Call Forth the Seed of Winter, 2012

Oil, Acrylic and Resin on Wood, 12" x 16"

"Into the Depths" Solo Show
Thinkspace Gallery
Culver City, CA

http://andykehoe.net/

非（hi） BUT MEN ARE LONELY

http://thisissocontemporary.com/hi/

shoes

Anita Kunz

left brain right brain

Good Morning!

windows and doors

6 Play TherapyTM September 2009 www. a 4 p t . o r g


CLINICAL EDITOR: Readers are guided by the authors through windows and doors that may strengthen our understanding of the children we
work with in play therapy.



B y D a v i d A . C r e n s h a w PhD, ABPP, RPT-S & E r i c J . G r e e n PhD, LCPC, RPT-S
The Symbolism of Windows
and Doors in Play Therapy

The Windows
In these darkened rooms, where
I spend oppressive days,
I pace to and fro to find the windows.
When a window opens, it will be a consolation.
But the windows cannot be found, or I cannot find them.
And maybe it is best that I do not find them.
Maybe the light will be a new tyranny.
Who knows what new things it will reveal?
~Constantine P. Cavaffy

Windows are literally the visual bridge between inside and
out. In the poem by Cavaffy above, windows provide welcome
light but also pose a threat by virtue of what the light might
expose. Similarly, Violet Oaklander (1988) discusses how
windows bring both light and darkness from the outside, in her
book, Windows to our Children. She utilizes windows as a
compelling metaphor to capture the therapist’s efforts to
create access to the child’s inner world of emotions.
As human beings we are often drawn to the bright, warm
light that shines through windows, possibly representing
health, growth, and the courage to change. At a deep,
unconscious level, we may also fear the light that the
windows allow in as they may metaphorically illuminate
the darkness in the inner recesses of the soul. At
times we may prefer the comfort of the familiar
darkness as opposed to the risk of the exposure
of parts of ourselves whether conscious or
unconscious that we choose to keep hidden.
Practically, windows and light traditionally
symbolize an opening and illumination of
darkness. Psychologically, the uncovering of
the shadow, or all that is hideous and hidden
about us, can be an ambivalent,
uncomfortable experience for many.
The symbols of windows are commonly
used by writers from Emily Bronte to
contemporary authors such as Stephen
King and Dan Brown to capture
symbolically psychological issues of
central characters in their stories. If an
observer views the outside world through a window they will
be constrained by a limited visual field. In Emily Bronte’s novel
Wuthering Heights (1847), windows were interpreted by many
critics to symbolically depict spiritual entrance and escape in
her gothic novel. Also the window though transparent is a
barrier between the viewer and the world on the other side.
Children who tend to be isolated and disconnected from their
social world in many instances enjoy a rich inner life; but, they
are not fully engaged with their external environment. They
become more observers than participants.
In children’s drawings of houses many clinical hypotheses
can be generated about the way windows are depicted. If the
windows are missing, this could be interpreted as a fear of
examination by others of inner secrets or conversely the fear
of looking through the windows to see what is outside. John
O’Donohue (2004) the late Irish poet, discussed how some
eyes have seen too much, tragic events that no human being
or child should ever have to see. From this perspective
traumatized children not including windows in pictures could

