CREATING HIS WORLD: Henry, age 7, as featured in Chapter Two of the book, Kids' Sacred Places: Rooms for Believing & Belonging. Creating the room, shown below, helped him feel better after his parent's divorce. Time has now passed and Henry will be graduating from high school in two weeks! He will go on to college with a football scholarship next fall.
Design changes lives. Many years ago I learned that a physical change in one's environment can jumpstart an overall change-in-life. When you are stuck, caught in a relationship pattern, battling illness, trapped by financial troubles or just feeling lost, a visible change in your home -- as simple as some new fabric on a chair-- can give you hope that bigger changes are possible. Chair-by-chair, a new life is reupholstered. You may already know my story, trailer park to Central Park.... my design career birthed in a humble abode with a trailer hitch! Suitably symbolizing that design can transport you to places you have only dreamed of going in life. Creativity, more specifically, gives us the imagination and ideas to help ourselves and others. With a big"C" -- Creativity -- that is the natural and supernatural force that helps us along if we choose to let it.
My most ardent belief in this creative source has led me to write books on the power of the design process in our homes to help us find peace, passion and purpose. Moving me from the practice of interior design "as a business" to the sharing of what I have learned to help serve others. Volunteering for the past several years to provide Miracle Makeovers, free-of-charge, for those who are sick or in-need, has given me even more time, and objectivity, from which to study and write about deeper processes for healing through creative means.
PROJECT: SAFE-IN-BEDSPREAD The dogs and chickens drawn by Henry and then stenciled on a sheet-bedspread, pillows and foam core headboard represented Henry's love of his Dad's farm; bringing him comfort during a time of loss and absence. Thanks again to our friend, artist Jackie Denning, for help with the low-cost sheet/bedspread/ headboard projects. Henry and Jackie's project actually looks like artist Jimmy Sasso's work on the left.
PROJECT: COMFORT CUSHION A great help for anyone experiencing loss or loneliness is a "comfort cushion". The process of painting the pillow helps to express creative energy in a positive and empowering exercise. Henry's dad had become absent because of divorce. But, became visible on this pillow, allowing Henry to express emotion and warmth by holding, squeezing or hugging it. Volunteer Jackie Denning helped Henry with the drawing. A permanent black marker on a pre-fab pillow provides a simple outline for painting it in. Acrylic paint works fine. Thank-you to the many artists and volunteers that gave time and talent to the kids in this book. They are now flourishing because of the experience.
Art Therapy, the use of creative projects to release and process thoughts and feelings, has become incorporated into my interior design practice. Painting, sculpting, drawing and other techniques enhance environments and well-being for the creator and dweller. In Kids' Sacred Places: Rooms for Believing & Belonging, I case-studied and worked with kids and families for over three years to make environments that counteracted issues like bullying and divorce, and provided healthy outlets for expressing emotions, goals and dreams. I invited other artists and designers to assist by trying-out some of the projects that found their way onto the book's pages. Nine years later, we find that most of the kids in the book, like Jasmine, featured here, have gone on to create and succeed. Some, beating depression and low-self esteem. Others are now designing the big-time life of their dreams. The process of creative design has empowered them, as it did me, long ago.
If you are creative or a professional artist, designer, builder or crafter, please consider giving your time and talent to help others. When we give of ourselves -- without regard for commerce -- the most valuable things can find there way into our lives. But, you say "one can not survive on good feelings alone." Exactly. That is why I have just re-started my interior design business after a long season-of-service. Interestingly, enough, my first new client has come to me as a fan of my give-back makeovers featured in Guideposts magazine! So, it seems life is give... and receive.
Know someone who needs the kids' book ? It was named a TOP TEN: Mind, Body & Spirit Book of The Year. And, we are providing them for FREE to those in-need until 5/14/2012 -- EXTENDED because of overwhelming response until 5/25/2012. Contact us at the upper right and share your story. Join the many therapists -- like Amy from Florida, Hephziba from the UK, Chou from the Philippines and Erin from New Zealand -- that have requested books! DGB TEAM
For more inspiration stop by The Art Therapy Blog.
