Cover Story: Drawing hope

In any upheaval where an entire generation of children is brutalized, the aftermath resonates with not only the horror of what has been done to them, but with what wrongs they themselves might feel compelled to do in the future. Humanitarian efforts are mobilized to deal with the physical emergencies while the wounded psyches, the emotional casualties, often are left untreated.
Enter ArtReach, a nonprofit organization based in Atlanta that uses art therapy to help trauma victims all over the world. The results of its first expedition, “Project Bosnia,” can be seen now through Feb. 17 at the Children’s Arts Museum in Duluth.
ArtReach is the co-creation of Susan Anderson, founder of Artistic Connections, who along with Bob Thomas of LaGrange College, and Dr. Jane Rhoades Hudak of Georgia Southern University, conceived the idea of an organization committed to developing art therapy programs in areas of devastation after normal society is restored.
The exhibition features artwork done by Bosnian schoolchildren during the ArtReach team’s first visit to Sarajevo last year.
“Ten thousand citizens were killed in Sarajevo; 3,000 of them were children,” explains Holley Calmes, spokesperson for the Hudgens Center for the Arts, which houses the Children’s Museum. “But the schools kept going. The older kids helped the younger ones get to school by timing the sniper shells as they ran from one building to the next.
“The ArtReach program is aimed at kids that act normal but have post-traumatic stress. It looks like artwork that any kid would create, but then you start looking closely and see the differences,” she adds.
The Bosnian children’s art show is an example of the use of art therapy in circumstances of extreme emotional devastation. But, according to its practitioners, art therapy is a healthy and valuable means of expression for everyone, at any age.
“Some people get confused and think that art therapy is just about analyzing artwork,” says Jenny Welty-Green, an Atlanta art therapist who has worked with children for 16 years. “It’s really about using the universal language of the creative element to help people work through things. It’s great for people who are healthy, as well as those dealing with grief, anger or illness.”
One of the art therapists who went with the ArtReach team to Bosnia was Susanne Fincher, founder of the Georgia Art Therapy Association. “Art therapy is a way of communicating what cannot be put into words,” Fincher says. “That’s why it works so well with children. They don’t have the vocabulary that adults do. It’s a natural form of communication for them, and all children love to draw.”
The concept of art therapy in psychological analysis and evaluation began with the breakthrough ideas of Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Jung was fascinated with the metaphors inherent in the mandala — a Sanskrit word meaning “magic circle.”
“A mandala is a drawing done in a circle,” explains Fincher, who has written several books on the subject. “Circular drawing evokes a sense of wholeness and identity.” Drawing mandalas was one of many ArtReach projects with the children of Bosnia.
Art therapy owes a debt to the father of modern psychoanalysis, as well. “It started with Freud, because he made us look at ourselves inside,” says art therapist Maxine Hull, who teaches and leads workshops in addition to her extensive private practice.
According to Hull, the two pioneers of modern-day art therapy were Margaret Naumburg and Edith Kramer. Naumburg first began publishing her ideas in the 1940s, while Kramer was famous for using art therapy with children. During these formative years, two schools of thought emerged — the concept of using art therapy as a diagnostic tool, and the usage of its interactive healing qualities. One approach was analytical, the other cathartic.
“There are many ways of using art therapeutically and it depends on the person and patient,” explains Hull. “Working with children is different than with adults. A child develops at different stages, and their cognition and capacity to understand changes as they get older. Even as teenagers, they respond differ-ently. With an adult, you’re working with a different insight. A child is living the art. A child thinks it’s the world, an adult feels it’s their soul talking.
“The language of the deepest part of us is images in metaphor,” Hull adds. “Art therapy taps that source. All human beings need to be heard. If you want to create a healthy child, let him talk so he’ll know he’s accepted.”
Annie Kelahan, a registered art therapist and director of The Bridge Family Center in Atlanta, a residential family treatment facility, uses art therapy during family counseling. “An amazing thing is that in family therapy it equalizes all the members. All of a sudden, the kids are just as competent as the parents when they draw. And only a picture can express such contradictory feelings as love and hate at the same time.”
Art therapists are quick to point out that expression in imagery goes back to prehistoric times, as evidenced by cave drawings. “Our natural form of thinking is in images,” Susanne Fincher explains. “We dream in pictures and drawing is an extension of a natural way of thinking. People derive strength through creating something that didn’t exist before. Creating gives direct expression to the unconscious in a way that words do not, and speeds up the therapy process. The hands don’t lie.”
In the practice of art therapy, there are differing classic textbook assessments, each carrying a certain therapeutic value. There are ways of looking at the art that have nothing to do with its artistic merit.
