Heather Adams
Travis Martin
WRD 110
March 3 rd
, 2015
Adams 1
The Change You Want To See
I didn’t take the easy way out by majoring in art, and I won’t starve to death. I didn’t decide to minor in psychology because I couldn’t think of or decide on another.
And the type of therapy where you lie down on a couch and talk about your problems to someone that you’re paying hundreds of dollars by the hour to not give you any advice or answers isn’t the only therapy there is. So after graduation I’ve decided to pursue a career in Art Therapy. Most importantly though, you need to know what I accept to be true. I know that there is too much pain in our world, and not enough love and acceptance, I have a theory that the earlier you get involved in someone’s life the more impactful your positive interaction will be and the more time you’ll have to help, and I believe in artistic expression which, in my opinion, is the best way to become aware of ourselves.
I am tired of experiencing and witnessing pain that can be avoided. I want everyone to have the same opinion on the importance of being involved in art, knowing about it, making it, and applying the messages of other artists to ourselves. I will let you know what kind of positive impacts that the numerous options of therapy have for us, and
I want to make you aware of how vitally we need to get involved in this negatively developing social cycle and make changes by starting with our children and adolescence.

Adams
No matter what you do or where you go, you are involved in art, the only difference
2 between us is how much we realize and accept that to be true.
As much as I used to disagree, I have learned thru appreciation that anything can be art, which means that art is everywhere and we need to realize that this is a great benefit, but only if we can learn to notice how it affects us daily. There is an art to communicating, to moving, living, learning, cooking, television, music, religion, functioning, relationships, figuring out answers to questions, even to finding meaning in everything that you experience. Creativity is an art as well as a necessary perspective to have if you wish to improve yourself, which you should. Art is time, space, and all other elements of our lives that we take for granitite, and there is a huge importance in knowing how beneficial it is to not overlook how this can affect us in the most productive way.
There has been a debate going on for decades about weather or not art classes and music classes alike should be a part of the educational curriculum. As we all know, when there are budget cuts, these elective areas are the first to feel the bite. In Art Education for the
Development of the Whole Child they state, “In a fundamental way, this type of meaningful learning connects us with what it is to be human, and with what it is to live on earth.” Meaning that art is literally the expression of what it means to be alive, anything and everything that anyone has ever felt about anything that has ever happened to them or around them. No matter the artist, every work they make has a message, a reason they made their work. These messages range from social/political issues to humor, and everywhere from irony to internal and external issues we wrestle with everyday.
Keep in mind also that there are thousands of artists making as much money as any other entertainers that are still around to tell us their messages if it isn’t already prominent in

Adams their style or pieces. When you listen to a song, we usually rely on lyrics to understand
3 what the musicians are trying to tell us. But when you look at a painting, a sculpture or a film, you rely on your sight, and different parts of what you are looking at to spark connections that you will make based on what you know or your own experiences.
Sometimes art has only one interpretation that everyone sees, and other times there are multiple ways of explaining what is going on, and that is the beauty of giving so many people exposure to museums and exhibits, they bring their own stories and there own perspectives. And lastly, a quote also from Art Education for the Development of the
Whole Child when asked, why do the arts matter? “… to develop creativity and imagination, and to experience joy, beauty, and wonder. The arts also present occasions to make the ordinary special, to enrich the quality of our lives, and to develop effective ways of expressing thoughts, knowledge, and feelings.” As I’ve also noticed, art is the only other way than written text to tell us how we evolve as a people and how our cultures change, this is what makes us different from one another as a country, as a state, and from everyone else that we are sitting next to in our classes. With the example of propaganda and any lie known to man, you can write anything you want to or feel like saying, and there is a better chance that it will be a lie than if you were to speak without words. It’s more difficult to lie thru body language, and its equally as difficult to lie in a piece that you can’t force people to all read the same way every time because the experience is going to be different for everyone. It’s easier to tell someone that everything is okay than it is to say the same thing and fake how you feel in an art assignment when nobody is pressuring you to feel any particular way or to include any certain traits or signs in what you produce. To lie in your work is a waste of time because

