2023 Artful and Intentional Living

I have just finished my 2023 altered book of intentions and wanted to share the pages and intentions I identified for this year. This year marks 15 years of this creative practice!

The process begins with preparation, including finding the children’s board book I will be using, getting the book ready to create, gathering materials, and prepping the creative space I will be working in. I then direct my focus to intention, which includes creating a list of words I want to guide me throughout the new year ahead with meaning and purpose. From this list, I shift to creation, crafting a page inside my altered book that symbolizes or embodies each intention.

This year I chose the intentions: Meaning, Resolve, Respite, Anchor, Tempo, and Artistry. I primarily used material from my paper stashes, magazine photo collage, dictionary pages, ink, paint pens, washi tape, handmade paper, and oil pastels in a 5×5 children’s board book.

Meaning

Resolve

Respite

Anchor

Tempo

Artistry – The heart piece was done with the handmade paper I made in a BlendJet blender I recently purchased— I wrote on small pieces of paper things I wanted to let go of/transform, ripped them up, put them in the blender to pulp, and then formed new paper from it— other pages/intentions also include hearts with the same handmade paper….

As the year unfolds, I revisit my altered book of intentions to reflect on and witness their transformation. I am grateful I am also able to participate in this process year-round within an inspiring digital community of women who are engaging in this creative practice as part of Prepare.Intent.Create.Transform workshops.

What are some intentions you have for this year?

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Creative Destruction and Transformation in Art and Therapy

I am super excited to share that this article I co-authored with art therapy colleague Mindy Jacobson-Levy was officially published in the recent issue of Art Therapy: Journal of the American Art Therapy Association (Volume 39, Issue 4): Creative Destruction and Transformation in Art and Therapy: Reframing, Reforming, Reclaiming.

For a limited time, you can download the full article for free. This access is available until March 31, 2023.

In February, Mindy and I are also teaching an all-day, online workshop as part of the Expressive Therapies Summit Singular Sessions inspired by our article. Join us on Saturday, February 25, 10am-5pm EST for this 6-credit continuing education offering.

Participants will explore key concepts surrounding the role of creative destruction and transformation through the lens of altered book making. This will include dismantling the book’s pages and reframing intentions within a safely contained construct. As we take this metamorphic artistic journey, this workshop will spark your creative spirit through extensive art making, embellishing methods, and group discussion. Case material will be shared to demonstrate the value of the create-destroy-reform process. To register, visit here to learn more.

How have you used concepts of creative destruction and transformation in your art or therapy practice?

Prepare. Intent. Create. Transform. 2023 Creative Offering

As many of my creative friends & followers know, in 2008 I started an annual end-of-the-year creative practice where I would create an altered book or art journal identifying intentions I wanted to focus on, invite in, and give to others during the new year ahead.

Last year, I launched an updated ebook and virtual workshop & group opportunity to inspire and discover the hopes and aspirations of intention through this creative practice. It was fun and inspiring to gather together in this special way to artfully work on this process together. It is hard to believe another year and another book has transformed. It is that time of year I begin to do a final look at my year through the lens of my intentions.

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Shortly, though it will be time for this artful process to begin anew – Preparing, intending, creating, and transforming a fresh book, a new space and art for a new year ahead. Year 15 of this awesome creative practice.

For 2023, I am excited to offer the workshop again!

I hope you will join in if it interests you:

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• 1 copy of my Prepare, Intent, Create, & Transform eBook. 10 full-color pages describing how to engage in this creative practice.

• 3 live virtual eWorkshops focused on developing, making, and reflecting on your 2023 altered book & intentions. January 8, 15, & 22, 2023 7-9 pm EST

• 4 additional quarterly, live virtual eWorkshops throughout the year to check in about our 2023 intentions & make art together for further exploration & insight. March 5, June 4, September 3, & December 3, 2023 7-9 pm EST

• Recorded slide presentations of the eWorkshop content in case you cannot attend one of the events or want to save the information for your future reference.

• Access to the eWorkshop’s private 2023 FB group to stay connected to Prepare, Intent, Create, & Transform participants and creative motivation all year long!