“The drawing will tell you things. And you watch the drawing process, too,” says Maxine Hull. “When someone turns the paper over and moves it around, I can tell that they can’t focus. And a drawing that has three or four things going on simultaneously can show a fragmented psyche. Some people do images of themselves as children. If a person has an eating disorder, I might ask them to draw an image of it, and they’ll draw themselves, or a meal. There is a classic visual test assessment of reaching for an apple on a tree. Another one, where you draw a house, a tree and a person, is one that a lot of psychologists use. The psyche will tell you what it wants to tell you.”
For two weeks, the ArtReach team worked in Sarajevo with 47 schools and 67 students.
“Sixty-five percent of the children in Sarajevo witnessed killings and death,” says team leader Susan Anderson. “During the siege, many teachers organized classes in storage units, and it was a saving grace for these kids, an escape from the hell of the bombardment. During sniper fire, they’d go to school, passing bodies in piles with people still breathing in them, and slipping in blood. They even had graduation underground.
“The war has been over for five years,” she continues. “The community has returned to a civil society and is dealing with the wounding of the war. The citizens of Sarajevo lived in a state of imprisonment without electricity or water for three years. Many of the children in the schools now were conceived, born or lived during that thousand-day seige. It will have a strong effect on how they see the world and deal with conflict resolution. Their experiences could lead to a recycling of violence in the future if someone doesn’t deal with their post-traumatic stress.”
Back in the museum, portraits taken by famed American photojournalist Lucinda Bunnen show the Sarajevo Olympic Stadium, now a vast cemetery. One photograph documents “Sarajevo roses” — mortar shell holes in the streets, filled with red resin as a memorial. Another shows a line of mosques, synagogues and cathedrals coexisting peacefully. In a glass case, spent shell casings are displayed, exquisitely etched in gold with Yugoslavian folk art. The children’s artwork is grouped according to the different projects, each with a special focus.
“In the first week, we told the children, draw yourself in a picture with an apple tree,” Anderson explains. “One child drew a tree without a trunk or any ground underneath, and the picture is a total void, a portrait of absence. This child had seen his parents executed. After working on art projects every day for a week, he did the exercise again.”
Anderson points to a vividly colorful drawing of an apple tree with a thick trunk on green grass, laden with fruit, and a child reaching hopefully up for an armload of apples. Another apple-tree drawing features mountains and a rainbow overhead. “The children can’t run and play in the mountains anymore because of the landmines,” Anderson explains.
One project asked children to illustrate the past, present and future in three panels. According to one child’s vision, the past is a blue-black sky with just a yellow sliver of moon, the present a badly-cracked and pierced heart and the future a whole heart with a blossoming tree. Another drawing features a child holding hands with a group of adults. “This child never drew a drawing without people holding hands in it,” Anderson remarks.
Susanne Fincher, like her colleagues on the Bosnia expedition, has vivid memories of certain children. “I remember a little boy in Sarajevo. He was so traumatized that he wouldn’t go outside to play for fear he’d trip on a landmine and get blown up. But he loved to draw and began to warm up to people while doing the art projects, and on the third day he was able to talk about his fears as he drew about them.”
ArtReach maintains constant contact with the participating teachers and students through the Internet, and Anderson plans to take more teams regularly to Bosnia. “The teachers were amazed; we were all amazed at the results,” she says. “With some of the children, the most important thing was to get them to pick up the crayon and make a mark on the page.”
For much of the past 30 years, many art therapists were employed by hospitals. But Hull says managed care has brought widespread changes. “They don’t pay for this kind of therapy anymore,” she says. “With hospital stays being shortened now, they don’t work on healing the psyche.”
But children’s hospitals long have recognized the value of art therapy. Sara Alderfer, child-life specialist at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston, incorporates creative art into her therapeutic activities with children.
Another approach is the use of art for the sheer enjoyment of creation. John Feight, creator of the Foundation for Hospital Art, does not consider himself an art therapist, but a muralist who devotes his talent to creating art on hospital walls — and inviting the world to join in. However, Feight acknowledges the therapeutic value of art.
“When we work with abused kids,” he says, “it’s surprising to see how focused they become when they’re painting, creating something for somebody else.” Feight takes his paintbrushes to the Atlanta Union Mission every Saturday morning, where he creates art with the homeless.
“I think art is love and shouldn’t be limited to a frame or protected in a gallery,” he says. “It shouldn’t be treated as if it were precious — rather, those who create it are the precious ones.”
“ArtReach: Project Bosnia” runs through Feb. 17 at the Children’s Arts Museum in the Jacqueline Casey Hudgens Center for the Arts, 6400 Sugarloaf Parkway, Building 300, Duluth. 770-623-6002. For more information on art therapy, visit www.arttherapy.org. For more information on ArtReach, visit www.artreachfoundation.org.