Adams you are expressing who you are, and no one else knows what that is. If your work has
4 nothing to do about you, or involves something that you are truly passionate about, you won’t care about it, and there is no point in doing something, or anything for that matter, if you don’t care about what it is you are doing or saying. Therefore if we are showing an audience what we are thinking, what we are feeling and what it is we want to say, we are also explaining what we are experiencing in the world that we are a part of. Which concludes that the art we produce are depictions of our individual lives, which makes our culture, which will become our history that future generations will look back on to learn about our present. And our modern day is full of just as much pain as it is pleasure, an equal amount of agony to joy, and art is not only vital to our expression, but to our health, healing, and prosperity.
The general public is sensitive to the idea of therapy or asking for the help of a counselor because there is this social idea that someone must be crazy if they need mental help, when actually seeing a therapist is no different than going to a hospital to fix a broken arm with a cast, getting stitches for a bad legion or needing a prescription of antibiotics from your doctor. On the contrary, it’s the smarter alternative than continuing to suffer with the issue or even worse, attempting to self medicate. Nobody expects you to fix your own broken bones or come up with your own sinus relief, so why is it an unspoken “don’t” to ask help from a specialist if you’re experiencing PTSD, depression that may be hereditary to you, or if you haven’t already been taught how to manage anger or stress in everyday situations? As they say, there isn’t always one solution to every problem. We need to know that there are multiple types of therapy for unique situations, that there isn’t ever only one answer. Today, we have talk therapy which can be broken

Adams down into categories like couples therapy, divorce counseling, family counseling and
5 anger management, there is music therapy, animal assisted therapy (service animals that assist patients with anxiety), hypnotherapy (often used to help against addictions), group therapy, and music therapy (often for anxiety, wounded warriors, depression, etc.) which is most closely related to my interest and passion. My career focus interest is art therapy, which by two different definitions are described as follows. First from Google as, “ A form of psychotherapy involving the encouragement of free self-expression through painting, drawing, or modeling used as a remedial activity or aid to diagnosis.” So it’s a form of therapy specifically to painting, drawing and modeling to either express yourself or to diagnose a patient. With what though are we diagnosing? And if it’s only selfexpression why don’t we just pick our own outfits and call it a day? Let’s look to another definition for a less vague explanation, from The American Art Therapy Ass., “A mental health profession that uses the creative process of making to improve the physical, mental, and emotional well-being of all ages. It is based on the belief that the creative process involved in artistic self-expression helps people to resolve conflicts and problems, develop interpersonal skills, manage behavior, reduce stress, increase selfesteem and self-awareness, and achieve insight.” So now we know the goals of this approach, to help patience that suffer from traumatic experience to help either communicate what happened, or to help cope with what happened with the help of a trained professional to better there everyday lives and interactions with other people. This practiced was formalized in the mid 20 th
century but best explained, “People have been using the arts to express, communicate and heal for thousands of years.” As you can imagine, healing can be reconnecting with what you find important by learning about

Adams your own strengths and weaknesses thru some sort of meditation, often this meditation
6 can be making art, most commonly painting or designating time to sit down with a book or listening to music, all three are art. There are also situations that draw the attention of educators in which a child will draw dramatic but simple pictures of abuse they endure outside of school. Physically as we know a body in motion stays in motion, so things like dance and again painting or even pottery are extremely beneficial to older ages that suffer from various forms of arthritis. When it comes to diagnosis it’s easier for a therapist to compare patients that are asked to draw exercises like themselves climbing a mountain including opsticals they feel like are keeping them from the top, or that they’ve gone thru already in their climb. Depending on what opsticals they include; weather they draw themselves closer to the bottom, in the middle, towards the top, or reclining down the other side; weather or not they gave themselves shoes or a backpack; or even what the weather is like can tell a lot about how they feel and their goals for the future or what kind of issues they may be suffering from. As you can imagine, someone that is struggling with depression would most likely place himself or herself near the bottom, stuck behind an opstical in bad weather with no support (backpack and shoes) from anyone else. Just this simple exercise that takes about a half an hour gives up more information than talk therapy could’ve attained in multiple sessions, when comparing with other subjects you can gauge the level of trauma, and the patients themselves can see what they are working thru after explanation of the meaning behind the exercise. Because this approach of therapy is already directed towards bettering the communication of people, developing self-esteem and aiding in traumatic recovery, I believe the impact it

Adams will continue to have on adolescence and younger children today will help improve our
7 culture and reestablish core values that are slowly but noticeably vanishing.
As we can all agree, newer generations, including ourselves but mostly our youngers, are increasingly rude, lack appreciation and are missing the sensitivity and compassion for others that a working society can’t do without. From
The Death of Manners
, “94 of
Americans believe the general tone and level of civility in the U.S. is a problem.” Also, this website goes on to say that aggressive driving has increased 60% since 2001. As a secondary source, an article published by ABC News quotes, “More than one-third of
1,000 people polled rate the manners of Americans as poor.” Simple manners that we are taught to use by family, by teachers, to friends, adults and strangers alike are the very first step in how we learn to treat people. I had only heard the first line of this quote until
I researched this topic for my paper, but in its entirety Will Bowen captures my belief of this cycle we need to change, “Hurt people hurt people. We are not being judgmental by separating ourselves from such people. But we should do so with compassion.
Compassion is defined as [keen awareness of the suffering of another coupled with a desire to see it relieved.] People hurt others as a result of their own inner strife and pain.
Avoid the reactive response of believing they are bad. They already think so and are acting that way. They aren’t bad; they are damaged and they deserve compassion. Note that compassion is an internal process, an understanding of the painful and troubled road trod by another.” From that quote I would like us to challenge ourselves not to just feel compassion for those that have suffered, but to reach out and replace their pain with love and acceptance, because with that change there comes a domino effect. When you take someone that otherwise would’ve been left in an abusive situation expected to fend for