be perceived not so much as a refusal to look inward, but a
weariness of the darkness and motivation to reconnect to the
beauty and invisible embrace around and within them.
Windows that are barred in children’s drawings may suggest
secrets to be protected, a prison that one is confined in - even if
it is of one’s own making. It may suggest the need to protect
oneself from an intrusive world perceived to be threatening or
unstable. In literature windows sometimes symbolize an
intolerable situation that needs to be escaped. In children’s
drawings sometimes the windows in the house are placed high
up so that it would not be possible to look out or look in even
though some light is available to those on the inside suggesting
an ambivalence with respect to the interface between the inner
and outer world.
One recent example from the clinical work of the authors
involved a 10 year-old African American male who was a
Hurricane Katrina evacuee. He and his family were stuck on a
roof as flood waters arose and were one of many who received a
dramatic air-lift evacuation. They were displaced by the storm
and hunkered down in a Red Cross shelter for several weeks.
During this time, the play therapist and child drew together.
After three sessions, once trust and rapport began to develop,
the therapist asked the child to draw a picture of how he saw his
world. The child drew a massive prison with many windows
across the top of the building, all with bars across them. The
roof was on fire, with bursts of flames being emitted from within
the prison where the fire originated. The child said that the
prisoners were trapped by rising flood waters, and they could
not get out. He said they started a fire to break through the roof
so they could escape or else they would die. The child had not
disclosed any of the events to the therapist surrounding him and
his family’s traumatic experience that is until he symbolically did
so through a drawing during play therapy. Because of the
less-threatening and developmentally-appropriate modality of
using art or creative means to communicate, children are
sometimes able to express difficult events and feelings to a
caring person both symbolically and concretely (Green, 2009).
This expression of emotion and the telling of their story of pain
and fear are often times therapeutic alone. In the next section,
the symbolism of doors is examined, beginning with the poem,
Doors, below.

Doors
Take me back again, and wake this child that’s sleeping.
Slip inside my head, and make my mind believe it.
You open up the doors I close.
The things you do bleed into my heart and soul.
I try to let these thoughts unfold.
Unlock my mind, and open up the doors I close.
I am not alone.
I feel you watching over me.
Slip inside my soul, until the light is closer.
~Chakra

Doors are often utilized in our vernacular to represent
opportunity. A job well-done may open doors for advancement
while closed doors may represent self-sabotage and
underachievement, or lack of ambition. A door partly open may
suggest new possibilities or potentials. Doors open or closed or
part-way open may symbolize key relationships in the child’s life.
Closed doors may represent rejection, deprivation, or missing
out while open doors the opposite. In play therapy scenarios
with severely deprived children, a common theme is enactment
of a grocery store scene with the customer (a role often assigned
to the therapist) showing up to buy food and suddenly the store
owner (child) slams the door and places a “CLOSED” sign on
the door. This play theme, often with intense affect in the child,
could depict the child missing out not just on the “goodies” of
life but basic nutrients (food).

www. a 4 p t . o r g September 2009 Play TherapyTM 7
“Doors are often utilized ...
to represent opportunity.”
8 Play TherapyTM September 2009 w w w. a 4 p t . o r g

