, I am reminded of this arts-based process that revealed and empowered my sense of being.

Bio: Lee Cohen is an artist and practicing art therapist working with the youth in the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice and hospice patients in Miami, Florida for the past 10 years. Lee received her undergraduate degree in Human Development and the Expressive Arts at Prescott College in Arizona and holds a master’s in art therapy and Creativity Development from Pratt Institute in New York and is a registered expressive arts consultant and educator (REACE) under the standards of the International Expressive Arts Therapy Association. Lee produced a film on art therapy and the male incarcerated youth that was presented at the American Art Therapy Association’s 50^th Anniversary Conference. Lee is the director of a non-profit organization and travels the Caribbean facilitating groups and conducting workshops on art therapy and Christian spirituality. She is a second-year doctoral student in Expressive Therapies at Lesley University where she experienced in “arts apprenticeship” an open door of self-discoveries and healing while simultaneously charting unfamiliar modalities.

Artist Statement: This year I apprenticed in clay. Having worked with clay at two other points in my life, I knew that I connected with it and that I longed to return to it. Being in the clay studio was simultaneously familiar because of previous experience, yet unfamiliar because I had taken a long hiatus and was new to the studio. I was influenced by all three teachers from different times in my life. This year’s experiences reminded me of my previous work in clay, with different teachers, studios, and classmates, and supported my learning through the first year of the PhD program.

At the beginning of the fall semester, I wondered how I might use clay work to give meaning to my experiences over the course of the year. With the support of a witty and insightful clay instructor who said exactly what she thought, I was able to focus on exploring the unknown, leaning into mistakes, and following the creative path. I took photos and some videos almost every week, and the video I created is a compilation of my creative process in clay. I loved the quiet of the clay studio, as it allowed me to process much of my PhD work, especially questions around the direction for PhD research. Unfortunately, the work was cut short when the studio was closed in March, so several pieces remain unfinished. However, I am grateful for the experience and look forward to returning to finish my remaining pieces. The improvised music echoes the meditative quality of the work and lessons learned throughout.

Bio: Adrienne K. Flight MMT, MT-BC is a board-certified music therapist in Massachusetts. She is an Assistant Professor of Music Therapy at Berklee College of Music, practicum supervisor, and the Music Therapy Department Coordinator at Brookline Music School. Adrienne also serves on the advisory board of the Berklee Institute for Arts Education and Special Needs. She has held various positions with the New England Region of the American Music Therapy Association, serving as President of the association. Adrienne holds a Bachelor of Music in Music Therapy from l’Université du Québec à Montréal and a Master of Music Therapy from Laurier University in Ontario. She looks forward to continuing her doctoral studies in the second year of Lesley’s PhD program.

Artist Statement: How could I make people listen when it is hard for me to voice my opinions, my feelings, my thoughts? Dance gave me that platform, and as a dancer and choreographer, I was able to create embodied narratives through movement. When Dr. Kossak asked us to explore a question through a new art medium, I chose film (a medium I knew nothing about) and asked the question “How Will Video Footage Capture an Embodied Narrative to Create a Movement Response?” There is action and movement in film, but I wanted to create a film that moved—footage that showcased images dancing to the beat of the ever-pulsating rhythm of NYC and that would make people feel the movement through the screen.

During my apprenticeship I learned I could achieve what I had envisioned through manipulation of the footage. The process of editing is an art unto itself in which film editors are constantly experimenting and perfecting. Like a dancer, experienced editors’ fingers move across the computer keyboard to find those editing shortcuts quickly as they choreograph through focus, cuts, rearranging and assemble disparate footage on the screen into a coherent sequence. It was difficult but I practiced on other projects simultaneously while working on the film and eventually I found my niche on how I was going to create movement sequences that spoke.

Originally, I had hoped to dance a response in person during the film and use it as a backdrop, but as societal circumstance change, I began to explore other ways to incorporate my response into the film. By chance on the first beautiful sunny day during quarantine, I ventured outside and happened to notice the silhouettes of my shadow against my house follow me as I moved. The photograph in the gallery was produced while practicing how to photoshop silhouette images onto film. The background photograph was the first glimpse I got of the NYC skyline when I first moved here. It was taken in 1989.

