Artifact I: Mask Art Directive

In my Art Therapy Materials and Techniques class, I completed a mask-making art directive.  To begin, I scaled up a doodle of an irregular polygon with many intersecting triangular and square perspectival planes.  In a symbolic sense, I felt this polygon represented my complex identity as a Jewish lesbian.  My doodle’s dynamic geometry couldn’t be neatly categorized into a standardized format, such as a cube or oval.  Instead, it transcended my facial anatomy, breaking down established boundaries with its multiple intersecting perspectives.

​

During this semester, I had been going through a depressive episode due to stepping away from my new job and local synagogue, which evoked feelings of disappointment, loss, and grief.  My sense of belonging had become fragile and I was working hard to maintain an internal sense of self-worth.  To locate my displaced self, I need to retrace my steps, reaffirm my fundamental values as a human being, and reestablish an authentic connection with HaShem.  Making a mask couldn’t have come at a better time, because I genuinely needed this art directive to reconstruct my identity and heal myself.

​

The moment of truth came when I pulled my mask over my face and tied the braided strings around the back of my head.  When I looked in the mirror, I had an affective experience seeing myself wearing my inner identity as an externalized art object.  I stared at my eyes through the red mylar film and felt a sense of raw anger that transformed into empowerment and determination.  Ultimately, I realized I was unwilling to compromise my values to fit into flawed manmade institutions.  My spiritual core has always been creating art, sharing meaningful experiences with friends, and spending quality time in nature.  This is how I heal and sustain myself and is the basis for which I will become a healer and help others.  Designing my mask felt like reclaiming myself and moving forward in the true spirit of all that I am.

Please click here to read my full essay reflection.
 

Artifact II: Action Research Project

In my Research Methods class, I completed an action research project focusing on monitoring and regulating my emotions and behaviors.  I hypothesized whether painting for at least two hours per week could reduce my depression symptoms.  Through this project, I wanted to know more about how non-directive painting’s measurable and trackable mechanisms of action were efficacious in lowering my depression symptoms.  Therefore, I had two goals: 1) to gain more awareness about how painting heals my depression, and 2) to discover more healing tools for myself (and potentially my clients) in my practice as an art therapist.  Knowing more about how to measure and understand my healing may help me better sustain my practice and apply similar research strategies to my work with clients.

My action research process involved encountering three major obstacles, implementing solutions, utilizing quantitative measuring and qualitative tracking, and receiving three rounds of creative insights from critical friends.  As a result, my quantitative PHQ-9 depression scores dropped from 19 to 13 over seven weeks.  Further, my qualitative results involved five major conclusions.  First, painting became a proxy for resolving my depression.  Problem-solving through issues within a painting’s composition created more neuroplasticity and resilience over time.  For example, I “messed up” a painting one week, then discovered a better solution than my original idea the following week.  Second, self-efficacy increased through my ability to scaffold joy and accomplish my goals despite feeling depressed.  Third, I built self-compassion via painting, which is strongly linked to my self-concept.  Fourth, I found that studio sessions in which I listened to music and focused entirely on my paintings increased my anti-depressant flow states.  And fifth, less procedural and more spontaneous painting approaches also increased my anti-depressant flow states.​

​

Please click the image below to read my full presentation.

Artifact III: Light Figure Presentation

In my Consciousness II class, I chose the Jewish-American poet Emma Lazarus as my Light Figure and wrote a poem to integrate my epigenetic Jewish trauma.  Emma Lazarus was an author and progressive activist who lived from 1849 to 1887.  Lazarus was a creative challenger and her foremost Light Figure quality includes her contribution towards the collective liberation of the Jewish-American immigrant community through creative writing, social advocacy, vocational training, and volunteer support.  A descendent of Portuguese Sephardic Jews who fled the Spanish Inquisition, Lazarus had a spiritual knowing that called her to aid the Ashkenazi Jewish refugees who fled to America from the bloody anti-Semitic pogroms of Eastern Europe.  Between 1880 and 1924, it is estimated that as many as 3 million Ashkenazi Jews came through Ellis Island.  This historical paradigm set the stage for Emma’s socially charged subject matter, which countered the extreme levels of anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic narratives (e.g., “the Jewish problem” debate) that were occurring in response to these new immigrant communities.  When she wrote the Statue of Liberty’s “The New Colossus” poem, her multicultural ethos was incredibly unpopular and the first anti-immigrant laws were being enacted.  Today, it is easy to take her radical hard-won truth for granted as something that has always been foundational to American values.

Emma’s story is personal to me because these were the same horrific Russian pogroms that my Ashkenazi Jewish grandfather had later fled when he arrived at Ellis Island as a child refugee in the early 1900s.  Upon revisiting the Statue of Liberty, which is inscribed with Lazarus’ poem titled “The New Colossus”, my elderly grandfather wept.  Lazarus’s work as a Jewish author and activist inspires me to think about how I might also embody loving power to support the Jewish community, which is currently experiencing extreme levels of anti-Semitism.  For my Light Figure presentation, I honored Emma’s historic contributions to the Jewish-American community by sharing poems about my Jewish family’s immigrant history in America.  My poem traversed a one hundred and fifty-year span of history and was divided into three parts: 1) two of Emma’s poems, titled “The New Colossus” and “The New Ezekiel", 2) the first half of my father's poem he had written for my grandfather’s 75th birthday about his life story as a Jewish immigrant in America, and 3) my poem about me and my family's life in the Jewish-American diaspora.

​

Please click the image below to read my full essay reflection and presentation.