$74.99 USD

Purchase Link

or Scan the QR Code below:

Those who purchased my 2022 eBook or attended 2022 eWorkshops, are eligible for a $25 discount off this year’s package. Look for more information about this in the 2022 FB group and in email communication to past participants.

Please note: eBook purchases are automatically sent to the email used to make your purchase. Please check your junk/spam folder if you do not receive your eBook once your purchase has been fully completed. All sales final. Email gretchenmiller@cox.net with any questions.

THANK YOU!

Wishing you an artful 2023!!

25 Creative Quotes on Giving & Gratitude

The Thanksgiving holiday will soon be here, which encourages me to reflect on & share this collection of new quotes I’ve gathered that embody the act of giving, creating, and gratitude.  These musings of thankfulness, graciousness & the power of art are wonderful to remember no matter the time of year!  I believe this lens can also help offer some creative counteraction to fear, judgement, and shame during times of distress, suffering, and sorrow.

What creative quotes or practices help ground you in gratefulness & generosity?

• The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude.  ~Friedrich Nietzsche

• All art arises out of gratitude, a deep pervasive feeling that you are glad something exists outside yourself, that something can complete you.  ~Dorothy Koppelman

• Gratitude is a way of creativity. ~ Apollo Matrix

• The art of appreciation begins with self appreciation. ~Amit Abraham

• Gratitude is an art of painting an adversity into a lovely picture. ~Kak Sri

• Gratitude is the closest thing to beauty manifested in an emotion. ~Mindy Kaling

• Gratitude in advance is the most powerful creative force in the universe. ~ Neale Donald Walsch

• I have walked this earth for 30 years, and, out of gratitude, want to leave some souvenir.  ~Vincent van Gogh

• Artists are among the most generous of people. Perhaps inherent in the appreciation of creativity comes a deep, underlying love of humanity and our Earth.  ~Kelly Borsheim

• Gratitude opens the door to… the power, the wisdom, the creativity of the universe. ~Deepak Chopra

• I will draw as much as I can for as many people as I can for as long as I can. ~Keith Haring

• I am filled with gratitude for the ability to live the artist’s life. In my studio. Being an artist. Everyday.  ~Mickie Acierno

• I’m very grateful for an entire lifetime spent involved in this creative process.  ~Ron Howard

• Those works I have most profited by are the ones I have given away. ~ Joseph P. Blodgett

• Music and art both spring from a grateful heart.  ~Katie Wood McCloy

• Make a gift of your life and lift all mankind. ~David R. Hawkins

• I want to thank anyone who spends part of their day creating. I don’t care if it’s a book, a film, a painting, a dance, a piece of theater, a piece of music. Anybody who spends part of their day sharing their experience with us. This world would be unlivable without art. Thank you for inspiring me. ~Steven Soderberg

• Picasso said that the sale of every one of his works was like having a little piece of himself taken away. In this sense, he could be regarded as a very generous person. ~Marvin Humphrey

• Gratitude is a many-colored quality, reaching in all directions. It goes out for small things and for large.” ~Faith Baldwin

• Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow. ~ Melody Beattie

• Art is the giving by each man of his evidence to the world. Those who wish to give, love to give, discover the pleasure of giving. Those who give are tremendously strong. ~ Robert Henri

• There is no better opportunity to receive more than to be thankful for what you already have. Thanksgiving opens up the windows of opportunity for ideas to flow your way.  ~Jim Rohn

• The essence of all art is to have pleasure in giving pleasure. ~ Dale Carnegie

• An artist gives. Gives visually, gives through courses, or with free advice, through generosity of spirit and through a need to share.  ~Veronica Roth

• The act of giving something to others is an art of flowering your heart. ~Vinayak

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours! Many thanks for everyone’s support throughout this year!

The Creative Psychotherapist Podcast: Social Media Tips and Strategies for Therapists

The Art Therapist's Guide to Social Media

This week, The Creative Clinician’s Corner published this podcast, a conversation with host and art therapist Reina Lombardi and The Art Therapist’s Guide to Social Media author Gretchen Miller about social media tips and considerations for therapists!

