Bound Fierce and Finely Woven

Jan Schreibman is a music therapist, educator, and flautist. She has been a long-standing clinician and established the music therapy degree program in 2017 at the University of Indianapolis where she is currently the Director of Music Therapy and Assistant Professor. She is the founder of Creative Pathways, Indy and also a founding member of the Indiana Wind Symphony.

I am a music therapist, educator, and flautist. I chose the copper foil method of creating stained glass for my arts apprenticeship. Stained glass has always mesmerized me and the idea of creating something from brokenness was exciting. I like how the light shines through various panes and illuminates textures and imperfections within the glass, but as a whole, the entire pane illuminates beauty. Hence the meeting to two truths, no stained glass is flawless, and beauty is present when the work is viewed as a complete piece of art.  

I found cutting glass and applying the solder equally challenging; each required the artist to exercise a steady consistent awareness of hand position and pressure applied, related to the task at hand. Additionally, awareness of mood state within my body (embodiment) and attunement to the creative environment played roles in the overall process. These same principles are at play in music-making. Awareness of hand position and pressure used to strike a key on a piano, or the force used on a percussive instrument adds texture and color to the sound that is produced. Unnecessary tension or pressure can result in diminished muscle coordination. This tension is realized in the form of uneven rhythms, sloppy fingerings, and imprecise articulations.  

Feelings a musician has about a particular piece of music can enhance or hinder the process of learning and performing a piece of music, not to mention what the listener perceives. Finally, the environment challenges the musician and listener to attune. The ability to attune or not directly impacts the musical/artistic product and experience.  

My experience of creating stained glass mirrored that of making music. Both require awareness and practice to master the difficult breaks in the glass or passages within the music, embody mindfulness of feelings associated with the art/music inform my body of how to respond and interact with the materials or instrument, and attunement with the environment/others impacts the outcome of the artistic venture, whether making music or creating stained glass. 

Mia is an art therapist and educator on the faculty of New York University’s art therapy program. She has become a Somatic Experiencing practitioner and Focuser in the last four years and is exploring the relationship between embodiment and art therapy. She is a painter, collagist, and weaver who shows at The Upstream Gallery in Hastings, NY, but currently resides on a farm in Portsmouth, RI with her baby cat Star and her husband Dean. She has two adult children who are both artists. 

Few things to me are more embodied than poetry.  As Mary Oliver says, “to write poetry we must make sounds,” and sounds come from the body; the viscera, the esophageal passage, the same as breathing. We can think words, but ultimately they come from our body self.  In this year I explored the connection between poetry and embodiment. I wrote poems about the process of living through the pandemic, moving out of my home, and adopting a cat.  I Interviewed my cohort about their experience of embodiment and then made poems from their words. The resulting drawings were a response to that process.   

Nest Series: This project represents a 9-month long process of experimentation with reed basketry, which evolved into a container for the overwhelming transitions that have occurred for me internally and externally during the pandemic when I became a Ph.D. student, a poet, and a wanderer in search of a new home. 

Insurrection Series: The Insurrection Series is part political and part personal; tracking the disorientation of this pandemic year, political climate, and the upheaval of leaving a home of 30 years. 

Cohort Response Series: The cohort response project was an experiment in arts-based research. I interviewed members of my cohort about their experience of embodiment. I wrote poems using their words from the transcripts. I then created drawings in response to the poems, in a reverse ekphrastic process, and finally photoshopped the drawings to enhance them. 

Shauna Chisholm, MA, LMFT, ATR is a registered art therapist and marriage and family therapist from Southern California specializing in working with addiction and the LGBTQ+ population. Shauna received her bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of California Davis and a master’s degree in art therapy and marriage and family therapy from Phillips Graduate Institute. Over the last 10 years, Shauna has worked in public mental health and crisis stabilization. More recently she has worked from the group up, helping to develop and run a substance use recovery station that allows individuals who are currently under the influence to have a safe space to sober up and receive counseling and peer support services to assist them with taking the next steps towards changing their lives. Shauna is a painter by nature and spends her free time expressing herself through her art along with her mini version of herself.   

