Lauren and Ed have been working towards an exhibition dealing with chaos and containment. It was expected that the circle wold promote the containment of the artwork/emotions emitted, and that we would see a more chaotic expression with the human figures. For the most part, this expectation has been confirmed, for the most part.
In today's group we re-introduced tissue paper as a means of bordering the circles. One of the children, a female client had a major breakthrough! She surprised everyone with her artwork, bringing tears to the eyes of her one-on-one staff.
This particular client had been repeating the same steps continually. She would outline the circle or body, and then completely fill it in with one color. She would then proceed to make a border around the entire composition, following the format of the paper she was working on, and would then fill the entire page with the same color (often red).
Today the client made a significant jump using the tissue paper. Firstly, she approached the task in an entirely different way than her peers (by bunching pieces up into small balls and glueing them around the border of the circle). Secondly, she finally recognized the circle - allowing it to be [not filling it in] - and creating a figurative image!
The client began by placing the purple, bunched tissue paper around the border of the circle. Once finished with this she began to fill the circle in - starting from the top quarter and moving left to right. We had all assumed that the client would fill the entire circle with the tissue paper balls - but she stopped placing them at less than a quarter of the way full. Underneath the dense area, she glued two bunched dots spaced evenly apart. Below these dot in the center of the circle she place an upside-down curved line and then returned her concentration to the are above it, placing one small tissue paper bunch. It was unmistakably a sad face!
Deciding she was finished with this piece she proceeded to color a human form. Her breakthrough continued! While the client did fill the entire page, she did so with several colors, yellow, brown, and orange! The client who had previously only creating artwork using one color per piece was able to push herself to use more than one color!
As the two art therapist I have been assisting excitedly discussed this - they spoke of it representing her ability to deal with more than one emotion at a time. She has become comfortable enough to show her emotion and not hide it afterwords by covering it up entirely! - Her progress alone is enough to be considered for a case study - and she has more time to continue and progress farther!
This is what it is all about!!!!
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