Some of the topics discussed:

• Social media sharing strategies
• Privacy awareness and content management
• Ways to create and strengthen a professional digital presence online
• Digital footprint and online legacy considerations

Attention to centering our online presence and activity to align with our professional passions, strengths, and values informs a lot of the conversation.

Thank you to The Creative Psychotherapist podcast for highlighting the power of social media to amplify our work as clinicians professionally, ethically, and creatively!

Listen here: https://www.creativeclinicianscorner.com/episode51

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Purposeful Parenting & Creativity

July recognizes Purposeful Parenting Month, which highlights the significant relational value of parents and children having resilient and meaningful connections with one another. Purposeful Parenting embraces understanding, unconditional love, and empathy with the consistency of structure, safety, and healthy boundaries. To parent with purpose is to be an active contributor in sustaining rapport, connection, and intention with your child or teen.

An offering I have facilitated is an art therapy group for moms living in a shelter with their children as they work on transitioning out of homelessness. This art therapy group was part of the shelter’s trauma informed parenting support program as an opportunity to receive nurturing assistance during this challenging time to strengthen coping, self-care, and explore empowering ways to sustain an affirming relationship in their child’s lives. The power of art and the creative process offers a safe place to address these topics.  Over the years that I was involved with this program, I met moms of amazing strength and resilience, not only committed to creating healthier relationships and attachments with their children, but often working on their own trauma recovery.

For children who have experienced trauma and loss in their young lives, having adult attachments that engage with purpose and compassion can be a key component to their healing. Perry & Szalavitz (2006) speak to how a child’s relationship with the adults in their lives has an essential component to how they react to trauma. They also note that if a child is surrounded and nurtured by caregivers who are safe, comforting, dependable, and present; this can help protect youth from the adverse effects of trauma, as well as strengthen their ability to recover.

“Recognizing the power of relationships and relational cues is essential to effective therapeutic work, and indeed, to effective parenting, caregiving, teaching, and just about any other human endeavor.” (p. 67, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog).

Ohio’s American Academy of Pediatrics identities six components to purposeful parenting for parents and caregivers to keep in mind. Being Protective, Personal, Progressive, Positive, Playful, and Purposeful in our relationships decreases the impact of chronic stress exposure and ultimately supports a child’s fullest potential and well-being.

The foundation of purposeful parenting and fostering relational enrichment inspired me to reflect on some fun and creative activities for families (and adult helpers involved in children’s lives) to engage in together that encourage affirming experiences and supportive interaction. Creative experiences can be an enjoyable way to foster connection, develop interpersonal ties, and positive memories:

• Painting with Bubbles or Shaving Cream: These sensory-based twists on painting can encourage play and experimentation between child and parent using simple, inexpensive materials. Levine & Kline (2008) cite that activities involving art expression such as painting and drawing are great bonding opportunities for parents to engage in alongside their children.

• Sidewalk Chalk: Grab a bucket or box of sidewalk chalk, head outside and take a break to chalk it up together—at home, a local park, or playground! Suggested ideas to support collective participation in this activity include drawing where the child and parent can add to one another’s images, marks, or doodles. If you are up for making your own sidewalk chalk, here’s how. Families can also play these classic sidewalk chalk games.

• Nature Walk & Scavenger Hunt: Parents, young children, and teens can benefit from unplugging and taking time to enjoy the outdoors, fresh air and reconnect! Take a walk in nature, go biking or hiking together. Create a scavenger hunt of different nature items that the family can look for and find as a group or in pairs.

• Homemade Play Dough and Goop: Spend a morning or afternoon making a batch of play dough together, or for older kids goop recipes can be equally as inviting and fun. You can even make scented play dough, which can add an additional sensory component to this experience.

• Visit an Art Museum, Art Festival, or Creative Community Event: Check out your local art museum or art event as a family outing. Many museums have family related programming or guides that can help enhance your experience!  Here in Cleveland, the Cleveland Museum of Art offers a hands on, interactive family-friendly art space called Studio Play.  For young children (ages 2-4), this mail art program allows caregivers and kids to engage at home with art. And it’s free!

No matter what the month or season, there is true power in the relationships we nurture for the children and teens we care for, either as parents, caregivers, or helpers. It’s important to keep enriching these healthy attachments by cultivating safe experiences and moments of meaning all year round.

