SYMBOLS & IMAGERY
HEALING THROUGH ART THERAPY ”Getting Rid of the Block”

Saturday, November 22nd. 9:30 am to 3:30 pm.
DARLA FISHER-ODJIG

Canadian Native Fine Artist, Art Therapist, D.T.A.T.I, Mental Health Therapist
http://fisherodjigstudio.spaces.live.com/http://fisherodjigstudio.spaces.live.com/

What is Art Therapy?

Clinical Rationale

Art Therapy is a form of psychotherapeutic processing with the emphasis on spontaneous symbolic representation. This encompasses the use of both verbal and nonverbal communication (simple art materials-paints, pastels, markers etc.) to facilitate assessment and therapeutic connectedness of a holistic nature re: mind, heart, body and spirit of the individual.
Extraction

The bright vibrant colors represent a need for recognition, validation. The repetitiveness of the hand imaging  may suggest that by repeating the emotional experience (trauma related) the issue may be altered or changed. The red signifies the anger emanating within. Also the yellow is reflective of the hope and calmness existing dually as a coping mechanism. The affect brought forth regarding the black was indicative of the power within and central to the trauma itself, the positioning of it represented that it was safely tucked and nurtured by the anger (red). Protected and screened by all other emotions within. By extracting these images the client was able to process through issues that were draining energy and blocking the individuals creative sense. Spontaneous imaging allowed restrictive movement otherwise bound to a sense of release without judgment or need for perfection and restraint.

Benefits

Art is an alternative therapy through imaging and spontaneity giving psychological release as awareness; acknowledgment and acceptance warrant a vision into managing what is processed regarding psychological blocks (barriers). This safe environment and holding place becomes a vessel in which the individual can express his or her issues by non-verbal means. It is believe that “art therapy represents unconscious hereditary factors of primordial origin,” past forced character mapping that through the art and its symbolic imagery allows for a phenomenon to occur.  This lends to a less intrusive experience and much safer tool for engaging and experiencing issues that may be blocking an artist’s creative light. It is an epiphany of phenomenon, enhancing the individuals’ connectedness within themselves thus enabling healthy external acceptance of environmental factors and a healthier interaction with others. (Getting out of the way of yourself).

Art and symbols also have been a means of communication by the Aboriginal people through rock paintings, through mother earth, through ceremony. Their connection with the earth by way of mind, heart (emotion), body and spirit is important and this is relayed through symbols and art. The pictographs are but one way that the history was preserved etched into the walls of a rock, buried in the belly of mother earth, protected and preserved and kept safe. Part of “Creative Intellect” is guiding and teaching creativity from birth to elder. This is done through storytelling and paintings. These are all part of imaging-imagining, being creative and allowing what is in our hearts and our minds onto paper.
Longfellow was deeply interested in pictography, and gave the best and briefest description of nine symbols that has ever been compiled.  It is given in the following verse from Hiawatha,

“For the earth he drew a straight line,
For the sky a bow above it;
White the space between for day-time,
Filled with little stars for night-time;
On the left a point for sunrise,
On the right a point for sunset,
On the top a point for noontide,
And for rain and cloudy weather
Waving lines descending from it.”
William Tomkins

http://www.inquiry.net/outdoor/native/sign/pictographs.htm

D. Fisher Odjig finished her formal education in Art Therapy at the Toronto Art Therapy Institute in 2003. Her internship consisted of counseling children, adolescence and adult individuals through symbolic imaging which included a 1500 hour practicum. The symbolic imaging proved successful between not only children but also adults as this modality promotes an alternative to verbal therapy and emphasizes creative abstraction toword stimulating the mind and its need for creative thought process. D. Fisher Odjigs’ work consists of one on one counseling, child and parent and group facilitation regarding behavioral problems and identity issues in both. Boundary setting, behavioral modification and self esteem issues are part of the art therapy process