There is Still Compassion…

I wrote this 3 years ago….It is still relevant today…

100 Cups of Compassion

I have been painting, just not posting, or blogging about the 100 Cups of Compassion. I am still painting these little cups and I am still giving them away… friends, co-workers and family. They all own a small piece of compassion that I hope will remind them to also share the compassion whenever they can. But I have a confession or maybe it is just an observation. Last night my son came home and told me about an old women in a wheel chair that was hanging out up the street at the soup kitchen. He pushed her into a parking lot on his way home last night at her request. She was carrying on a nice conversation with him until a man from the soup kitchen came over and told her she had to leave the parking lot as it was private property. I guess at that point she…

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There is Still Compassion…

I have been painting, just not posting, or blogging about the 100 Cups of Compassion. I am still painting these little cups and I am still giving them away… friends, co-workers and family. They all own a small piece of compassion that I hope will remind them to also share the compassion whenever they can. But I have a confession or maybe it is just an observation. Last night my son came home and told me about an old women in a wheel chair that was hanging out up the street at the soup kitchen. He pushed her into a parking lot on his way home last night at her request. She was carrying on a nice conversation with him until a man from the soup kitchen came over and told her she had to leave the parking lot as it was private property. I guess at that point she began to get a little “nasty” and was, in my son’s opinion, clearly suffering from mental illness. Here is my confession, I saw this women yesterday at the soup kitchen and thought she might be there to help in some way until I noticed the pile of “stuff” all around her. I also noticed that when I walked the dogs this morning she was still outside in her wheel chair. Did she sleep out there last night, in front of the soup kitchen? Surely they took her in? They have shelters there. Surely they let her have a hot meal and had some one there to help her shower? Surely? Maybe? She is about 80 or older and can not manage by herself. Surely someone was there to help? But it dawned on me that maybe there wasn’t. Maybe, due to her mental illness she won’t take any help or won’t let anyone near her….. How do you help her? Where can she go? One of my cups of compassion will not help this situation. Christ calls us to love even the marginalized, smelly, old, hostile homeless people. I will do the best I can because I didn’t do anything yesterday when I saw her.  I will enquire about her at the soup kitchen/shelter but will it be enough? This was a big reminder to me that all of us need to keep trying to help no matter how hard it may be. Share your compassion always…………..

Advocacy and Visability

When overlooking my Strategic Communications plan the first question asked was this;

What issue is most important to your organization right now?

For the Veterans Creating for Community or VCC it is an easy answer:

FUNDING: Finding funding so that all veterans in our community can come and create using art as a form of fun, healthy living and a welcome diversion to physical and mental challenges.

I believe that all programs have this issue but I also believe that advocating and making your program visible to your surrounding community and possible stakeholders is very important to finding and receiving funds in the form of grants, donations and sponsorships. The better you can convey your need and educate your stakeholders on why your program is so important to your community the better chance you have of receiving support.

Our mission is to help Veterans create a community through engaging in all artistic mediums as a way to improve health, build relationships and share in community projects.

Our vision is to improve the mental and physical health of not only the veterans in the PRRC program with the local VA, but to also include all veterans in our community who want to practice all forms of art making for health, wellness and fun.

More and more we are seeing how making art is helping veterans to overcome physical and mental challenges and sometimes it is easier for a stakeholder to witness or view visually how a program is doing than to read a brochure or letter. For this reason I have attached a power point that I used to get funding from a small grant competition last year as well as a multi media slide show that I created today. VCC New Power Point  and Veterans Creating for Community Old power point.

If I were to use either of these I would expand on each of them with more stats and pictures. I enjoy using the multimedia tools for my creative outlet as it is a big switch from my usual painting and I believe, when expanded upon, stakeholders can get a better idea of how the VCC program is run.

Humans of Oldsmar…..

That does not sound quit as exciting as Humans of New York. Most people in this country have heard of Brandon Stanton’s Art Initiative Humans of New York. Brandon photographs every day people in New York City and lets them give a brief story about anything that they would like people to know about them. He photographs them in their “natural habitat”. The stories are funny, happy, sad and at times evoke compassion in the viewer.

Today while I was sitting at Nosh Cafe in Oldsmar FL working on my 100 Cups of Compassion initiative I struck up a conversation with 3 tourists visiting from MN. They asked me what I was doing with my paintings and I was happy to engage them in the history of 100 Cups but the conversation quickly became about the weather. I find it so interesting, being a native born Floridian that people think the weather here is so wonderful. I know it is because they are only here for the one month that it is not oppressively hot and these folks were not unlike any of the others.

As we talked about how the weather was on the other 360 days of the year, Angela picked out a cup of compassion. She told me how she missed painting and used to paint all of the time. I talked to her about my degree in Arts In Medicine and she shared with me a story about her friend who was in a deep depression and had chronic pain. She coaxed her friend to go with her and paint at a local studio and shared how freeing it ended up being for her friend and that for those few hours her pain was not a part of her life.