Doors likewise in children’s drawings or in play therapy when
children construct houses out of Legos™ or Lincoln Logs™ can
invite many potentially useful clinical hypotheses that will be
either confirmed or dismissed based on the continuing flow of
the child’s own responses and associative activity. Doors that are
placed in the house high up without steps can symbolize how
inaccessible the house may be for both those inside and outside
of the house. Doors with bars or multiple locks suggest a heavy
emphasis on security and a degree of fear and vulnerability.
Obviously, the question to be explored is whether the barred
doors are meant to keep the occupants of the house in or the
outside world out or a combination of both. A door with a
window may suggest more comfort with the intersection of
inside/outside and the larger the window even more so. The
following paragraphs comprise an example of the authors’
clinical work to illustrate the symbolism of doors in children’s
play therapy.
Viola, a 10-year-old African-American female from the
Southern portion of the U.S., was an only child raised in a
single-parent home by her biological father. Her mother died
when she was two-years-old from cancer. Viola’s father worked
one full-time and one part-time job and therefore was not at
home much to raise his daughter. Viola was often home alone as
young as six-years-old, sometimes feeling neglected, isolated,
and unloved. She would often have to complete homework,
watch TV, eat dinner, and play all by herself. She came into play
therapy after being chronically sexually assaulted by a 20 year
old male cousin who was caretaking for her periodically on
weekends while her father was working his part-time job.
Viola was initially diagnosed with Acute Stress Disorder. Then
after a month, her symptoms did not alleviate, so her diagnostic
label changed to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). She
mainly held her pain and suffering within, presenting as a quiet
child, with a soft voice and a shy and introverted demeanor.
While play therapy was predominantly non-directive (i.e., when
the child leads) for the first few weeks to build trust and rapport,
therapy eventually evolved into more directive techniques as the
extended developmental assessment was underway. Sometimes,
directive art techniques, particularly through the creation,
analysis, and interpretation of symbols, facilitate communication
between a therapist and a child sexual assault survivor and may
be healing as the trauma narrative develops (Green, 2008). Viola
drew a series of houses or variations of during weeks four-seven
of play therapy. The first home she drew was a home with
windows that had X’s crossed through them and a door with a
small peep hole. No people were included in this drawing. Viola
explained that this was so she could “watch and see if any bad
people were coming.” In the second drawing, the house still
had X’s on the windows, and the peep hole was still present. In
this drawing, she included herself, her father, and a pet dog. She
said the door was always locked so no bad people could come
inside while they were not at home. The therapist explored this
with her further, and she acknowledged that sometimes she’s
scared of being home alone. In the third drawing, the house
looked basically the same. The therapist asked if anything had
changed from the last week, and she said the door wasn’t
locked all the time, just some of the time. Also, the windows did
not have X’s on them. The therapist stayed with the metaphor of
the drawing and asked Viola if the girl in the drawing became
less scared. She responded quietly and with a smile, “Yes. She
feels a little safer.”
Viola expressed later in therapy, after the sixth month, that
she did not want anyone to ever know that her dad was working
and she was home alone. She said she blamed herself because
she thought she was unlovable. She also said when her cousin
raped her, she felt even more unlovable and “gross on the
outside and inside.” Not communicating her hidden pain and
suffering to the therapist or any adult for the first several months
after the sexual assault, she used artwork to symbolically portray
her inner landscape. While many interpretations could be made
regarding her drawing and the progression or regression of the
symbols in the series, the therapist mainly acknowledged,
non-judgmentally, her statement of overwhelming shame and
hurt. He emphasized and honored her sadness and her not
wanting anyone to get close to her too quickly to hurt her again.
She portrayed her inner turmoil symbolically through the locked
doors, the peephole, and the crossed out windows. The
therapist was careful not to be overly reflective or interpretive
with the child for fear of deepening her misattribution of guilt.
The locked door that eventually became unlocked and the
windows that eventually became open may have symbolized
Viola’s inner transformation of self-healing and progression of
trust between her inner and outer world. The therapist was
deeply grateful to simply be able to witness and respect the
production of these symbols and carry some of this child’s pain,
if only for a very short period in her life.

References
Bronte, E. J. (1847). Wuthering heights. New York: Penguin
Popular Classics [2007].
Green, E. J. (2009). Jungian analytical play therapy. In K. J.
O’Connor & L. D. Braverman (Eds.), Play therapy theory and
practice: Comparing theories and techniques (2nd ed.),
83-122. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Green, E. J. (2008). Re-envisioning a Jungian analytical play
therapy approach with child sexual assault survivors.
International Journal of Play Therapy, 17(2), 102-121.
Oaklander, V. (1988). Windows to our children. Highland,
NY: Center for Gestalt Development.
O’Donohue, J. (2004). Beauty: The invisible embrace. New York:
Harper Collins.

boy with a cloud

Jana Brike
"Boy with a Cloud"
mixed media on canvas
35x35 cm

stairway

Chiharu Shiota
2012

http://www.chiharu-shiota.com/ 

creativity

connection

dance dance dance

differences

holding

the brain

a stammerer

Kim Daehyun
young illustrator from Seoul, South Korea

The Healing Arts

The Restoring Power of Imagination

by Cathy Malchiodi

What Art Therapy Learned from September 11th

Children's drawings of 9/11 increased our understanding of trauma and PTSD

Published on September 9, 2011 by Cathy Malchiodi, PhD, LPCC, LPAT in The Healing Arts

Child's drawing of disaster at World Trade Center

As the 10th anniversary of the events of September 11th approaches, like many mental health professionals I am revisiting what I experienced and in particular, what lessons I learned about psychological trauma. In the weeks and months after the terrorist attacks I provided art therapy and mental health counseling to numerous individuals who were directly and indirectly affected by events in New York City and Washington, DC. I also had the unique opportunity to talk to hundreds of children throughout the US about their impressions of what happened and to ask them to tell me through drawings about the events they witnessed either firsthand or on television.