Recommended Reading:

Levine, P.A., & Kline, M. (2008). Trauma-proofing your kids: A parent’s guide to instilling confidence, joy, and resilience. Berkeley : North Atlantic Books.

Perry, B.D., & Winfrey, O. (2021). What happened to you?   Flatiron Books.

Perry, B.D., & Szalavitz, M. (2006). The boy who was raised as a dog. New York: Basic Books.

Resources:

Introduction to Purposeful Parenting (PDF) | Ohio Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics

How to Approach Mindful, Purposeful Parenting

The Purposeful Parenting Mindset | PsychCentral

Purposeful Parenting Month: A Time to Learn and Grow

The Artful Parent

Childhood Trauma and Art Therapy: Supporting Well-being and Healing

In honor of Children’s Mental Health Awareness Day (CMHAD), this post is dedicated to providing resources and re-publishing content that can bring awareness to the value of trauma informed care, as well as the benefits of art therapy in trauma intervention with children and adolescents.

Some key considerations to remember:

(C) 2017 Gretchen Miller

For many survivors of childhood trauma, the use of art therapy supports many of the key messages shared during the 60 minutes broadcast.  Here are some of art therapy’s unique benefits to support survivors of developmental trauma and adverse childhood experiences:

• Art therapy provides a visual voice for a survivor’s experiences, emotions, and thoughts to be seen and heard through the creative process and therapeutic relationship with the art therapist. It is not uncommon for survivors of trauma to experience limitations or apprehension with expressing themselves through words alone.

• Art making, as a sensory-based intervention can help safely express and manage or access content from lower parts of the brain where traumatic experiences and implicit memory live without words. This is why verbal expression can be insufficient, anxiety provoking, and inadequate for many survivors.

• When a survivor engages in art therapy they are offered with the opportunity make choices and decisions through the creative process that helps create new ways of seeing the self, empower resiliency, and help envision their recovery path ahead.

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Resources

How Art Therapy Can Improve Your Mental and Emotional Health:  Learn about how art therapy can benefit the wellbeing of adolescents.

Art Therapy in Action: Trauma (American Art Therapy Association Video)- How art therapy can help individuals or families who have experienced trauma express what they’ve been through safely, and tell their stories without needing to talk.

The Value of Art Expression in Trauma-Informed Work – The following American Art Therapy Association and National Institute for Trauma and Loss Institute resource summarizes a few of the important themes and considerations connected to trauma-informed work and how the process of art-making can help to achieve grounding, reflection and growth.

Bruce Perry’s Impact: Considerations for Art Therapy & Children from Violent Homes – Brief presentation about how Dr. Bruce Perry’s work has influenced an art therapist’s art therapy & trauma work with children from violent homes. Presented as part of a panel at the 2008 American Art Therapy Association conference in Cleveland, Ohio.

How Art Therapy Can Help Children Facing Mental Health Challenges (Huffington Post)

SAMHSA’s Resources for Child Trauma Informed Care

National Child Traumatic Stress Network

What Happened to You?: Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing – Dr. Bruce Perry and Oprah Winfrey

Ohio Department of Mental Health & Addiction Services- Trauma & Children

Ohio Department of Mental Health & Addiction Services- ABCs of Mental Health

The Value of Community Care in Difficult Times

We are all familiar with concepts of self-care as an important practice to take time for attending to our emotional, psychological, and physical health,  wellbeing, and needs.  Engaging in self care has often been highlighted throughout this pandemic to bring attention to strategies connected to managing our stress, isolation, and extreme changes associated with COVID-19’s impact.

Beyond self-care however, is the value of community care and its importance in taking responsibility and accountability to collectively care for one another, especially showing up in the hard times of distress and struggle.  Community care is also examining how we can use our privilege to be present and of help for another person or a group of people in ways that activates support and commitment not just on an individual level, but as a collective consciousness dedicated to caring for others in our communities and world. For example, people have been hand sewing and making masks for healthcare workers, loved ones, and community members to help protect everyone from COVID-19 infection. Our mask wearing, physical distancing, and handwashing hygiene to mitigate COVID-19 is a responsibility we can all practice for the health & well-being of those around us.

