Visual Arts Briefs

Towering over visitors in the Atrium of Washington D.C.’s Corcoran Gallery of Art are three 26-foot-tall paintings by Chris Martin (BFA 1992 Fine Arts): Birds Sing in the Morning (Homage to Purvis Young), Light Brahma Stomp and Radio Sunset. The three art pieces, part of his “Painting Big” exhibition, are being shown along with several other of his works and are the focus of an article in Art in America and an online gallery in The Washington Post.

Since the start of his career in the 1980s, Martin has used a variety of techniques and materials to create his visual art, as exemplified by the piece White Bread, which was made from bread coated in polymer medium and acrylic paint. He has also made paintings with fire, through performance, and “while making love with paint on top of canvases—I thought I could make ‘passionate paintings,” he is quoted as saying in the Art in America article, “but it wasn’t such a good idea.”

Along Martin’s eclectic journey to where he is today, the article details how he dropped out of Yale University, traveled to India, held random jobs such as museum guard, and worked at an AIDS day treatment program in New York City. To see samples of the work exhibited at the Corcoran Gallery, please visit The Washington Post or the Corcoran Gallery exhibition page.

Watch a video about “Painting Big” below.

SVA has teamed up with the Valetudo Association to present “Life’s Work,” an exhibition of paintings and drawings by 13 alumni of the MPS Art Therapy Department and by clients at the Maison de Santé Saint-Paul, today a women’s psychiatric clinic in Saint-Rémy de Provence, France, which was once home to Vincent Van Gogh. The exhibition is on view at the historic cloister at Saint-Paul through October 18, 2011.

The exhibition opened on September 16, the eve of the Journées de Patrimoine, an annual festival celebrating France’s cultural heritage, with a reception that drew hundreds of visitors to Saint-Paul. In a brief ceremony led by Dr. Jean-Marc Boulon, chief psychiatrist at Saint-Paul, SVA Executive Vice President Anthony Rhodes spoke, in French, of the importance of chance meetings and face-to-face interaction in building relationships.

Van Gogh spent perhaps his most productive year in Saint-Rémy de Provence from 1889-90. After voluntarily committing himself to Saint-Paul de Mausole, the artist was given special permission to set up his easel on the grounds of the hospital and produced over 150 paintings, including Irises and The Starry Night. Today, the Maison de Santé Saint-Paul operates adjacent to the legendary site of Saint-Paul de Mausole and is supported by the Valetudo Association.

“Life’s Work” features some 40 works by clients at Saint-Paul, as well as 26 works on paper by SVA alumni, which were created in the spring of 2011 in a workshop led by BFA Fine Arts and BFA Visual and Critical Studies Department faculty member Peter Hristoff. Participating alumni in the exhibition are Sarah Amiel, Jess Benston, Amelia Morgan Camion, Julie Combal, Naomi Cohen, Suzanne Dell’Orto, Yaara Kastiel, Lauren McCarthy, Rachel Mosler, Ryan Norton, Ayde Rayas-Gribben, Susan Walton, and Amanda Zucker.

For more information about the exhibition and a slideshow of the work, visit SVA.edu. To read about “Valetudo: Art and Healing in Provence,” an exhibit held in New York in 2010 at SVA’s Westside Gallery, which was the first phase of this exchange project between SVA and Valetudo, click here.

Photos by Francis Di Tommaso.

On Thursday, May 12, the School of Visual Arts held its 36th formal commencement exercises at Manhattan’s landmark Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center. Family, friends and faculty joined the College’s graduating students as they received BFA, MAT, MFA and MPS degrees in two consecutive ceremonies marked by thoughtful speeches. This year’s activities included four new departments who celebrated the graduation of their inaugural classes: MFA Interaction Design, MFA Social Documentary Film, MPS Branding and MPS Live Action Short Film.

At the 10am ceremony, the undergraduate address was delivered by Victoria Rivera (BFA 2011 Film and Video). She was followed by Ariane R. West (MFA 2011 Social Documentary Film) who delivered the graduate address. Both speakers touched on the importance of fostering creativity, especially during our current economic times. Jason E. Bakutis (BFA 2011 Computer Art, Computer Animation and Visual Effects) delivered the undergraduate address at the 2pm ceremony. He was followed by Valeria Koutmina (MPS 2011 Art Therapy) who delivered the graduate address, urging her fellow graduates to bear witness to the world’s challenges in their art.

Following the student addresses, SVA President David Rhodes took the podium to deliver a timely speech that focused on the recent political uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. He spoke to the responsibility that the graduates have for their fellow global citizens. President Rhodes noted, “I should not tell you how to go about fulfilling this responsibility of solidarity, nor to whom you should lend your support. But I can tell you that these gestures of support are part of what it means to be an artist in the 21st century. And doing these deeds for others will make it less likely that others will be required to do these deeds for you.”

The graduates and guests then heard an insightful address from two-time Nobel Prize-winning biologist Dr. Gerald M. Edelman. In a speech complemented with a multi-slide presentation, Dr. Edelman drew on his decades of research on the development and organization of higher brain functions. He detailed how emotions travel through the brain and the role art plays in eliciting emotions. By the end of the afternoon ceremony, more than 1,000 graduate and undergraduate degrees had been awarded to the Class of 2011.