themselves, and shower them with kindness, understanding, affection, love and
Adams 8 understanding, their walls will come down. Sometimes it’s as simple as listening when someone is talking regardless of weather or not your interested, and sometimes it’s months of sitting down with the same person and learning a little bit more about their story every session. Instead of kids staying at home to watch their parents fight, or left alone to think about the fact that they are stuck in foster care, I will in time open a studio for them to get away and make art without being told what to feel, but how to learn from it and how to grow as individuals. I want to take the pain of other people and let them transform it for themselves into pieces of work that they are proud of, that they can share with other people, and that they can look back to as they progress. Art has been my single outlet of self-expression, what I consider to be the most raw form of captured emotion that isn’t tainted by other people’s opinion. As a creator I am forced to think creatively which won’t only help me in the working world, but will greatly impact how I communicate with other people. With this growth of self-awareness and confidence in who we are, people will grow with less hatred, their drive to hurt other people will be weakened because they themselves are more content and loving due to the help that they received. I want this acceptance for everyone from all backgrounds, and as a goal now, I expect to see myself transform as a person to then change how we all view each other.
So in the entirety of this topic, who disagrees with the importance of being aware of art in our every day lives? Like I previously mentioned there is an on-going debate on weather or not to keep funding the arts in our school systems. I predict that they won’t ever be completely removed, but the only two reasons that I found for people to think this was a good idea was so that we could spend more time covering math and science. I

Adams agree that both of these subjects are equally as important to that of the arts because the
9 two work hand in hand. Curiosity stems from having a different perspective about something and not necessarily agreeing with every fact that you’ve been told. However, we must know measurements, how to build structures, how to measure time and the formulas that are crucial to understanding what science has discovered about our world.
And the only other reason that I have found to support taking these extracurriculars out is because they cannot be graded on a right or wrong basis. Correct, there is not a strict grading rubric to follow as a teacher. However, you can grade the measurement of time a student put into their work, if they were willing to reach outside of their comfort zones to discover and develop more about their talents and their passions. In art studio classes that
I am currently enrolled in, we do not have exams, we have critiques where we present our individual work and hear constructive criticism from both our instructors and peers. And there is a grading sheet attached to each project that includes a 0(being the worst) -
5(being the best) grading scale that includes the following subjects: creativity and idea generation; interesting composition in the round (specific to my sculpture class), creative use of materials; creative interpretation of assignment; interesting selection of original subject matter; quality of craft and overall problem solving, effort, experimentation, revision and improvement. No, we do not have a right or wrong way of being graded, but we do have criteria to follow, goals to meet, hours of work to put in both researching and in labor, and revisions to make all in the sake of learning. So why does it matter that we all help each other improve our minds, bodies, and the way we interact with each other?
Because we are sick of watching the news and hearing about hate crimes, murders, and other dysfunctions that can be avoided. Accidents happen, but grace, that undeserved

Adams forgiveness is taught. Compassion, caring about total strangers, is learned. Wanting to
10 help people not because you will be rewarded, but because we want to see others succeed, is something that we learn from other people. Wouldn’t you rather your tax money go to filling pot holes in the road rather than feeding someone that will be sitting on death row for years because the only way they knew how to handle their problems was thru violence? Isn’t it better to teach our children to enjoy the sports they play rather than being focused on stepping on their teammates for a spotlight moment? Would it not be ideal to return to the way it used to be before people put two dead-bolt locks on every door and fought animals to the death for entertainment? The moment that you stop being aware of other people is the moment that you are putting yourself and others in danger because of your carelessness. Pay attention to what it is that the world is saying to you, what we hold that is beautiful, what we want to see change and the good that comes with the ugly. I believe that the American Indians had it right in saying, “Only when the last tree has been cut down; Only when the last river has been poisoned; Only when the last fish has been caught; Only then will you find that money cannot be eaten.”