On 01.02.02, I was diagnosed with metastatic breast cancer. Too late for surgery, I had chemotherapy, which failed. In May the chemotherapy was changed and I was soon in remission which was celebrated and welcome and lasted nine years - until October 2011. There was progression in 2011 so more treatment was indicated and I am now back in partial remission. But I'm not only a cancer patient - I also enjoy my family, walk my dogs and am learning to draw and paint. Life is good!

Monday, November 22, 2010

All bottled up

Last week I was in a craft store that was selling rubber stamps at 40% off, a discount I couldn't walk by. I found a fairly largish stamp of a jar, a simple outlined shape and was thinking of all the ways I could use it. I'm not a rubber stamp artist, I rarely use such stamps, but I'm always looking for ideas I can use in therapy groups, especially with teenagers.

I've come up with two ideas so far. One is to line up jars on a shelf and, given this Thanksgiving season, draw in all the situations and people and things we are thankful for, a veritable pantry of thankfulness. The second idea was the unbottling of too many diverse emotions, letting them spill out in a trickle or a gush, but out in the open either way. If a client offered me this image I would regard it as a gold mine of material to consider -- what's being held in and who is the helper removing the lid? I used basic techniques of masking to separate the two images and drew in the fingers. I would have drawn in more of the hand, but I'm right-handed and it took my right hand to both remove the lid and to draw, so I gave up quickly!

Now that I've presented the image to myself, I can begin to journal the responses. And come up with a third and fourth way to use my new stamp!

6 comments:

  1. Just read thru many posts on your blog to catch up and see what you have been doing. Great stuff, and I find it heartwarming that you continue to reach out to the kids in juvenile detention. I love your rules about sketch journals. So funny! Thanks for the smiles.

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  2. I love both ideas for using the jar image: the goods we've stored up and the emotions we need to spill out... Both are great art-therapy options.

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  3. Hi Linda & Rebecca -- Thank you both for stopping by. I am ALWAYS on the lookout for art journaling activities to support reluctant teen group therapy!

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  4. The spilling out looks to me winglike. Intentional? Lovely that you're keeping at it.

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  5. Wings, you say? Not intentional but one more thing to thinks about! Thank you for stopping by.

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  6. Anonymous10:48 AM

    Awesome sketch! I love how you did the bottle with all the emotions running out. Creative thinking.

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