We have also witnessed a form of community care throughout US cities and beyond in other countries coming together to collectively support Black Lives Matter in unprecedented ways to denounce the murdering of African Americans at the hands of the police, shed light on the realities of systemic racism, and through acts of demonstrating, protesting, creating public & street art in response, as well as the use of digital activism through social media to amplify messages of support, solidarity, and anti-racism.

Community care has been an important component of taking care of each other during these difficult times. Read this recent post from YES! Magazine to learn more about how community care is showing up in this “next normal” we are trying to make sense of for ourselves and more importantly, others.

If you are interested in exploring the concept of community care with art therapists, below is an artist trading card exchange focusing around this theme that you are invited to participated in– what does community care look like to you?

Related Posts:

Creative Action Link Round Up: Self-Care, Responsibility, Community

Creative Action Link Round-Up: Racial Justice, Anti-Racism, & Social Change

Finding Calm Through Creativity In Uncertain Times

Creative Action Link Round-Up: Racial Justice, Anti-Racism, & Social Change

This creative action link round up shares some art therapy and art-based resources to learn more about racial trauma, ways that art therapists can practice anti-racism, as well as how the arts are providing a voice to pain, loss, suffering, and bring communities together in protest, meaningful change, hope, solidarity, & advocacy.  This post also honors the contributions of African American pioneers in the field of art therapy.

• Creative Healing Spaces: Healing From Racial Wounds: Three lessons art therapist Lindsey D. Vance has learned about changing the framework of therapy in her practice with clients of color to respond to racial trauma, engage in community based practice, and bring communities together through art.  Lindsey also participated last week in a Creative Justice FB Live with Sharon @ Spark Your Creative to discuss the intensity of what we are seeing and hearing, how it can deeply affect our ability to create , what we do create, and how we can heal ourselves and others affected by violence in our communities.

• Cultural Humility in Art Therapy– In this book published early in 2020, art therapist Dr. Louvenia Jackson writes about cultural humility in art therapy, as a lens to address power differentials and encourage art therapists to examine privilege within social constructs, become mindful of our own bias, assumptions and beliefs.

• Anti-racist Approach to Art Therapy: Re-examining Core Concepts– Three strategies from art therapist Dr. Jordan Potash for art therapists to confront race-based injustices & power differentials in our practice and with systems. Learn more about how art therapists can develop an anti-racist perspective, re-examine art therapy concepts through anti-racist paradigms, and advocate for system change.

• Framing Race in the Context of Art Therapy: Art therapist Dr. Cheryl Doby-Copeland frames race in the context of art therapy through defining racism, racial trauma, & bringing awareness to the impact of societal discrimination & oppression with clients & families of color.

• These three takeaways for art therapists from Dr. Angela Clack address barriers that often exist for Black women seeking therapy and the importance of building trust and openness as core to the therapeutic relationship.

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• Talking About Race: National Museum of African American History & Culture: This newly launched project collects 100+ multimedia tools, including videos, scholarly articles, and exercises to help educators, parents, and others develop the language to have productive conversations about race.

 

• From Murals To Tweets: The Global South Shows Solidarity With George Floyd Protests: Throughout the world, the use of art is activating social action through protest and solidarity.
• What Is Art Good For? Especially during times of pain, anger, and sorrow.

 

• Plans Underway to Preserve, Exhibit Protest-Inspired Art Covering Columbus Storefronts: ““Art is like music…. Has no limit. Has no guidelines. Has no parameters. Speaks to all races, all generations. This should be retained, should be somewhere that’s available even after we’ve gone through this period.”

 

• Essential Arts: The Memory of George Floyd Lives on in Murals: How the arts are creating an uprising across Los Angeles.

• George Floyd’s Death Has Inspired Powerful Protest Art: ‘I needed to have another way of seeing him: Thousands of people have created powerful art in response to George Floyd’s death and the recent Black Lives Matter demonstrations to protest police violence. From street murals near the White House to editorial comics created near where Floyd died, artists are delivering political messages.

• How Protest Graffiti Re-contextualizes Public Art: Throughout the country, street art has forced people to confront and examine our troubling racial realities.