Images: (first and second) SVA graduates at Avery Fisher Hall; (third) commencement speaker Dr. Gerald M. Edelman. Photos by Joseph Sinnott.

The American Art Therapy Association (AATA) held its 41st annual conference in early November, with five days of lectures, panel discussions and events under the title Art Therapy: Awakening Awareness. MPS Art Therapy Department faculty members Elizabeth DelliCarpini and Valerie Sereno traveled to Sacramento for the conference, where they set up an SVA table in the conference’s main hall and met with colleagues from around the world.

Sereno (who is also the department’s coordinator of special programs and projects) served on AATA’s Art Committee and participated in a panel discussion called Positive Image Strategies: Towards Agency, Insight and Reflection. “We explored how artwork can communicate issues and feelings, and how clients exhibiting their images in public can help them play a role in their own culture,” says Sereno. She presented examples from the Women Veterans Art Therapy Group that she runs at SVA, which held a formal exhibition of its work at the College, “Tears Dried Solid,” in 2009.

Image: From “Tears Dried Solid.”

The MPS Art Therapy Department, in conjunction with the Visual Arts Foundation, is presenting its 26th Annual Art Therapy Conference. On Friday, October 22, 9am – 4pm, at the SVA Theatre, 333 West 23rd Street, the conference will feature a series of talks on the theme of International Art Therapy.

Lynn Kapitan, PhD, ATR-BC, will give a talk entitled Border Crossings: Art Therapy in the World; Margaret Hills de Zárate, PhD, is presenting The Rim of Every Cup: Art Psychotherapy Practice and Research in Situations of Uncertainty and Political Violence; and Bobbi Stoll, MFT, CTS, CT, ATR-BC, HLM, will speak about The Profession of Art Therapy: International or Intra-national?

Admission for the general public is $75 with pre-registration, $80 at the door; $50 for SVA alumni, current part-time SVA and non-SVA students; and free for MPS Art Therapy Department alumni, current SVA on-site supervisors, and current full-time SVA students, faculty and staff. All proceeds from the conference will go to the Ray Levine Art Therapy Scholarship Fund of the Visual Arts Foundation. To RSVP or for more information, call 212.592.2610 or send e-mail to arttherapy@sva.edu.

Image: Photo by Dana Gramp.

On October 7, MPS Art Therapy Department faculty member Rebecca DiSunno presented a special lecture at The Smithsonian National Museum of African Art in Washington, DC, that examined the role of art therapy in the aftermath of the January 2010 earthquake in Haiti. DiSunno’s talk was part of an exhibition at the museum, “The Healing Power of Art: Works of Art by Haitian Children After the Earthquake,” which includes artwork created at arts centers housed in converted buses in Port-au-Prince. DiSunno spoke to an audience of educators, museum professionals and students about art’s ability to transcend cultural differences and the subsequent value of art therapy following a traumatic event like the earthquake.

In examining the children’s work, DiSunno observed, “The art has some devastating images of severed limbs and dead bodies, plus lots of anxiety markers—there’s no baseline, things are kind of floating, and there are many pictures with dots of color, which shows tremendous anxiety.” She also examined “response work” created by Jill Biden, wife of U.S. vice-president Joe Biden; U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama; and Elisabeth D. Preval, the first lady of Haiti, all of whom reacted to the work of the younger artists. “It was a wonderful show of empathy through images,” she said. “Michelle Obama and Jill Biden could empathize in their watercolors, but they had a visible baseline, on safe ground; the Haitan first lady’s work had a spiral and no baseline, which is visually significant for someone recovering from trauma.”

“The Healing Power of Art” is on view at The Smithsonian National Museum of African Art through Sunday, October 17.

Images: (top) Rebecca DiSunno speaking at The Smithsonian National Museum of African Art; (bottom) drawing by Desir Lucson, 2010.

This fall, the MPS Art Therapy Department is presenting “Valetudo: Art and Healing in Provence,” an exhibition of works made by psychiatric patients at the Maison de Santé Saint-Paul in the southern French town of Saint-Rémy, at the Westside Gallery,141 West 21st Street, August 31 – September 18; there is a reception on Monday, September 13, 6 – 8pm.

Saint-Rémy has near-mythical status among artists and art historians as the place where Vincent Van Gogh spent a highly productive year from 1889 – 90, following his voluntary internment at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole mental hospital. It is here that the artist made renowned paintings like Irises and The Starry Night, just two of more than 150 paintings produced during his stay. “Valetudo”—curated by Dr. Jean-Marc Boulon, chief psychiatrist and director of the institution, along with Laurence Minard-Amalou, a private licensed tour guide in Provence—features recent paintings made in a studio setting by psychiatric patients at the women’s clinic of the Maison de Santé Saint-Paul (as the hospital in Saint-Rémy is now known), along with their written testimonials and photographic documentation of their community.