Bio: Lynda Perez-Venero Naimoli is a dance/movement therapist having worked with individuals of all ages—from very young children to centenarians. She also taught dance and drama for 30 years to children in public and parochial schools in the Tri-State area. Lynda received her BFA in Dance with a concentration in performance/choreography and education before moving to NYC to dance professionally. When her three daughters were a little older, Lynda went back to school and received her MS in Dance/Movement Therapy from Sarah Lawrence College. She is a second-year doctoral student in Expressive Therapies at Lesley University.

Artist Statement: There is so much to be said about what’s going on in the world right now. Sometimes there can be a centering calm in silence. This piece does not desire to create that center. Despite my best efforts to control this work and its evolution, my struggle with it was not centering. I found myself continually revising what I thought I wanted it to be. So here we are. We are here. Still trying to figure out what the universe has in store for us. My initial intent was to combine many dissonant and discordant tracks and pull them all together to tell a story of my sound experiences during this year. However, nothing came out the way I expected, my planful became playful and structured became disruptive. I tried to use the techniques I learned from electronic music production to distort the sounds I heard from my surroundings: vendors on the street, music on the radio, on the bus, in the supermarket, or the rare times my daughter sang to herself. Serendipity played a big part in this entire process.

Manipulating tracks electronically is a fairly controlled process so it was interesting how my experience of gathering sounds was polar to this and very loose. I learned that I could play with sound waves and trim in order to create texture, layering, foreground, background, and emphasis. I wanted some of my sounds to be bright and others to be more monotone. I also wanted to make a statement about taking a position on the things going on around us, even when it’s not a sophisticated, politically correct, or trending view. I believe all voices are important. I wanted to preserve contrasting voices or positions in a dialogue. It was intriguing to discover the musicality and prosody of different languages, dialects, and creoles.

When learning a new language, prosody is one of the hardest things to acquire. I want listeners to somehow experience languages/sound as I now do (zooming in and then out) and then see how it shapes music. Sound, music and language are all fascinating when we begin to feel out the world through our ears.

Bio: I have been lucky to call the expressive therapies home and a platform for multi-hyphenation. As a writer-entrepreneur-artist-activist-therapist-facilitator, I feel that it has been integral to exploring my life beneath the surface. When I graduated with a Masters in Expressive Therapies, I felt an outpouring of energy, especially for initiatives of change. Now a little more sobered by life, I seek to continue to use my pen and voice to work with marginalized, whether with victims of intimate partner violence (IPV), incarcerated mothers, or coaching teens through their anger. As a community youth trainer, family therapist, anti-violence advocate, columnist, and most importantly mother, I feel that there is still more to explore and push through. Working for change can be just plain exhausting, but also surprisingly invigorating. I look forward to more channels for change within myself as I enter my second year of Lesley's Expressive Therapies PhD program.

Artist Statement: I entered this process with extreme anxiety for visual art. Although I am an avid art collector, this may very well be my cover-up for the overwhelming anxiety I feel when participating in art. It was my understanding that the goal of this apprenticeship was to study an art modality for which one is unknown or most uncomfortable. Along the way, I ran into a phrase that changed my trajectory and became the motivation for this study: “be brave enough to suck at something new.”  With my new found motivation coupled with my previous dance background and familiarity with the body, I figured there would be a great connection when art is combined with the body. So, for this art apprenticeship, I studied body painting. In doing this, I realized that body painting can be therapeutic in many ways. The process of transformation is a long and tiresome process, but yet lethargic and therapeutic. It was in this dubious and lengthy process that I was able to disconnect. The real world started fading away as a new reality emerged in which the model was the main character. As I witnessed the model succumb to the process and enter their relaxed state of being, so did I. This is the effect that I often felt when observing the process and what I experience when viewing the final artwork. It was also the same feeling I get when I dance, so I knew that I had found something that resonated with my inner soul. What if I could see in a person what he or she stopped seeing about himself or herself? What if that vision served the purpose of healing? What if transforming a person in what is not seen with the naked eye allows us to grow and boost self-confidence and a new appreciation of the self? What if body painting is used to help people as a form of therapy?

