Friday, January 16, 2015

Being an Art Therapist turned Artist


Many of you may not know that I used to work as an art therapist with patients who have dementia.  In my experience in that field, people with dementia are often forgotten about or are seen as not being real people who lived full and unique lives.  As an art therapist, I really liked being able to show the value and importance that these residents still had both to themselves and to others.  Although I am not currently working in that field, I care a lot for the art therapy field and still consider myself an advocate for the dementia population.  I actually love talking about both art therapy and the importance of offering high quality dementia care for people, so if you have any questions or comments in those areas I absolutely welcome them!  

Raquel Manuela was also interested in knowing more about my path of being art therapist turned artist, and she offered to feature me in her blog, De.  Of course I said yes, and I have shared with her some of my thoughts on what being an art therapist working with dementia patients was like and how that has shaped me into the artist that I am today.  If you would like to know a little bit more about that part of my life as well, just check out the blog feature here!  

As always, thanks for stopping by.  Have a wonderful weekend!
Jennifer

2 comments:

  1. i love your new layout jennifer! it's very pretty. i did not know that about you. that's interesting. my mom teaches social work on the university level. her specialty is gerontology. she discusses aging a lot. it's cool to hear this aspect. i bet it's therapeutic. thanks for the introduction.
    http://www.averysweetblog.com/

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    1. Hi Kim, thanks for stopping by! That's really neat that your mother teaches social work and specializes in gerontology! Geriatrics is such an interesting field (as I'm sure your mom knows!), and working with older adults for the time that I did really has been special. There is a lot of new research coming out about the actual therapeutic benefits to doing art therapy with this population, and I definitely got to see the benefits first hand as a therapist! Anyways, I could talk about this for ages, so I'll stop myself, but thanks again for taking the time to stop by and read about my story!

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