“THE COLOR OF FEELINGS”
an Art Therapy intervention in Elementary School
Art Therapy Italiana
Art Therapist: Paola Cominato
Via San Vitale,33 Bologna
Tel. 051/224467
E mail:
SUMMARY
The drawing, more than being one of the means that the child possesses fir communicating, describing and narrating the beings and the things that surround him, is above all a privileged tool of expression of the child’s emotional life and his/her own inside word.
Through the graphic- pictorial activity, the child risks his/her ability of imaginative elaboration.
The object of the evaluation is not the idea of beauty or resemblance with reality but the child’s line of the product, its intellectual, social, aesthetic and creative components.
Moreover, the work developed within a group favors socialization through comparison and exchanges with the others.
The group becomes a great resource from which every individual can derive a feeling of being contained and protected.
SUBSTANTIVE PAPER
For the past few years I have been working with pre-adolescent children leadingArt Therapy interventions for both individuals and groups in an ‘at risk’ neighborhood in the immediate periphery of Bologna.
The program was requested by an association composed of families and teachers, worried about their own children and the other ‘at risk’ children in the area.
It was on this basis that the Art Therapy program in elementary schools began.
The program entails ten sessions of about one and a half hours each, held in one secure space for the entire duration of the program.
The participants are seven children with learning problemsin the fourth and fifth grades.
Due to the short duration of the program I chose to work alternating interpretive forms and more organized forms such as drama therapy, guided fantasies, the use of songs and chants, creative writing, etc.
I chose to assign a theme because this permitsthe exploration of interests that the children have in common, favoring a rapid sense of empathy and communication between the participants of the group.
If the session involves working in pairs I ask the children to choose a different partner each time, in this way reinforcing the idea of belonging to a group and maximizing the possibility of exchange between its participants.
I work not on relationship and transference, but on the choice of materials, which can help to unveil the resistance and problems in the group, making the children more aware of their needs.
For example, resistant materials such as collage, paints, wood and stone strengthen the knowledge of boundaries.
More fluid materials like fingerpaints, watercolors and chalk can expand and obtain an absence of form which facilitates regression.
Pastels, wax and clay are useful in expressing strong feelings, they work to channel and express aggression.
If the goal of the therapy is to increase self esteem, aesthetically pleasing materials like vellum paper and pieces of mosaics are quite useful.
The use of ‘found objects’ can add more flexibility to the work, rendering the children’s creativity to surface in games and free associations.
My role as the therapist is that of the ‘container of ideas’, which I record in a notebook.
This impresses the children, who begin to feel that their thoughts and feelings are important and thus are stimulated to express their fantasies to the group and to ask others’ opinions about their artwork. This brings about the free expression of feelings, sensations, thoughts, and intuitions.
The group is composed of seven children, five males and two females. I know next to nothing about their lives.
After we’ve introduced ourselves, which is done in a circle, I ask the children what they expect from these sessions.
This initial encounter is very important as each of the children is able to externalize their fantasies linked to being in this place, as well as their expectations.
The first question they ask is: “Why the seven of us and not others? Why us, in particular?”
The children attempt to answer this question: we are here to find our inner spirits, to imagine, to have fun, to remember this place, to release, to play, to discover more about ourselves, to fall in love, to draw pretty pictures.
I don’t intervene, rather I let the group express their fantasies.
Next, I introduce the art project, which entails using pieces of very durable paper and liquid watercolors (ecoline), which have the unusual property of expanding uncontrollably when placed on wet paper.
I propose these materials because I feel that they immediately allow me to transmit two pieces of information to the children; first that there is a sturdy paper base which metaphorically serves as an internal space for their thoughts. At the same time the actual therapeutic space also serves as a ‘container of thoughts and feelings’.
The second information is that the uncontrollable expansion of the liquid watercolorson paper permits a regression which is accepted and sustained precisely because of the sturdiness of the paper.
In this first phase the fantasies which surface from the art projects are related to the following:
Persecutory anguish (Maurizio says his paper is in crisisbecause he can only make empty drawings. He wants to represent a beautiful day with the sun and fields, but sits staring at the blankpage).
The fear of being lost in the group and the fear of being sucked into the group (Tiziano draws a building where the windows have no window frames. He says that the people inside are being enticed up into the sky).