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• Honoring African-American Art Therapy Pioneers : Learn about the contributions of Georgette Seabrooke Powell, Charles Anderson, Dr. Sarah McGee, Dr. Lucille Venture, and Cliff Joseph to the profession of art therapy as leaders, clinicians, educators, researchers, authors, artists, and advocates.

 

• Multi-Traditional Art Therapy: Invoking All of Our Ancestors:  An excerpt of Dr. Potash’s 2019 keynote address to the Buckeye Art Therapy Association describes how rediscovering art therapy history, particularly overlooked early art therapists of color, reveals diverse theoretical and practical applications.

• Wheels of Diversity in Art Therapy: Pioneers of Color – This video highlights art therapists and pioneers of color and their impact on the field of art therapy.

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My Own Call to Action: 

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Related Posts:

Creative Action Link Round Up: Self-Care, Responsibility, Community

20 Creative Quotes on Courage, Hope, & Possibility

Creative Resilience Link Round Up

COVID-19 Material Management and Best Practices for Art Therapy

This week I started to cautiously ease into providing in-person art therapy groups at one the sites I am at that has re-mobilized face to face group therapy programming for clients.  A lot of consideration has been made organizationally to create a physical environment that will be safe for clients needing services.  This starts with mandatory healthcare screening measures and clearance upon entering the overall facility such as temperature checks, self report questions about potential COVID-19 symptoms and risk, lots of signage and visual cues for physical distancing in common spaces, and being provided a mask to wear if you do not already have one.

Within the program space in which I provide services, every group member is required to physically distance at least 6 feet from other members and the facilitator, which also includes limiting the maximum number of clients allowed in the group space depending on the required amount of space needed for physical distancing.  Everyone on-site (group leaders, staff, and clients) wear masks throughout the day’s programming.

As an art therapist facilitating primarily group work, I want to keep clients, their families, staff, and myself as safe as possible during this transition of navigating to this next normal of gathering together again, even if it is 6 feet apart.  The usual use of art therapy materials that are commonly available to the group or used in a session (often shared or handled by multiple people and as a community), as well as the way materials are managed or distributed in the art therapy space required serious reconsideration.  In an effort to make sense of this new, developing practice for myself and help educate or reassure those coming into the art therapy space, I drafted this COVID-19 Material Management and Best Practices in Art Therapy two pager. 

The two pager provides practices on three areas: Hand Washing/Sanitizing,  Material Management, and Disinfection of Art Materials to help promote infection control and decrease the spread of germs and illness.  I also provided examples of media that I use in my art therapy space to help distinguish between supplies that would be considered single use or could be used multiple times if properly disinfected.  I also started to individually put art materials into ziploc bags that could be given to clients to use (and clean before putting back into the bag) or if not possible to clean (such as oil pastels) to keep for their own use at home or discard.  Obviously in a group setting, where the amount of clients and number of groups throughout the week can be several, there may not be the necessary budget to sustain giving materials away or throwing them out.

As this evolving situation with COVID-19 continues to emerge, additional practices and approaches will certainly also surface within the art therapy community.  Medical art therapists who regularly work with immune comprised patients have instituted infection control procedures with their materials and their way of working as a common form of practice.  Considerations are made for providing meaningful and therapeutic art interventions that not only emotionally support a patient they are working with and appropriate treatment goals, but also the necessary use of handling, prepping, and using materials in the physical space to ensure this is a safe practice and will do no harm to ones health and wellbeing.   Art therapists’ knowledge and understanding of materials are a primary foundation to our practice, expertise, and training.

The two pager I created was informed by the valuable experiences of the medical art therapy community, as well as art educators working in classrooms with lots of students who are trying to figure out how to teach and make art together safely as a group when they are finally able to return to some form of in-person learning.  This American Art Therapy Association (AATA) COVID-19 related resource and recent journal publication, as well as AATA webinars that were hosted in March and May also provided helpful information about working in this new environment.

I am curious if you have any suggestions for practices you’ve started to use or consider for face to face art material use in this time of COVID-19, especially related to work with groups or more than one individual at once?  We can definitely keep learning from eachother as we face unfamiliar situations and working because of this pandemic.