For the art therapy and mental health community, the exhibition also offers a reminder of the role of culture in practitioners’ training and methodologies. “Art therapists must recognize that there are significant differences across cultures and be fully cognizant of how these impact the therapeutic encounter,” says Deborah Farber, chair of the MPS Art Therapy Department. “The ways in which theory and practice are understood is a reflection of the norms of a particular society, but does not fit those of all societies.”

Images: (top) Painting by Nicole Jobertie; (bottom) photo of the Valetudo Studio at the Maison de Santé Saint-Paul.

The third in a series of one-on-one conversations with SVA’s department chairs.

Deborah Farber chairs the MPS Art Therapy Department, a two-year program that combines clinical experience with training in studio art and contemporary theories of psychological development and creativity. In addition to an annual conference and public lectures, the department hosts an annual exhibition highlighting students’ internships. Farber talked to the Briefs as the department was about to open “Counterbalance,” which is on view through March 20.

Tell me about the exhibition.
It’s called “Counterbalance” because the premise of the exhibition is how the therapist responds to the client’s needs by providing the resources and creative environment so that the client can find his or her own curative path. The relationship is very fluid, and it’s always changing based on the needs of the client. The show supports the notion of humanistic art therapy, that both the therapist and the client learn from each other and grow as a result of the relationship.

Your students are artists who have decided to pursue another avenue of creative expression. How does that come into play?
Being an artist, you understand innately that the creative process is healing, and you’ve developed a kind of vocabulary, a personal hieroglyphics. When you experience something that’s beyond words, and you can deal with it through art, there’s something cathartic about that. After you put it down on paper it doesn’t feel the same as before, because you understand it in your own personal artistic language. So students are learning about the creative process and how to harness it in other people. And they’re learning patience. They might understand where a client is at, because they have the diagnosis, but they might have to wait for clients to tell the story of what happened to them—either through art, or through words, or both. They have to know how to support and not judge it.

How has the field changed since you started the program?
There’s a lot of focus now on neuroscience and how trauma is processed, and it turns out that trauma memories are stored in the right cerebral hemisphere, in a part of the brain that is nonverbal, so nonverbal methods such as art therapy are an excellent way to access and process trauma. We’ve had lecturers like Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk, a leader in neuroscience, and we have a physician on the faculty, whose specialty is addiction and neuropsychiatry, who teaches the physiology of addiction. So students come away with an understanding of the brain that art therapists who were trained 10 years ago did not.

You not only chair the department and teach, you also practice art therapy.
I worked for the past year with women soldiers in transition. They were taken out of the field because of physical injuries, or psychological injuries, or both. I met women who, in Iraq, for example, went out with a partner to search for weapons, and then a bomb hits their vehicle, and the person they were talking to five minutes ago is dead. So they suffered multiple traumas. They weren’t sure if they were going back to war. But through art therapy they got to examine different sides of themselves, different masks they would wear in combat and in other aspects of their personal and professional lives.

Image: Katherine Hinson, untitled, 2010, mixed media; from “Counterbalance”

With the opening of the exhibition “Counterbalance” last Saturday, the MPS Art Therapy Department kicked off a series of thesis exhibitions and year-end events happening all across SVA. “Counterbalance” features work by student therapists and the clients with whom they work at their internship sites across New York City. The exhibition runs through Saturday, March 20 at the Westside Gallery, 133/141 West 21 Street. There is a reception on Wednesday, March 3, from 6 – 8pm, and the exhibition is curated by Liz DelliCarpini, internship coordinator, MPS Art Therapy Department.

As the spring semester progresses, there will be over 25 end-of-the-year events including “Classical Myths Transformed,” an exhibition of work by students in the BFA Illustration and Cartooning Department at the Visual Arts Gallery, 601 West 26 Street, 15th floor, from April 9 – 24, and the MFA Design Criticism Department Conference, a presentation of papers from the inaugural class in the department, at the SVA Theatre, 333 West 23 Street, on Friday, April 30.

View the complete list of thesis presentations, open studios, portfolio reviews, screenings, conferences and exhibitions featuring work by soon-to-be graduates at www.sva.edu/firstlook.

The MPS Art Therapy Department is presenting a new exhibition, “Tears Dried Solid,” showcasing artwork by the Women Veterans Art Therapy Group. In commemoration of Veterans Day, the exhibition will be on view Wednesday, November 11, 10am – 8pm, at Lyons Wier Gallery, 175 Seventh Avenue, with a reception to be held 5:30 – 7:30pm.

Since January 2008, the art therapy program has been running the Women Veterans Art Therapy Group, with 10 female participants who have served in the United States Army and United States Air Force in deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as Desert Storm. Each week, the women work freely with linoleum block prints, mixed-media collage, painting and drawing in a safe space, allowing them to process issues related to post-traumatic stress disorder and to externalize memories and emotions that are difficult to put into words. Participating in the group helps the veterans to re-establish social connections, as one participant describes feeling, “a mixture of emotions when I first returned home. The group gave me the courage to express these feelings. I am not alone.”

The exhibition space for “Tears Dried Solid” was donated by Lyons Wier Gallery, and the show was curated by Val Sereno, art therapist and special projects and programs coordinator for the MPS Art Therapy Department.

Image: From “Tears Dried Solid.”