Art Therapy exhibit provides window into the impact of mental health

Different perspectives in how mental health has touched lives was the theme of this year’s Art Therapy Exhibition at the Art and Design Building West. And the graduate students of the program showcased a variety of artistic pieces, ranging from traditional paintings to innovative collages made of sentimental objects.

The theme of this year's Art Therapy was "Perspectives" to highlight the different ways mental health has impacted people's lives. (Photo by Joseph Lacdan)

The theme of this year’s Art Therapy was “Perspectives” to highlight the different ways mental health has impacted people’s lives. (Photo by Joseph Lacdan)

This design, titled "Fragile Heart Mussels" was created by Art Therapy student Dominique Begnaud using personal objects, organic material and recycled prints. (Photo by Joseph Lacdan)

This design, titled “Fragile Heart Mussels” was created by Art Therapy student Dominique Begnaud using personal objects, organic material and recycled prints. (Photo by Joseph Lacdan)

MFA Art Therapy student Sarah pray performs acoustic music during the opening of the annual Art Therapy Exhibit. (Photo by Joseph Lacdan)

MFA Art Therapy student Sarah Pray performs acoustic music during the opening of the annual Art Therapy Exhibit. (Photo by Joseph Lacdan)

Exhibit curators Rani Cozad and Ashley Ramm, both MFA students in the program, created a community art project that encourages attendants to participate in artistic creation and to think about the impact of mental health. The banner features pins with an aspect of mental illness and mental health attached to each point. Participants take different colors of yarn to connect each statement that represents each person individually. Topics include identity, gender and mental health treatments.

“It’s about the stigma associated with mental illness, so it’s kind of bringing life different perspectives on mental illness and how it’s touched people’s lives,” Cozad said, during the Exhibition’s opening reception March 17. “There is a nail attached to a statement.”

The exhibition runs through Saturday. Students invited faculty, mentors, art therapists and other members of the art community to attend the exhibition. The exhibition also featured acoustic music by Art Therapy student Sarah Pray and an emotional personal reading by Veronica Delgado, where she discussed the effects of trauma on her life.

Hillery Jones created her painted design titled “The Kinesthetic Sense,” by immersing herself in paint and using her body to create a symmetrical silhouette. She said she combined yoga and dance movements to create the motion depicted in the piece.

“I was trying to see if by making body movements to create art would it be calming or would it be like yoga,” Jones said. “I wasn’t necessarily trying to make an image it was more about the process and the way it felt during the process.”

Jones tested some of the effects of her art pieces as part of her research program during the Creative Art Camp for children in St. Louis last summer. Jones said that she plans to pursue her PhD and hopes to work as an art therapist at a behavioral treatment facility.

Dominique Begnaud created four pieces of art in the exhibition, with each piece dealing with relationships or culture. One piece was created using an old hard cover with tea-stained, blackened pages combined with pasted magazine pages to create a visual collage. Begnaud, who is working in the restaurant industry, also created a cookbook that is reflective of Cajun culture that was made using hand-made paper. The book featured the “holy trinity” of ingredients in Cajun style cooking

“These art pieces kind of evolved after reflecting on those art journals and they were objects that I’ve been collecting,” Begnaud said. “Some of them are sentimental pieces that are really special to me like these broken sterling mugs from home and hand-made paper I made in a class this past summer. It’s kind of like a relationship-oriented artwork without objects.”

The art work showcased helped connect members of the art community, Cozad said. It also provided a platform for expression for the students.

“A lot of our artwork is conceptual and we don’t get to talk about it a lot,” Cozad said “So getting the experience for the community to come in and see the work that we do it means a lot to us and it means a lot to other people.”

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