Making art can shift the energy of an individual or a community towards a more balanced and positive state.
From as residency at a center for adults with disabilities in Concord NH
Observing someone making art or a viewing a completed piece can also generate a state of well-being.
Residency at Crocheted MT Center in Greenfield NH
It’s not just the visual arts - listening to an inspiring piece of music, a poem, play/ movie or watching a dance performance – can also engender this transformative. My personal experience focuses on the visual arts as a transformative pathway towards a healthier state of being – so my narrative here will center on the making/observing of the visual arts.
Weaving at a Veteran’s Hospital in NH.
As a child I discovered that I felt better when I played with color, pattern texture and form. Almost as an intuitive force, I was pulled towards putting whatever materials I could get my hands on or into to create stories and patterns. This was my way of navigating an often confusing world.
Connecticut Children’s Hospital
I have discovered that by teaching others ways to create, I can guide them into this same state of transformation. The process of creating can shift one’s energy from that of a wobbly imbalance to a healthier vibration. For example, during a residency at the NH Prison for Women, I taught an anxious, incarcerated mother how to weave a simple potholder. She remarked how her headache disappeared and that this project reminded her of who she was before the incident that changed her life.
Tewksbury State Hospital
The repetitive motions inherent to textile techniques have a particularly calming effect. Akin to the rocking motion to quiet an anxious infant, the physical motions of weaving, stitching, spinning or knitting all have the capacity to calm one’s central nervous system.
“What You Will” The first in a series of works that I created after the death of my brother.
Personally, I have used making art to help navigate the complexities of loss and grief. In 2011 the death of my beloved brother had me crawling on the floor, gasping for breath. I became unhinged. After months of spiraling, I found a thread to pull on – I began to draw and then weave images that held my grief.
CT Children’s Hospital
I soon discovered that my story is not unique. That loss is universal part of the human condition and that the images I created held a resonance for many.
Yale New Haven Hospital
Since the early 1990’s I have followed this thread of art and healing to guide/teach in a variety of clinical, educational and community settings. From Hospice workshops to residences in Children’s Hospitals, to grief organizations and prisons, from a safe house for women to communities recovering from trauma, from homeless teens-at-risk to elders in a VA Hospital, from hospital bedside to infusion clinics and from doctor to patient and the wider community – I have witnessed the power of art to support a pathway to a happier, healthier state of being.
“Woven Voices: Messages from the Heart” 2007 - 12 - Interactive Global Community Art Project
In 2007 I designed and guided a Global Community art project that endeavored to heal on an international scale. “Woven Voices: Messages from the Heart” was inspired by Tibetan prayer flags, Shinto paper prayers and the Buddhist concept of impermanence. Intended to be accessible to all people, I solicited positive messages of hope and renewal, dreams, wishes or prayers written on paper or cloth of any size, color or weight. These messages were read out loud in a public place and then woven into brightly colored prayer flags. As the flags were completed, they were sent back out to be hung outside in communities around the world to fade, unravel and release the messages of hope, peace and renewal.
Prayer Flag hanging out side to release messages of hope and peace to all beings.
For over 5 years I witnessed how this project lifted up communities and individuals - from those who sent messages, to those who helped read them out loud, to those who wove the flags and sewed the edges and finally those who hung the flags and those who saw them hanging.
Reading positive messages of hope and renewal from the Woven Voices project. Market Square Portsmouth, NH 2008
Art creates a positive change.