In the end I was glad that Angela had taken a painting. She understood compassion. She helped her friend by using creativity and in return, I hope I showed her a little bit of compassion through creativity myself.

Humans of Oldsmar

Thank You!

the Nature of Relationships & Ethos, Values and Standards.

I think in every good relationship it is important to say thank you. Aristotle tells us that three things “Inspire confidence in the rhetor’s [speaker’s/writer’s] own character-the three, namely, that induce us to believe a thing apart from any proof of it: good sense, good moral character, and goodwill (Henning, M. 1998, August 1). In the Art in Health field one can get very attached when working with groups of individuals for long periods of time and I am not immune to this human feeling. I have worked with my VCC or Veterans Creating for Community group for over a year now and I will be moving on soon to another area in Florida. While looking for a replacement to instruct and help grow the program I knew it had to be someone special. This group is wonderful and they deserve fresh ideas and a compassionate and happy replacement. Through a friend I met an artist and former veteran herself, who will be taking over the program. I believe it is important to make sure that the new instructor knows the group dynamics and how to ease into the atmosphere. She has done an excellent job. It is for this reason I thank my friend Laura (a fellow artist) for introducing me to our new instructor and my replacement and to let her know how excited I am that I can feel confident leaving this program in such competent hands.

Recently the new instructor and myself have been working together on projects with the veterans group. The pictures below are some of our recent work and a collage of compassion that I worked on as a member (rather than instructor) of the group today.

 

Refrences

Henning, M. (1998, August 1). Notes: Ethos Pathos Logos – The Three Artistic Proofs. Retrieved March 11, 2015, fromhttps://docs.google.com/document/d/1Zkpy7DBDhGI5QfrWHx1okPUWf7z2ZkRZrlc2U05vZbE/edit (Links to an external site.)

Ode to the Elecorn

It started off as a simple gesture. Go to The Hause Coffee, paint, enjoy the day and give away some free art as a form of compassion in my community. I sat with a friend and listened to chatter around me. There were businessmen conducting meetings by phone, twenty somethings discussing religion, mothers with babies and bikers dodging in and out for their fix. It was quite relaxing really and it was fun to sit and paint with a friend. It was even nicer to give away what was being painted. People really are appreciative. Then, as we were closing up shop, Jeser walked in and enquired about the paintings. Jeser, an artist in his own right picked out a cup of compassion to take home. He was in his early 40’s, curly hair and cap on his head. He carried an intricately painted back pack. It was for his medical supplies. He was diabetic. He had also lost his short term memory in a motorcycle accident. His journal helped him through the day. We talked about his work in glass, his stencils and memory loss. The conversation only lasted about 15 minutes. His claim to fame as an artist is the Elecorn, half elephant half unicorn. I hope he becomes famous someday.

Ode to the Elecorn (Conversations in a Coffee Shop)

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you…. I love these! I already had a huge muffin! Thank you, Bye!

Hello, yes, let me go outside……I don’t really care….Just for the time being….

Yes, Jeser, J-e-s-e-r. This is how I remember, oil markers draw my memories.

OH MY ELECORN! They are everywhere! Take one of my stencils. I give most of my art away. The Elecorn is going to be famous. A professor at Ringling is documenting them.

Thank you for the Elecorn and it was nice meeting you….

The Ultimate Gift of Life

Recently I was struck by the story of the cells of Henrietta Lacks (HeLa cells) an African American women who died of cervical cancer. Her cells were harvested and used for science. Based on a book by Rebecca Skloot NPR interviewed Skloot who said that Lacks was a poor Southern tobacco farmer who was being treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins University when her doctor reserved samples of her body tissue for his research. Lacks died of cancer 60 years ago, but her cells — taken without her knowledge or consent — are still alive today (Skloot, R., 2013) There are literally trillions of her cells that have been kept alive and have been used for treatment and research for cancer. Although her cells have helped to cure diseases like polio the question of ethics must still be taken into account. These cells were harvested at a time when doctors did not tell patients what they were doing and it was common practice to do these things for the betterment of the masses in medicine. While I believe that we can not change the past, I look at what those cells have done in the past 60 years. In my eyes Ms. Lacks lives on in those cells that are helping so many live longer lives. This unforeseen act of compassion by Lacks prompted me to paint her cells which, under a microscope are just as beautiful as the gift they have become to so many.