After each session, I would often ask the artist what it was like for them and the majority mentioned the intensity, the textures, and how relaxing/soothing it was to feel the paint covering their body. Other comments supported their surprise with how deeply connected they felt with the final product. Although freestyled and often without guidance, the final designs became a reflection of the person’s personality or character. It is easy to look at someone else and see what they don’t see. By painting on someone, I hoped to allow them to see what I saw from my vantage point. As a part of my growth, I had to succumb to the understanding that it is art even when I paint a generic design on someone. A therapeutic marriage was created when the vision of the artist is linked to the person being painted. Throughout my career, I have prided myself on not doing things for the sake of art or entertainment. I seek a deeper value in everything I do. I yearn for those opportunities to impact the lives of those who encounter my art in some way. 

To further my connection to each person and the work, I would utilize Dance/Movement Therapy movement response after each session. In the video, you will witness my interpretation of what Shaun McNiff spoke about when he said, “the work will take you where you need to go.” I can now agree with him when he said, “if you can move, you can paint.”

Bio: Stephan Reynolds, a Dance/Movement Therapist, is a seasoned veteran of live on-stage performance. His dance training includes Alvin Ailey American Dance Center, Dance Theater of Harlem, Paul Taylor, and the Martha Graham School with a long list of performance credits both nationally and internationally. In addition to his dance education, he acquired an MA in Clinical Mental Health Counselling with a specialization in Dance Movement Therapy from Lesley University in 2019. His continuation to receive his PhD in Expressive Therapies supports his goal to continue using arts as a means of healing and understanding. As a second-year PhD student, Stephan seeks to explore spaces that will encourage authentic living for young men and boys in the African American community.  

Artist Statement: This work is a culmination response in a year-long drawing apprenticeship. It is a mixed-media self-portrait, rich in symbolism of a dialectical journey to explore gender identity and role within social, religious, and family systems. Inspiration for the compositional theme is from a biblical story of Mary of Bethany. As described in Mark 14:1-11, the death plot and anointing of Jesus are convoluted, with a woman’s powerful actions at the center of the story. What struck me most was the absence of her perspective in scripture. She was a central figure, yet her words and thoughts have been omitted from accounts throughout history. As I reflected on this omission, I was able to center my own experiences within the narrative.

Before I was old enough to have an opinion of my identity, my body was a projective for desires and opinions of others. For most of my life, the subject of my dark eyes, hair, skin tone, and even the shape of my backside, were used by others to project a sexualized gender role and exoticized racial identity. Being female in my culture came with entrainment and a prescriptive gender role to care for the domestic needs of others. While these experiences often came with confusion and pain, they have also fueled decades of work to critique and dismantle harmful structures. This arts apprenticeship provided opportunities to explore, accept, and reject opinions about my identity as I learned the foundations of human figure drawing theory and technique. 

Bio: Chyela Rowe, MA, RDT is a drama therapist living in Chattanooga, TN and a member of the NADTA research committee. She leads the Arts in Healthcare program at CHI Memorial Hospital where the program supports social justice-based mission integration, staff resilience, community health initiatives, and clinical internships for creative arts therapy students. In 1997, she received a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology with minors in bible and drama from Lee University in Cleveland, TN. Chyela graduated with her MA in Expressive Therapies and Mental Health Counseling from Lesley University in 2002. She has shared life with David for 22 years and is mother to Avalon, Oliver, Jonah, and Pippin. They all live and work in a messy, creative home with Gramma, two cats, and a dog.

View Chyela's artwork as a PowerPoint here.

Artist Statement: I started my journey in arts apprenticeship to learn ukulele and intended to sing along while playing. Singing, is a foreign, if not scary, idea for me. But I soon fell in love with this gentle and jolly instrument and was finding my voice when I timidly allowed myself to hum along spontaneously while strumming the chords. However, what hit China in late January 2020, and gradually took over the whole world was nothing gentle or jolly. The whole Chinese society was in turmoil during quarantine, whether forced or voluntary. There was not much to do in our apartments, but our mental space was filled with uncertainty, fear, and anger. When only one person per household was permitted to go out and grocery shop every three days, the internet was my main connection to the outside world. I saw dreadful news about extreme shortages of medical supplies and burnt out medical staff. I witnessed civilians in Wuhan who were sick, but not sick enough to be admitted to the hospital crying for help. I heard about doctors being reprimanded by the police for sharing information about the virus before it was officially confirmed. There was also news about corrupt local government and charity officials delaying and meddling with the distribution of protective gear. But these “sensitive” materials were soon taken down on the webpage, since internet censorship became stricter than ever, screening for negative portrayals of the government. The need for stability and control in an authoritarian regime trumps everything else. COVID-19 is such a collective memory but some pieces of this crucial experience are being wiped out without a trace. I started to collect images and posts on social media just because I knew they wouldn’t last long and compiled them into a folder on my phone named “VIRUS.”