See All Stories In

The Legacy of 9/11

Art therapy reached a new level of public recognition in the days just after 9/11. Just about every major newspaper and print magazine featured stories about how art therapy was used as psychological intervention with children who lost a parent in the attacks, particularly those associated with the World Trade Center. Hillary Clinton, then US Senator for NY, entered a statement in the Congressional Record shortly after 9/11 citing that "since September 11, many of us have witnessed its enormous benefits in helping both children and adults alike express their emotions in a very personal, touching way." As I look back on that time period, I am reminded of just how much has been learned about trauma intervention with children in particular. Here is some of what psychologists, counselors, and creative arts therapists have learned, post 9/11:

Repeated exposure to traumatic events impacts the content of children's art. As I have noted in previous posts, "when trauma happens, children draw." After 9/11, children were drawing images about the attacks, whether at home, in clinics, in community agencies or at school; some of their art expressions were spontaneously created while others were at the request of concerned therapists, teachers and parents. Their drawings conveyed remarkably similar stories about 9/11

and mostly one singular and iconic image: planes flying toward or into the World Trade Center. A smaller percentage of children included a second incident associated with the attacks in New York City-- the depiction of people falling out of the Twin Towers. These children usually reported that they had viewed television footage of this particular event. While commonsense tells us that children draw what they see, the repeated widespread exposure via media to images of the destruction of the Twin Towers taught mental health professionals a lot about how children translate what they experience into art. Specifically, we learned just how children use drawing to express repeatedly televised images that are traumatic, frightening and confusing.

The content of children's drawings, paintings and play activities, post-9/11, also offered a context for new understanding of posttraumatic stress reactions in children. While no large scale art therapy studies were conducted, collective clinical and anecdotal observations about the content of children's drawings post-9/11 and after other disasters such as Hurricane Katrina provided some valuable insights. For example, children who were more susceptible to long-term trauma reactions such as PTSD were less likely to include images of helping adults such as first responders in their drawings of traumatic events than those children who were more resilience. In brief, art expressions may give us clues to which children have a positive outlook and hope in the future in contrast to those who believe help will never come.

Art expression stimulates narrative. Studies during the past decade underscore that art is not just a "right brain" activity, but actually a "whole brain" activity that stimulates storytelling. In fact, research with children indicates that drawing while talking about an emotionally laden event can actually stimulate two to three times as much narrative than just talking alone. This finding is having wide-reaching impact on current treatment of a variety of stress responses, including PTSD in returning military and interest in developing graphic narrative approaches for Veterans as therapy and self-help.

Art expression is a form of re-exposure to sensory memories. In my interviews with children post-9/11, it became evident that drawing images or impressions of traumatic events re-exposes individuals to some of the same sensory (visual, auditory, kinesthetic and tactile) memories of that event. For some this is an opportunity to make meaning of an emotionally laden or upsetting experience. For others-- particularly those with unresolved trauma reactions-- it may trigger avoidance, intrusive memories or anxiety, requiring strategic and sensitive intervention on the part of the therapist. Increased understanding of creative arts therapies and play therapy as forms of exposure therapy after 9/11 are contributing to contemporary best practices with not only traumatized children, but combat military in the form of sensory interventions as wide-ranging as virtual reality programs to art-based programs for the treatment of PTSD and related conditions in Veterans hospitals.

Art theorist and perceptual psychologist Rudolph Arnheim once noted, "Art serves as a helper in times of trouble." The events of September 11th, 2001 increased our knowledge of how art serves as a helper in times of profound crises. More importantly, 9/11 ironically resulted in greater recognition of art therapy's potential to illuminate our understanding of posttraumatic stress and why the healing arts are important and effective approaches to trauma intervention for individuals of all ages.

Cathy Malchiodi, PhD, LPAT, LPCC

©2011 Cathy Malchiodi

www.cathymalchiodi.com

References
Malchiodi. C. (2008). Creative interventions with traumatized children. New York: Guilford Press.

