THE APPROACH
I practice a multiform, bottom-up art therapy approach that integrates the creative process with evidence-based practices, such as psychotherapy, somatic therapy, and CBT to provide high-quality treatment. I use strength-based, Humanistic, Behavioral, and trauma-informed frameworks, depending on the need of the client. I hold specialties in working with Black, brown and multi-ethnic individuals experiencing depression, anxiety/panic, complex trauma, and relationship or social transitions. I hold an interest in somatic therapy, the use of clay as a medium in therapy, and improved mental health outcomes for people of color.
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THE WORK
1 :1 THERAPY
Within individual therapy sessions, you will have an opportunity to learn to channel instincts towards mind-body integration using methods of creative expression, talk therapy, and somatic exploration. We will build a space to freely explore and identify strengths and spaces of improvement, allowing the rawness of your own self-narratives to be not just felt but contribute to your overall healing.
COLLECTIVE THERAPY
Collective therapy workshops foster the opportunity to explore both personal and group experience. Through therapeutic approaches rooted in creative expression, you will develop tools to navigate communication, connection, and collectively heal within a space of mutual support and community cohesion. Group-work will include open studio and method workshops.
THE PROCESS
Few art materials kindle growth like clay. Fostering a space to immerse oneself in a felt experience, clay is that medium that is naturally responsive to human feelings. It’s as if it has the vigorous power to accurately and concretely absorb an individual’s emotions at any given moment. And in doing so, it yields to their deepest feelings, providing no barriers or blockages to the line of expression. At times when our deepest thoughts and feelings are controlled by anxiety, or hidden beyond our obvious awareness, clay conveniently has a way of recovering balance without the need of verbalizations. It gives the opportunity to become deeply introspective. The motions of molding, shaping, carving and wedging become part of cathartic manipulation, creating space to more clearly grasp our problems or traits of ourselves less seen fully-faced.
Many of us often struggle to let ourselves “feel”. It is within art-making that the resistance to show emotions deemed vulnerable, are penetrated and unearthed. The process of feeling becomes no longer led by an excuse of “survival” or “beyond words or others comprehension”. Alternatively, it is led by expression of Self to oneself. The process becomes purgative––giving space to decipher the ambiguous and often confusing flow of sensations in the body.
THE VESSEL
I, myself, see the beauty of vessels being that there is both an inside and outside, the hidden and the exposed; that which can be seen and that which cannot. The use of vessels supports the conceptual embodiment of the human “Self” – consisting of both an exterior (open to being perceived by outside viewers) and an interior (hidden and containing inner components of one’s identity).
Conceptually, people can be viewed this way; Both, created because of and often misunderstood due to their idiosyncrasies on the “outside”. So, the vessel provides the opportunity to create a self-portrait of sorts. It provides a space where one can safely build up a vessel, coil by coil — all but to transform it into a new form. From the somatic manipulation of one’s fingerprints, to the methodical use of carving tools, clay facilitates a meaningful experience of creating something out of nothing, and transforming the product into different forms. As I commonly use the technique of coiling, one can quite literally construct or build up their perceived “Self” into the form of the vessel, and take an active role in making a metaphor of their inner world.
WHY CLAY
Clay material is an ideal medium for sensing into someone’s experience and capturing it in a seeable, touchable form. It brings forth expressiveness of the inexpressible, tangibility of the intangible, knowingness of the unknowable, visibility of the invisible, and apprehensibility of the inapprehensible; making space to reveal what is hidden. It can bring to the surface emotions and experiences with a power and clarity that no other medium of expression can bring about.
Use of tactile, hands-on art approaches like clay facilitate a more process-oriented approach within art therapy, and particularly within the treatment of trauma. In examining processes of the bottom-up approach in the underpinnings of human perception, clay can be a medium for integrating the body and touch, and somatic-based interventions within therapy. Clay can provide a process of unification, and allow an individual to integrate the various parts of their Self by enhancing personality integration, improve the capacity to regulate emotions, and re-author traumatic experiences. Within my own work, encouragement in working through the somatic experience can make space for individuals to slowly discover parts within their self, feel moments of discomfort, and adaptively create new ways to better work through it.