What do I do with all these raw emotions? How does it relate to me as a person and as an artist? How my society responded to COVID-19 made me reflect on my relationship with rules and control. As much as I wanted to embrace spontaneity and free expression in music, I was actually terrified by the idea and sought comfort in following the rules, i.e. chords, strumming patterns, and sheet music. I was a novice desperately trying to “get it right,” and it gave a great sense of safety and gratification when I achieved the teacher’s standard; it gave me great sense of safety and confidence. I realized it was just like how I first learned Chinese painting at five years old. Everything had a certain way to be painted and there was little room for what “I” wanted to paint in the beginning. It was only after mastery that I was then able to experiment with all the skills I have learned. So, I decided to revisit my Chinese painting skills as a reflection art to singing and playing. 

What you will see in the gallery and performance is a piece of music I created using ukulele and my own voice in reaction to the photos I collected in my “VIRUS” album. It will be played along with a digital reflection painting done in a traditional Chinese painting style. In both pieces, I started with the rules I learned and built experimentations of spontaneity on top.

Bio: Ziyi Su, ATR-BC is an art therapist based in China. She primarily supports school-age children who face various social-emotional and behavioral challenges, and also holds workshops and online courses promoting art therapy. The most recent project teaches parents how to tackle specific issues, such as children’s anxiety and anger management, by incorporating children’s book reading, play, and artmaking in their daily parenting practice.

Ziyi received her bachelor’s degree in Psychology and Art & Design from the University of Michigan and her master’s degree in art therapy from New York University. She had served at-risk children and adolescents in New York City public schools before moving back to China in 2018. As an artist, Ziyi is mostly inspired by nature, dreams, and some of the most marvelous art she has had the honor to witness in her clients.

View Ziyi's Virus Album as a PowerPoint here.

Artist Statement: This year I explored the art of sewing and quilting through a lens of self-exploration and arts-based research. As I began my work this year, my intention was to create something meaningful and useful, while also developing my sense of self as an artist and developing my relationship with my mom, who became my mentor in the art of sewing and quilting. I have a very difficult time calling myself an artist, because I am primarily a therapist and simply use music as one tool in my clinical work. However, I worked through my anxiety to find the courage to create and focused my project on the interaction between my anxiety and my art. After purchasing my first sewing machine, I realized that I did not know how to sew with it, and I didn’t even know the difference between sewing and quilting. This was very anxiety-inducing. Inspired by Wyss (2018), I decided to incorporate body art into my work. So, each time I used body art, I focused on writing words of anxiety and filmed myself sewing with the words on my hands. Through completing each project, I became more comfortable with sewing and quilting. I focused my body art on words of positive affirmations, particularly affirming that “I am enough.” By working diligently to complete a quilt spelling out “I am enough” with my favorite colors and patterns, I recognized that in my self-exploration of being an artist I can overcome anxiety through planning and perseverance, and I also can let go of my insecurities and know that it will be enough. My work is enough. My art is enough. My life is enough. I am enough.

Bio: Rebecca J. Warren, MM, MT-BC, NICU-MT (Becki) is a board-certified music therapist from Western New York. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Psychology and Bachelor of Science degree in Music Therapy in December 2015 from the State University of New York at Fredonia. She graduated with her Master of Music in Music Therapy from Fredonia in December 2017. Becki is a clinical supervisor and adjunct professor at the State University of New York at Fredonia. She primarily works in private practice with school districts and families in Buffalo. Becki recently published her article, “The Impact of Invisible Illness and Invisible Disability on Music Therapy Practica Students” in the Journal of Music Therapy and looks forward to continuing her research in the second year of her doctoral program at Lesley University.