Introduction
In my studio I have a box full of beads, broken windshield glass, flattened pieces of tin can, buttons, copper wire, miscellaneous hardware, small stones, and other bits and pieces of lives discarded. They are my treasures. It is not so much what I do with them in my art as it is what they do with me. They inspire me, excite me, pain me, and help me to see new possibilities. Each piece of windshield glass came from someone’s broken car, broken life. Each button came from someone’s coat or pants or dress, worn to embellish a life, or to hold it together. Each screw and bracket and brace came from some life being built, falling apart, being built again. These found objects find me and I release the stories embedded in them through what I make of them.
When I engage in the creation of art from these bits and pieces of lives, I am engaging in religious activity. I am taking what has found its way to me in my life and making something of it. This is an act of faith. It is an admission that no matter what worn, broken, barely held together, damaged, discarded pieces of life find their way into mine, I am still willing to participate in life, willing to make something of it. Even when I don’t think of it as such, this is a faith statement about my belief in the ultimate goodness of life.
Engagement in creating is an act of manifesting faithful devotion to an ultimate reality. In this chapter I most often refer to that ultimate reality as God, though other words such as Mystery, Creator, or Higher Power are also words I use in a vain attempt to name that which is unnamable. No matter what term is used to refer to this ultimate reality, it is clear that our senses alone cannot observe and come to know the object of our faith. It is through our imaginations that we apprehend God, Mystery, Higher Power, Ultimate Good. What cannot be seen, heard, felt, touched, smelled, tasted, or logically understood can still be
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imagined and so the imagination is an instrument of faith. This faith becomes concretized – becomes something that can be seen, heard, felt, touched, smelled, perhaps tasted – through the act of making. I will be focusing on the act of making visual art, though there are other modes of creative expression that may serve to concretize experiences of faith.
This idea that creative activity is a means by which to apprehend the divine has its basis in theology. Dorothy L. Sayers (1941) argues that the only quality ascribed to God by the author of the book of Genesis to explain in what way humans are made in the image of God is to be found in the assertion, ‘God created.’ She writes, ‘The characteristic common to God and man is apparently… the desire and ability to make things’ (p.22). In her exploration of the nature of creative activity she invites the reader both to a clearer under-standing of the nature of God and to a clearer underunder-standing of the human calling to co-create with God. Meinrad Craighead (in Peay 1990) asserts that the theological concept of the Incarnation, the invisible becoming visible, has its correlation in the artistic process. She is an artist who views her work as religious in that it is a manifestation of God’s life within her. Linda Sexson (1992) offers a view of religion as a ‘quality that pervades all of experience’ (p.7) rather than something set apart from the mundane and secular aspects of life.
She writes that the created object cannot contain religion but is an admission that religious meaning ‘shows itself ’ via metaphors. She writes:
Religion is made up of nothing special – the ordinary is holy or poten-tially holy; since the object of the religious is no-thing, its images can be improvised from…the ephemera and scraps of the ordinary world by means of metaphor. (Sexson 1992, p.10)
Both Sexson and Dissanayake (1988) ascribe to artistic behavior the essential role of making the ordinary special or holy. Dissanayake describes the behavior of ‘making special’ as a fundamental human tendency underlying all the arts.
She writes:
One intends by making special to place the activity or artifact in a
‘realm’ different from the everyday… Both artist and perceiver often feel that in art they have an intimate connection with a world that is different from if not superior to ordinary experience. (Dissanayake 1988, p.92)
It is from this basis in religion that I work as an art therapist. Many people understand a Christian therapist to be one who ascribes to specific religious dogma and who frames treatment interventions according to particular
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religious beliefs. While this type of approach may be helpful with some clients, this is not what I discuss in this chapter. Instead, I discuss how traditional elements of a Christian belief system can inform a therapist’s practice in a way that is affirming of the creative process and responsive to the client’s needs without imposing any particular dogma or beliefs. In fact, I write out of an understanding that these religious concepts are a helpful way of framing experience, even when an art making or art therapy session has no particular religious or spiritual focus.
This is not to say that this discussion will be bereft of religious beliefs or theological concepts. In the ‘politically correct’ contemporary environment it is more acceptable to speak of spirituality than of religion, of the transpersonal than of the theological, of a Higher Power than of God. While these terms have their place in creating a spirituality that is accessible to those who have become estranged from organized religion, they do not capture the deep sense of history and tradition that is part of a religious perspective. Having been raised in the Catholic faith I have a great appreciation for symbol, ritual and mystery as expressions of the faithful. Through my studies at a Methodist theological school I came to understand theology as no more than the humble quest of faith seeking understanding. My writing reflects my deep appreciation for Christian history and tradition, as well as my belief that history and tradition are made meaningful only through the encounters of our everyday lives.