International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (2011). Guidelines 16 and 17 (Creative art therapies). Retrieved at http://www.istss.org/TreatmentGuidelines/3337.htm.

Trauma-Informed Art Therapy webpage

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-healing-arts/201109/what-art-therapy-learned-september-11th

beginning

Artist: unknown

take music with you every step of the way

PHOTO: Adrian Zissos

~ We rarely hear the inward music but we are dancing to it nonetheless ~ Rumi

Dancing with the Divine Intuitive Healing

a tomato

Fliper

a chapter

"You might be experiencing a dark chapter right now, but it’s not your whole book." ~Author Unknown

Rk's Divine Sharings
PHOTO: Cara Barer

you and me

霧終究是要散去
其實，不過是人們儲備夠了陽光
我走不出夢想的永恆
那裡，依附的青苔躲在情話下
無法回應你們

我離去之後，時間扭曲了一些
在你們的記憶底下透不過一點氣
詩句開始驚醒一樹林的鳥:
“他總是真誠地愛著其他活著的人，
他聽見我們的笑聲。”

在漂浮的文字中，人們再次提起誰的符號
我變成一朵不會動的雲朵
人們在光中，想像
從我所有的離去與抵達之間，選擇一個
為我紋上，一個被動的沉默
呼吸，人們察覺不了我正窒息
悼文化成的淚水淹沒我

我願意在人們的淚光中深潛
我忙碌穿越於人們交錯的哀傷
我在人們的投射之中
看見我無權過問的我
只要人們活著，人們只會看見自己
我朦朧的告別
迷霧很快就會散去。我說
“人們不斷遺忘傷痛的意義，快樂應該永遠解散。”

／美鯨仔

sculpture

Hyun-soo Kim
1976 Born in Gyeonggi, Korea
Currently Lives and Works in Seoul, Korea

Get the picture? Art in the brain of the beholder

• 17 July 2012 by Kat Austen

"My child could have done that!" Wrong – neuroaesthetics is starting to show us why abstract art can be so beguiling

STANDING in front of Jackson Pollock's Summertime: Number 9A one day, I was struck by an unfamiliar feeling. What I once considered an ugly collection of random paint splatters now spoke to me as a joyous celebration of movement and energy, the bright yellow and blue bringing to mind a carefree laugh.

It was my road-to-Damascus moment - the first time a piece of abstract art had stirred my emotions. Like many people, I used to dismiss these works as a waste of time and energy. How could anyone find meaning in what looked like a collection of colourful splodges thrown haphazardly on a 5.5-metre-wide canvas? Yet here I was, in London's Tate Modern gallery, moved by a Pollock.

Since then, I have come to appreciate the work of many more modern artists, who express varying levels of abstraction in their work, in particular the great Piet Mondrian, Paul Klee, and contemporary artist Hiroshi Sugimoto. Even so, when I tried to explain my taste, I found myself lost for words. Why are we attracted to paintings and sculptures that seem to bear no relation to the physical world?

Little did I know that researchers have already started to address this question. By studying the brain's responses to different paintings, they have been examining the way the mind perceives art. Although their work cannot yet explain the nuances of our tastes, it has highlighted some of the unique ways in which these masterpieces hijack the brain's visual system.

The studies are part of an emerging discipline called neuroaesthetics, founded just over 10 years ago by Semir Zeki of University College London. The idea was to bring scientific objectivity to the study of art, in an attempt to find neurological bases for the techniques that artists have perfected over the years. It has already offered insights into many masterpieces. The blurred imagery of Impressionist paintings seems to tickle the brain's amygdala, for instance, which is geared towards detecting threats in the fuzzy rings of our peripheral vision. Since the amygdala plays a crucial role in our feelings and emotions, that finding might explain why many people find these pieces so moving.

Could the same approach tell us anything about the controversial pieces that began to emerge from the tail end of Impressionism more than 100 years ago? Whether it is Mondrian's rigorously geometrical, primary-coloured compositions, or Pollock's controversial technique of dripping paint onto the canvas in seemingly haphazard patterns, the defining characteristic of modern art has been to remove almost everything that could be literally interpreted.