Experiences of fragmentation (Elisa breaks the modeling clay into little pieces which she says are snails, then randomly leans various objects against them).
A form of control (Teresa gives particular meaning to colors, green is peace, red is war, purple is death, green is life. She is very critical, and gives me advice about how I should lead the group and what I should say and do).
Fantasies of incorporation and aggressive experiences (Danilo models clay to form a Hannibal mask).
Competitive experiences (Nicholas draws two crabs that are holding an animal. At the right of the picture is a magic flower and below it a caterpillar is digging a hole. Each petal of the flower can fulfill a wish. This is a race for the magic flower, and the caterpillar is trying to arrivefirst).
Destructive fantasies (Cristian draws a map divided by a red line, a bridge-border, a volcano-tower where a man in a cage calls for help. At the base of the volcano the lava is contained by a plug, as if holding back his destructive impulses).
In the second phase of the therapy sessions I intervene less directly and let the children become immersed in their projects. In this way the children’s needs surface at their own speeds and rhythms.
Maurizio works on his ‘picture in crisis’ for three encounters, adding things: feathers, beads, as if weaving a base for his Self.
In order to attach things without ruining his project he asks Tiziano to help him, who very carefully and delicately does so.
He glues a kangaroo mother with a baby kangaroo in her pouch to the field, and asks me to help him paint the sky because he is afraid of leaving white spaces. We spend three sessions ‘covering’ the sky. His request touches me, I see him as a young child who still needs to be protected and taken care of. (foto 1)
Tiziano works on his building that people are sucked out of for two sessions, inserting pieces of mosaics that seem to weigh down the base of the building. (foto 2)
Elisa places the random objects and the snails on a sturdy support.
Teresa creates a striking mask to wear and a golden baby, as if asking to be noticed by the group. (foto 3)
Danilo dresses up with feathers and wigs. Using rubber cement (vinavyl) he creates scaly skin, which he sheds saying that he is moulting like a snake. His every drawing is different from the next, which makes me think of a manipulation of the contents, a kind of ‘dress up’ in order not to expose his true self.
Nicholas models a face/muse out of clay, between its cage-like teeth he has trapped a fly.
Christian unplugs the volcano. The lava flow captures a man, a woman and a child who undergo various amputations. He calls me ‘Doctor’ and wants me to help him build a hospital for the lava victims to recover in. I suggest some small containers which become beds where the victims recover, a box becomes the hospital. (Foto 4)
During the third phase of sessions we focus on needs. The question I pose to the group is: “What do our art projects need at this point?”
In this phase the group is brought together through the use of a specific material: boxes. Through this material the children express their inner world and share it with the group, adding their personalexperiences to their boxes.
Maurizio puts his garden made of modeling clay in a container with low sides.
Tiziano wants his garden in a red box with very high sides, as if forming a protective wall.
Elisa doesn’t know what her project needs. Everyone offers suggestions. She remains unconvinced. Then a smile lights up her face as she says:
“Glue!” She will spend the rest of the time gluing objects on a cardboard support. (foto 5)
Teresa makes a home for her golden baby in a big box decorated with pictures and curtains, a “room of her own.”
Danilo and Nicholas construct a hospital with various wards to connect by bridge to Cristian’s hospital. The three children become doctors in this game, they move the patients to different wards in order to better cure them and to reduce deaths.
The other children use the hospital for little clay men who were broken during the sessions, they are placed in beds and slowly recover and are cured. (foto 6)
Above the cardboard box we write the word “Hospital” in English. Pronounced in Italian, ‘ospitale’ means ‘hospitable’, and I perceive this play on words to have a significant meaning: the willingness to welcome in, to “be in/a part of the group”.
The sessions end with a final art show, for which the children decide which images they want to share with others and which they prefer to keep for themselves.
In the Art Therapist’s point of view, these are the parts to be shared with the world outside of the group (parents, teachers, friends), and that which is saved as something intimate, secret, and profound.
Thanks to my colleague Carla Carlevaris for her supervision, Maijastina Hourula and Yael Eliastam for the accurate translation, and Maria Belfiore, my clinical reference.
(1) Maurizio
(2) Tiziano
(3) Teresa
(4) Christian
(5) Elisa
(6) Hospital