The three aspects of Christian theology I write about in this chapter are prayer, sacraments and grace. Each of these elements of a Christian belief system addresses the interaction between the human and the divine. Each offers a glimpse of how this divine–human relationship might be understood as attending to the brokenness in the world around us. They have been particularly helpful concepts for me in my work as an art therapist, when I have been confronted with what seems, at times, to be an unbearable amount of human pain and suffering.
Prayer
I suppose my first definition of prayer was that series of words I used to say as a child at the family dinner table. Eager to dive into our food, we rattled those words off as quickly as our mouths would release them. ‘Bless-us-oh-lord- and-these-thy-gifts-which-we-are-about-to-receive-from-thy-bounty-through-Christ-our-lord-amen.’ Over the years my ideas about prayer have changed, though one view has remained constant: that prayer is an attempt at
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spiritual connectedness. Even in those early, blurry-word recitations it was an acknowledgment of something beyond my mere humanness.
There are a multiplicity of forms that prayer can take, from the hushed, spon-taneous expressions of a single individual to the words spoken in unison by the members of a large church congregation. Whatever form it takes, prayer has a social nature, a communicative function. The making of art can be an alternative prayer language.
A Methodist minister I once knew understood the prayers of confession in the Protestant liturgy to be an acknowledgment of our humanness. He did not refer to religious dogma or abstract ideas about sin but instead read headlines from the newspaper, without comment. The reading of these was an acknowl-edgment of life as it is and of our capacity as humans to contribute either to the brokenness or the healing of ourselves and the world. The making of art can be such a prayer, a laying claim to who we are in order that we might come to understand the possibility lying dormant in our strong, frail, hurting, hurtful, fearful, courageous selves. Art as prayer involves the drawing or painting or sculpting of the everyday, ordinary images of life as they present themselves. It is the willingness to extend expression to images whose meaning is unknowable.
The doing of art requires an openness to the salvific value in the accidental (Apostolas-Cappadona 1984) and in the capacity to ‘make do’ with whatever is at hand.
Janette
Janette, a patient in my art therapy group, had no trouble with ‘making do’
with what was at hand. On her first day in the group she created an outfit for herself with the materials she found in the studio…fabric, glue, glitter, tissue paper, beads, buttons. Her outfit even included breast cups, reminiscent of the singer, Madonna, made out of styrofoam cups and covered with gold glitter.
She was quite a sight as she walked back to the unit after her first art therapy group!
Her ‘making do,’ while creative, was impulsive and directionless. She slipped in and out of rooms, moods and commitments like a woman nearly drowning, though not quite…only endlessly bobbing. She seemed able neither to succumb completely nor to breathe freely and deeply of life. At times she seemed to be asking to be rescued, pulled from the waters that threatened her, that kept her from finishing law school, that made it impossible for her to attend to the responsibilities of adult life, that created chaos in her relationships. Then, just as the rescuer’s hand would near, she
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seemed to dive underwater and pop up nearby but out of reach, only to resume her endless bobbing.
Janette was viewed by many on the treatment team as a performer who delighted in her dramatic calls for help, her narrow escapes and unexpected returns. They resented this in her, called her narcissistic, saw this as something undesirable. I tried to view how she presented herself not as pathology, not as something wrong, but as pathos, as movement. I thought of how to join with her in this movement. Her flair for the dramatic and her narcissism seemed to offer points of access and were characteristics that could be used to her advantage in the studio. My role was to help her learn to use them in a way that helped her rather than hindered her.
It seemed to me that the art process might offer Janette a way to claim the truth of who she was so that she might see the possibilities lying dormant in her strong, frail, hurting, hurtful, fearful, courageous self. But I knew truth could not be found through creative flair alone. As an artist, I know that uncovering the truth of oneself comes from a mixture of letting go of control and disciplined attentiveness to the work. It seemed clear that Janette needed help with the discipline aspect of art making.
I suggested to Janette that she might try a technique called contour line drawing, as a way to help her focus. She was willing, and so we began. I set some objects on the table – a plant, a bowl, a small sculpture – and taught her how to keep her eyes focused on the object she was drawing and her pencil on the paper in a continuous line. The discipline of contour line drawing is the discipline of seeing with one’s full attention. I was afraid Janette would get distracted, restless or bored and rebel against this disciplined way of working. On the contrary, she became immediately intrigued with the process and delighted with the surprising results when she finished drawing something and could look at her image for the first time. The characteristic, slightly askew, look of the contour line drawing seemed to be pleasing to her.