Although these works often sell for whopping sums of money - Pollock's No. 5 fetched $140 million in 2006 - they have attracted many sceptics, who claim that modern artists lack the skill or competence of the masters before them. Instead, they see the newer works as a serious case of the emperor's new clothes, believing that people might claim to like them simply because they are in fashion. In the scathing words of the American satirist Al Capp, they are the "product of the untalented, sold by the unprincipled to the utterly bewildered".

Chimp or Rothko?

We certainly do have a strong tendency to follow the crowd. When asked to make simple perceptual decisions such as matching up a shape with its rotated image, for instance, people will often choose a definitively wrong answer if they see others doing the same. It is easy to imagine that the herd mentality would have an even greater impact on a fuzzy concept like art appreciation, where there is no right or wrong answer.

Angelina Hawley-Dolan of Boston College, Massachusetts, responded to this debate by designing a fun experiment that played with her volunteers' expectations of the pieces they were seeing. Their task was simple. The volunteers viewed pairs of paintings - either the creations of famous abstract artists or the doodles of amateurs, infants, chimps and elephants. Then they had to judge which they preferred. A third of the paintings were given no captions, while the rest were labelled. The twist was that sometimes the labels were mixed up, so that the volunteers might think they were viewing a chimp's messy brushstrokes when they were actually seeing an expressionist piece by Mark Rothko. Some sceptics might argue that it is impossible to tell the difference - but in each set of trials, the volunteers generally preferred the work of the well-accepted human artists, even when they believed it was by an animal or a child (Psychological Science, vol 22, p 435). Somehow, it seems that the viewer can sense the artist's vision in these paintings, even if they can't explain why.

With this in mind, I recently wandered down to an art exhibition at University College London's Grant Museum, where chimp and elephant art is exhibited alongside artworks by abstract artist Katharine Simpson, whose blocky pieces are reminiscent of Rothko's, but on a smaller scale and with more variety of colour. Challenging myself to guess the professional work, I wandered the gallery looking at the paintings before reading the captions. I managed to get it right every time.

So a liking for abstract art can't be explained by peer pressure. Yet Hawley-Dolan's experiment didn't explain how we detect the hand of the human artist, nor the reason why the paintings appeal to us. With a realistic picture, we might relate to the expression on a person's face, or we might find symbolism in a still life. But how does the artist hold our attention with an image that bears no likeness to anything in the real world?

Of course, each artist's unique style will speak to us in a different way, so there can be no single answer. Nevertheless, a few studies have tackled the issue from various angles. Robert Pepperell, an artist based at Cardiff University, UK, for instance, has worked with Alumit Ishai of the University of Zurich, Switzerland, to understand the way we process ambiguous figures. They may look familiar, but "don't add up to something immediately recognisable", Pepperell says. Like the work of Wassily Kandinsky or certain pieces by Gerhard Richter, Pepperell's paintings, which sometimes take the composition of older masterpieces (see images here and here), are not entirely abstract but neither can they be readily interpreted like a representational painting.

Mind games

In one study, Pepperell and Ishai asked volunteers to decide whether they saw anything familiar in the piece. In a quarter of the cases they claimed to recognise something real, even when there was nothing definite to pick out. They also had to judge how "powerful" they considered the artwork to be. It turned out that the longer they took to answer these questions, the more highly they rated the piece under scrutiny. And this delay seems to be filled with widespread neural activity, as revealed by later fMRI scans. From these results, you could conclude that the brain sees these images as a puzzle - it struggles to "solve" the image, and the harder it is to decipher the meaning, the more rewarding we find that moment of recognition (Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol 5, p 1).

This doesn't necessarily tell us much about the more abstract work of Rothko, Pollock or Mondrian, since these artists do not offer even the merest glimpse of a recognisable object for the brain to latch on to. But they may instead catch our attention through particularly well-balanced compositions that appeal to the brain's visual system.