As an artist, primarily a painter, my focus tends to revolve around the human figure so when given the opportunity to apprentice in an unfamiliar art form it seemed a natural step to create art on the body. Drawing on my own experiences from being tattooed in which I experience a feeling of release and freeness, I sought to explore if the process of tattooing others with one's own art could be meditative as well as create a spiritual connection. When I made the decision to explore tattoo as an art form I had not counted on the challenges tattoo artists would face during the pandemic of not being able to work on clients due to social distancing. This lead to challenges for myself with being able to tattoo on the body.  

I learned that the process of apprenticing as a tattoo artist required a lot of repetition and patience. The process takes time to be ready to put ink to skin and development of the ability to repeat fine line work with an unforgiving medium. The process of preparing to do a tattoo from the initial commission of art, through the planning and drawing stages, as well as the setup of the equipment and space to tattoo becomes like a ritual for the artist. The communication back and forth about the artwork creates a connection with the client different from that of a commissioned painting in that the art placed on the body often has a deep meaning in the individuals and in that communication a story is told giving insight into the life of the individual.  

My question adjusted from a broad thought of how tattoo artists feel while tattooing to be about how I experience the process of tattooing on skin. While my initial intent was that I would be using a tattoo machine to place art on people's bodies I have learned that drawing a piece of art in the style of a tattoo on the body with henna or with ink created a connection to the art piece as well as the individual. As the art I designed and placed on skin often related to my spirituality I experienced a spiritual connection to the work.   

Valerie Bostory, MA, ATR-BC, RPT-S, LCAT, an art therapist, play therapist, and school psychologist has worked for 20+ years in a large urban public school district. She is part of a multi-disciplinary team and extensively trains a wide array of professionals on diverse topics. She has also earned licensure as a state administrator and clinical supervisor, served on the board of NJATA- New Jersey Art Therapy Association as the Programming Chair, belongs to several state and national organizations and has been awarded large federal, state, and local grants in the service of supporting children and families using the expressive art therapies. 

Valerie also shares her passion for creative arts therapies on the faculty of New York University’s – Post Master’s Program in Child & Family Therapy where she is the specialist in play therapy and teaches a variety of art therapy courses at New Jersey City University. In addition, she has contributed to the text Childhood Revealed: Art Expressing Pain, Discovery & Hope, (H. Koplewicz, & R. Goodman (Eds.). (1999). Harry N. Abrams, Inc. New York, NY. 

Valerie resides in NYC where she enjoys metalsmithing and is a member of the National Arts Club. 

My year’s long art apprenticeship was a process of moving from the safety of my intellectual self to a more embodied approach.  

I entered on the surface level by reading books and watching “how-to” videos (unable to find an in-person mentor during the COVID-19 pandemic). Continuing, on that path, I dabbled in the realism of Bob Ross’s painting techniques, painting nature scenes, followed by painting small artist trading cards. None of it was working. I still struggled to let go of my false sense of control. Intuitively, I knew I needed to go deeper. 

But how, I wondered, can I find my way back to a more meaningful connection with my artwork, with myself? I kept repeating, “I need to move out of my head and into my body to a more sensory experience with the materials, an embodied approach.” Speaking through my body, I explored a dialog: (With the art materials I will reconnect with the art process.  Can I be a receptive surface and accept new marks, new ways of expression as if I am the absorbent paper itself? Can I move away from the comfort of watercolor and explore the unknown and mystery of opaque acrylics? A medium I’ve always been afraid of). 

Intellectually, I knew I had to find the courage to let things fall apart in order to rebuild. So, I did! 

“Culmination” (TBD 11” by 14” acrylic on canvas) is the result of my artistic journey to find a way back to a more embodied expressive self.  This painting speaks to me on multiple levels, it has a sense of flow and integration that transcends the critical voices that prevented me from fully engaging before.