After a week went by she seemed to be losing interest in this drawing method. Perhaps the discipline of it was becoming too tedious for her natural inclination toward the dramatic. On an impulse, I went into the storage room and dragged out a full-length mirror. Suspecting that her narcissism might be the key to re-engaging her in the art process I set the mirror up in front of her and said, ‘Why don’t you try a self-portrait?’ Her eyes widened in delight, as if she were surprised that here, in the art studio, it was acceptable to indulge in self-absorption, something frowned upon elsewhere. She gathered her paper and pencil and went to work.
In the weeks that followed she created many self-portraits, both during the art therapy session and at home in her sketchbook. Some were drawn with delicate pencil lines, simple impressions of herself barely visible on the page. Some were drawn with dark black charcoal and captured a fleeting expression, as if she thought no one was looking and so neither hid nor put
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herself on display (Figure 1.1). Some were drawn boldly, with fervent detail and areas of bright color (Figure 1.2).
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Figure 1.1 Self-Portrait 1
She would often ask me what I thought of her portraits. She would remark on her progress and note features that resembled herself, looking to me for agreement. Didn’t I think this one looked like her? They all did look like her, and every one of them looked different. I trusted that she was coming to know the multiplicity of her strong, frail, hurting, hurtful, fearful, courageous self and the possibilities coming to life from within her.
While Janette and I never spoke of prayer during these art therapy sessions I thought of what she did as a form of prayer. She was open to mishaps, accidents and surprises in her creations, but she also worked with disciplined attentiveness and intention. In this way she allowed herself to be open to the unfolding mystery before her. She had not done artwork since
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Figure 1.2 Self-Portrait 2
she was a child and she seemed awestruck by what came out of her hands onto the paper. She did not respond to her images as if they were something to be ‘figured out’ but rather as if they were small miracles or bits of revelation. As I sat by her and worked on my painting, my own attempt at truth, I ‘prayed’ alongside her. What I brought to the art therapy session was not religious dogma about the nature of prayer, but a religious view of art making as a form of prayer. This allowed me to approach Janette’s images, my images and the images of others working in the studio as I would any mystery. They stopped me short; I was touched deeply; I was caught up in them.
What has influenced the development of my ideas about art making as prayer making has been the tremendous sense of awe I have for the creative process. My own experiences as an artist and my experiences as an art therapist since 1980 have led me to recognize that there is something much bigger than I, much bigger than any single individual, involved in the art-making process. I have experienced it myself; I have witnessed it; I have heard other artists speak of it. It is referred to in many different ways and not always as spiritual or religious phenomena. It is the sense that people have of transcending themselves, going beyond what they considered possible, being startled or shaken or awed by the things they create. It happens when we are able to engage in art making in an intentional but not controlling way, able to actively let go. This leaves room for mystery. There is an opening up to the mystery in such a way that we are both very much involved in that mystery and simultaneously getting out of the way so that the mystery might move through us rather than have to detour around us.
It is this active letting go which enables or empowers us to change through and to be changed by art as prayer, to experience transformation.
That art therapy occurs in the context of relationships is another significant aspect of my ideas about art as prayer. While some forms of prayer emphasize a withdrawal from the world in order to connect with God, other forms of prayer, particularly those based on liberation theologies, developed out of the experi-ences of the oppressed, emphasize engagement with the world as the path to connection with God. Liberation theology provocatively suggests that the place of prayer ‘is at the center of life and not just at the borders. Prayer for others, for the poor, for the Jews at Auschwitz, when action is what is required is an abuse of prayer’ (LeFevre 1982, p.19). In a parallel vein, Suzi Gablik (1991) calls for a re-visioning of art ‘that transcends the distanced formality of aesthetics and dares to respond to the cries of the world’ (p.100). These understandings of art and of prayer are particularly relevant to my work as an art therapist with the
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mentally ill. The people who seek art therapy are often the rejected, marginalized, oppressed people of our society. I see my role as one who is ‘in the trenches’ with them, helping them to become empowered through action. I work on my own art while they work on theirs. They see me dare to put my suffering out in images painted on canvas. I see them dare to shape the hope within them out of a lump of clay. They are with me when my hope peeks through my pain, surfacing as bits of bright color or the image of a consoling figure. I am with them when their suffering becomes manifest in the clay sculpture lifted from the kiln in broken fragments. We are all changed by these courageous acts. We are not merely praying passively for the end of suffering and abuse; we are acting on it, changing the face of oppression one person at a time through the very ordinary, very miraculous act of making art. The act of creating empowers us to have a say in how we will shape and respond to the suffering and hope within us. By creating art we participate in the creation of ourselves.
Viewing art making as prayer helps keep prayer grounded in the nitty gritty
Viewing art making as prayer helps keep prayer grounded in the nitty gritty