Document text
The Art of Healing Mail Tribune / Drew Fleming Dalaine Due, a professional art therapist, works with teenage boys at a juvenile detention facility in Grants Pass. She says the process of creating art, and what it does for the creator, is more important than how the final product touches the viewer. Therapist uses creative media to help clients cope with inner wounds By Shari Downhill Art therapist Dalaine Due sees a lot of ugliness as she weaves through the lives of her clients. The process, she said, is where the beauty lies, not in the product of pastel chalk dust or paint. For Due, the success of art is not measured in terms of aesthetics or marketability. The attraction others have to the artwork means little compared to the emotional healing process of the one creating it. "Usually, in therapy, there is some form of trauma involved," Due said. "Those experiences aren�t stored in a cognitive verbal place. They�re stored in an emotional body place in the brain. To talk to that, you have to talk to the right place." Due�s biggest challenge as she builds her private therapy business, People�s Art, is explaining the difference between regular psychotherapy and art therapy. "At first, people looked at me confused," she said. "They would ask something like, �Is it therapy for artists?� " But Due is a patient woman. "An art therapist is not someone who uses art as part of the therapy," she said. Art therapy is a means to touch the seemingly untouchable. "It�s a lot more than free expression through art," she said. "There are a lot of nuances. It�s knowing how to recognize it, catch it and process it when it happens. "People are engaged in a process that involves more senses than just talking," she said. "It�s kind of like having a conversation with the unconscious because you�re activating those different parts of the person. " Due gravitated away from commercial art after completing a bachelor of fine art degree in graphic design with a minor in art therapy in Detroit, Mich. She migrated from the East Coast to attend a graduate degree program in psychology and art therapy at Sonoma State University in California. She then joined the ranks of the American Art Therapy Association. Due worked as a primary therapist for an adolescent treatment center before deciding to build her own caseload of clients this past year, treating clients from Ashland to Grants Pass. Some of her clients are part of a transition group in a Grants Pass juvenile detention facility. As she sits in the midst of the teenage boys, Due�s voice is slow, assuring and authoritative. The instructions for the class are clear. In unison the teenagers unsheathe small, thin boxes of chalk and oil pastels. She calls it the "bridge" project � appropriate for this group preparing for life outside the facility. Some start tentatively; others quickly. Chalk dust billows and smears across desk surfaces. Large hands sketch, smooth, scrawl and shade. They spell out messages of hope, faith, fear, anger, frustration and betrayal. Throughout, Due�s voice remains low and comforting. "Good," she tells each one. "Thank you." The next phase is as important as the creation. Each "art piece" is presented to the group. The process isn�t a critique. It�s observation. It�s the "This is what I see" phase. Each statement starts with "I." Due decided to devote her life to art therapy after working through trauma of her own in her first Art Therapy 101 class. "One of the requirements for the class is that we keep a journal," she said, pulling out a spiral-bound, black, inch-thick book, one of a dozen bulging with her own turmoil, confusion and joy. "I just filled them with my life, pretty much," she said. "This really became a deep process for me. It helped me heal a lot of wounds that I had been carrying around in my life. They just became too painful. So I put them in here." She opened the book slowly, careful not to let fly pieces of a sliced page saturated with wild, vibrant scribbles. "Some of it was really ugly stuff," she said, laughing. "This was a day I guess I was pretty upset. This was my own art therapy." In the midst of her initial art therapy class, Due said she realized it was the first time she found herself doing the kind of art she liked. "I feel like, presented in the right way, it�s a way for people to express themselves without talking," she said. I like to just leave things around to see what people pick up and do." Although Due always has a few tricks in the hopper, she said letting the situation unfold naturally with the artistic supplies chosen by the client works best. "I get jazzed witnessing someone creating something, when the first words out of their mouth are, �I can�t draw.� " Due�s goal is to create a "community based" art therapy center open to the public. "It would be wonderful to have a space to do this," she said. "That�s what I�m trying to accomplish." Reach reporter Shari Downhill at 776-4463, or e-mail [email protected] . Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2000 Mail Tribune, Inc.