HeLa Cells

‘Immortal’ Cells Of Henrietta Lacks Live On In Labs

References

Skloot, R. (2013, February 18). ‘Immortal’ Cells Of Henrietta Lacks Live On In Labs. Retrieved March 2, 2015, from http://www.npr.org/2013/02/18/171937818/immortal-cells-of-henrietta-lacks-live-on-in-labs

Painting Emotion

Even though I live in Florida and we are not getting pelted by huge snow storms and subzero degree weather, it is still possible to feel a little “blue” at times. Today I am working on an Art Therapy directive entitled Emotion Painting. You can find the directive here. http://www.kinderart.com/painting/emotion.shtml (how appropriate for me that it is under the name kinderart.) :0) This directive asks you to paint your emotions. There are quite a few directions on how to approach this directive that an Art Therapist would want to explore, but as an AIR, I just used the first 3

1.Talk about emotion. What does the word emotion mean? What kinds of emotions do we experience on a day-to-day basis

2.Talk about color. How do certain colors make us feel? Why?

3.Talk about line. What kinds of lines are there? Straight, jagged, squiggly, zig-zag, etc.

Today I was feeling chilly! Although I can look out of my window and see the sun is brightly shining and there is no snow, I know that by Florida standards it is very cold outside and the wind is strong. When I went to put paint to canvas all I could think about was how cool it was outside and the noise of the wind. It prompted me to use “snowy” colors and want to paint in wispy strokes. My painting does not depict what it looks like outside, but depicts how I feel inside. Where I might use this directive to start a creative exercise with a patient, as an AIR I would not use the full directive in having a patient explore how they feel or what they are thinking. I will stick to my snowy scene just for the fact that I feel cold today.

Poetry/Biblio Therapy Writing or Reading Poetry to Help With Grief.

In art therapy, many different models are in use, ranging from Gestalt to Freudian. Some art therapists see themselves as closer to psychologist than artist; many practice analytically, some practice transpersonal therapy. An awareness of projection, transference and counter-transference, a knowledge of the effects of trauma in infancy, or later abuse, and a working knowledge of mental illness all form a practical basic training. But therapeutic writing – or whatever it may be called – may not need such a psychologically oriented approach as Art Therapy. In the American Poetry/Biblio Therapy model, emphasis is placed on the selection of material, careful supervision and a structured approach, although at least basic counseling skills and some kind of qualification as a writer are required before training (Flint, R., Hamiliton, F., & Williamson, C. 2004, January 1). Writing can be very therapeutic to some. It can help to get your thoughts down about issues you may be having. We all have heard of journaling and may have even tried it or rely on it today. But, I found peace and solace in actually reading a poem that a friend of mine sent to me after I had gone through a rough summer of multiple deaths of family and friends. I believe in the power of writing for therapy, but sometimes there is also power in reading. 

Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away to the next room. I am I and you are you. Whatever we were to each other, That, we still are.

Call me by my old familiar name. Speak to me in the easy way which you always used. Put no difference into your tone. Wear no forced air of solemnity or sorrow.

Laugh as we always laughed at the little jokes we enjoyed together. Play, smile, think of me. Pray for me. Let my name be ever the household word that it always was. Let it be spoken without effect. Without the trace of a shadow on it.

Life means all that it ever meant. It is the same that it ever was. There is absolute unbroken continuity. Why should I be out of mind because I am out of sight?

I am but waiting for you. For an interval. Somewhere. Very near. Just around the corner.All is well.

Henry Scott Holland

•  http://www.lapidus.org.uk/index.php/core-competencies-for-practitioners/

Flint, R., Hamiliton, F., & Williamson, C. (2004, January 1). Lapidus.org.uk. Retrieved February 11, 2015, from http://www.lapidus.org.uk/index.php/core-competencies-for-practitioners/

Create Your Own Anxiety Tool Kit

For this directive I found a great website that has art therapy and expressive therapy ideas (Kostelyk, S. 2013, August 23). Although the creator of this site uses the ideas with her child and talks about her child using them in therapy, I found that one in particular could be used for anyone that may be experiencing anxiety, PTSD or nervousness for any reason. The directive is to create your own anxiety tool kit. The author of the blog goes into a very in depth discussion on how to use this directive. The author states that “What you want to do in essence is create a toolbox of tools that they can pull out when they need them. You want to give them the strategies and confidence to be able to manage their stress and anxiety on their own.”(Kostelyk, S. 2013, August 23). She also gives ideas on how to use prompts, creating cards that will help to guide or give ideas on how to relax and she is quick to add that when you use this directive you should have already spent time with your child teaching them how and when to use the tool kit. She is very thorough in here presentation on her blog. I decided to put together my own anxiety tool kit using the object that I feel keep me calm when I am stressed out. Besides my personal objects, I also used her relaxation prompt cards. The things that calm me down the fastest, are my Bible, looking at a beautiful, rustic crucifix that one of my veterans made for me (out of paper! It is magnificent!) and chocolate. I would encourage everyone to think about what calms you down in stressful situations and create your own anxiety tool box.

  

Kostelyk, S. (2013, August 23). Create Your Own Anti-Anxiety Kit for Children. Retrieved February 11, 2015, from http://thechaosandtheclutter.com/archives/create-your-own-anti-anxiety-kit-for-children/

http://thechaosandtheclutter.com/archives/create-your-own-anti-anxiety-kit-for-children/