ART AS THERAPY

As creators, we formulate in material imageries representing and expressing our inner world. Moreover, our physical contact with the material prior to imagery manifestation carries immense impact upon our inner world and its further expression in imagery.
 

The workshop investigates the meeting point between these two realms - the material which opens the gate and brings us closer to our inner world, and imagery which represents our personal-inner world.

Engagement with material through sensory and movement is commonly termed "regressive", as it seemingly returns the creator to an early undeveloped developmental stage. The workshop offers a renewed approach to the meaning of material experience as an essential inspirational basis and as key to all creative experience and development.

The workshop will include experimentation in the sensory experience of contact with various materials. We will learn how to be in this state and deepen our familiarization with materials, and how this process expands affective space. We will experience the meaning of "merging" into the material and the transformative impact of being in material space. We will observe and experience "emerging" into the imagery and learn about the emotions which accompany each action. This will be followed by free creation and summarized by a discussion analyzing and conceptualizing the process.

Ronithah Heymann PhD
Arts therapist (art and drama), instructor and supervisor at Tel-Hai Academic College, inventor of an innovative Arts Therapy assessment tool based on the creative process, and coined the concept of the 'inner spectator' as a therapeutic element in Drama Therapy and Arts Therapy.