Q. You have come upon an intriguing concept--that people can explore themselves using works of art. Could you explain this idea for our listeners?
A. I came upon this idea as a longstanding lover of art. It is simply this: Art Healing is a communion with a work of art for emotional healing, for psychological insight. You use art as a springboard for exploration of your inner self. And you can really tap into power embedded in visual art to transform yourself, by yourself.
Q. What if you know nothing about art? Do you need some kind of special knowledge? I say this because there are people who might feel intimidated by art so that they've never really spent any time in art museums.
A. I'm glad you asked this question, especially at the beginning of the interview. I came upon this process because for me art has provided a way to get out of my head-this is my tendency. I tend to overthink and intellectualize everything and you might notice I will do this as I provide examples to your questions--so if I do this feel free to stop me! So for me, even as I had studied art in college, and loved it, I realized that I used art primarily as a way to help myself emotionally. So I want to tell all of your listeners that anyone can do this. Anyone. In the beginning when you are face to face with a work-whether it's a painting, or a sculpture, or a performance piece, or a looping piece of video you might encounter in a dark room in a gallery, or even, the kind of art that asks you to physically do something-it is best to just be there and have the experience, even if you don't know what the art is about, even if you don't know if what your looking at is art. The key is to be open to the experience.
I want listeners also to realize that this is a process and that you will be forging a relationship, a personal relationship, with a work of art. And if you are not one to pay attention to art, after learning more about art healing, you find that you notice the sculpture in the waiting area of your dentist's office. And you notice it not just as decoration, but as something that could be useful for you personally. And then you, of course, start to notice more and more possibilities for improving your life-just by looking at objects, at pieces of art.
This realization is like looking at those weird magic-eye posters that were popular a few years ago. What looks like a lot of incoherent garbage-markings that look like nothing at all-all of a sudden pop out at you when you relax your eyes in such a way-and you're then staring not at nothing, but instead at a wildly 3-D image that wasn't there a moment ago. This is what it was like for me when I was in college and noticed that art was more than just paint and pretty pictures. But instead that art was alive-that it was a living and breathing thing, that even if the work I was looking at was from hundreds of years ago, that it could make me feel something today, right now. And that it could mean something very special, very personal.
So there is a kind of point you reach in art healing where if you've never done this before, you will get to the point where you begin to see not just what may be for you another boring picture of fruits and vegetables on a table, but instead a jumping off point for feeling better in some way. Now art will seem to pop out at you-all of a sudden all the paintings and objects you would ordinarily ignore now seem to register differently. They become alive, and multi-dimensional.
Q. Well, I'm thinking, what if you go to the museum and try to connect with a work, but nothing really interests you. What then?
A. If this is your first time in a museum or an art gallery, the fact that you've been moved to go there in the first place is an achievement. It says you are open to making changes in your life. But if you are not moved or interested, then you leave and try other places. This is a process. It would be like going to a therapist for the first visit and expecting that somehow you' have some earth-shattering realization or cure. This is the start of an enjoyable and powerful lifelong process.
Now I have a certain bias in that I feel that more contemporary works of art seem to lend themselves more readily to art seeking.
One example is a work of art that contains no paint, no drawing, no sculpture. Instead it's a work of art that simply asks the viewer, or participant rather, to do something. In one case it was a kind of plank, like you might find on a pirate ship, that you walk to the edge of. And then you're supposed to jump several feet down below onto very thick mats that help to break your fall. That's it. That's the art. And when you do this you have had an experience. And this experience is something that you can use-you can remember, you remember the feeling you had, you might compare this feeling to the difficulties you have in your life, in your emotional life. You could do a lot of different things with this-but the point is that you have just had an art experience. You have just let yourself experience art. This is the beginning.
Q. Wow. It's amazing how art can take so many different forms. I would imagine you can find art all over the place?
A. Yes. I am thinking about one incredible work of art installed in Central Park a few years ago called The Gates by Cristo. There was saffron-colored material draped over over 7,000 16-foot tall rectangular arches. They were placed over the walkways within central Park and were accessible to anyone. And for every one of thousands upon thousands of viewers of this work. So to go and experience this art requires no deep understanding of the work, the artist, but just that you let yourself try out this new experience. When one art seeker told me she felt like she was but a small child again pulling at her mother's skirts when she walked beneath the flowing nylon, it became a deeper exploration of her own childhood. Art stimulated that. Art was in a moment, as it induced a feeling or a memory, became for her more powerful and more incisive than any session of regular psychotherapy.
Q. How is this different from the branch of psychotherapy known as art therapy?
A. Art healing is distinctly different from art therapy. In art therapy you might be asked by a therapist to don a smock and soften clay or paint something. Art healing requires none of this. In art seeking you don't get your physical hands dirty. There is so much art all around us that already exists-made by artists over the centuries including that made in recent years-that we simply can begin to avail ourselves of what may be the greatest untapped resource for psychological healing.
Q. And you do what with the art exactly? What do you mean by communion?
A. By communion I mean a very personal, private back-and-forth between you, a human being with your unfathomably complex psyche, and a single work of visual art, the end result of an artist's creative process. By spending time with this personally meaningful work of art-something that significantly captures your attention-you begin a dialogue within yourself and across the space separating you with the object. Now when I say significantly captures your attention, this is harder to convey as the work may be intriguing or disturbing or delightful, it could be familiar or scary or strange or haunting. The point is that there is something about the work you've chosen that somehow seems to have your name written on it. It's this work-even if you don't know why it is so compelling to you-even if it challenges you, or makes you feel scared or angry or happy, or perhaps you are not sure how it makes you feel, but seems to ‘pop out' amidst all the other works you've viewed that day in the gallery or museum. This is the work that you might use for this purpose, what I am calling art seeking.
Q. Let's really make this come alive for our listeners. Walk us through your process of art healing-a personal trip.
A. OK. I enter the museum. I walk through the entire museum (or as much as seems sufficient to cast a wide enough net to capture a work or two for my closer examination). During the first go-round I am making mental notes of which work or works seem to resonate with something inside of me, or intrigue me, or stimulate me such that I may want to return to it later. And so then, I will go through the museum a second time-but this time I head straight for the work that seemed so personally intriguing.
And I look at the work again, and I am in no rush when I do this. I examine the work from different angles, from close up, from a few steps back. And I sit with the work, much as a good therapist has the client sit with their feelings.