Consider the art of Mondrian, whose work consists exclusively of horizontal and vertical lines encasing blocks of colour. (His conviction in this principle was so strong that fellow artist Theo van Doesburg's decision to use diagonal lines ended their friendship.) Mondrian's art is deceptively simple, but eye-tracking studies confirm that the patterns are meticulously composed, and that simply rotating a piece radically changes the way we view it. In the originals, the volunteers' eyes tended to linger for longer on certain places in the image, but in the rotated versions they would flit across the piece more rapidly. As a result, they considered the altered images less pleasurable when they later rated the work (Journal of Vision, vol 7, p 1445). Changing Mondrian's colours has a similar effect: in one example, a large square of red in one corner is offset by a small dark blue square on the opposite side, which contrasts more strongly with the surrounding white. When the researchers swapped these colours, it threw off the balance, leading the volunteers to take less enjoyable journeys around the piece (Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, vol 5, p 98).

The same is probably true of many other works. Oshin Vartanian at the University of Toronto, Canada, for example, recently asked volunteers to compare a series of original paintings to a set in which the composition had been altered by moving objects around within the frame. He found that almost everyone preferred the original, whether it was a still-life painting by Vincent van Gogh or Joan Miró's abstract Bleu I.

What's more, Vartanian found that manipulating the objects reduced activation in areas of the brain linked with meaning and interpretation (NeuroReport, vol 15, p 893). The results suggest that our mind notes the careful arrangements and senses the intention behind the paintings, even if we are not consciously aware of the fact. It is unlikely, to say the least, that the chimps or children would ever hit upon such carefully considered structures. That may explain why the volunteers in Hawley-Dolan's study tended to prefer the work of the experienced artists.

Besides the balance of the composition, we may also be drawn in by pieces that hit a sweet spot in the brain's ability to process complex scenes, says Alex Forsythe, a psychologist at the University of Liverpool, UK. She used a compression algorithm to judge the visual complexity of different pieces of art. The program tries to find shortcuts to store an image in the smallest number of bits - the more complex the piece, the longer the string of digits used to store the painting on the hard drive, offering a more objective measure that human judgement. The results suggested that many artists - from Edouard Manet to Pollock - used a certain level of detail to please the brain. Too little and the work is boring, but "too much complexity results in a kind of perceptual overload", says Forsythe.

Art imitating life

What's more, many pieces showed signs of fractal patterns - repeating motifs that reoccur at different scales, whether you zoom in or zoom out of a canvas (British Journal of Psychology, vol 102, p 49). Fractals are common throughout nature - you can see them in the jagged peaks of a mountain or the unfurling fronds of the fern. It is possible that our visual system, which evolved in the great outdoors, finds it easier to process these kinds of scenes. The case for this theory is not watertight, though, since the fractal content in the paintings was considerably higher than you would normally find in natural scenes - to the point that, in other circumstances, it would be considered too busy to be pleasant. Forsythe thinks that the artists may choose their colours to "soothe a negative experience we would normally have when encountering too high a fractal content".

It's still early days for the field of neuroaesthetics - and these studies are probably only a taste of what is to come. It is intriguing, for example, that some scans have registered the brain processing movement when we see a handwritten letter. It is as if we are replaying the writer's moment of creation in our brain. That may be down to our mirror neurons, which are known to mimic others' actions. The results have led some to ponder whether the work of Pollock might feel so dynamic because the brain reconstructs the energetic movements the artist used as he painted. This hypothesis will need to be thoroughly tested, though (Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol 11, p 197). Others have speculated that we could use neuroaesthetic studies to understand the longevity of some pieces of artwork. While the fashions of the time might shape what is currently popular, works that are best adapted to our visual system may be the most likely to linger once the trends of previous generations have been forgotten (Spatial Vision, vol 21, p 347).

It would be foolish to try to reduce art appreciation to a set of scientific laws, of course. While the research helps us to understand the way the technique used to create an artwork may appeal to the brain's visual system, an artist's ingenuity also depends on their ability to develop or confront the ideas of those before them. Benno Belke, a German sound artist and cognitive scientist, points out that we shouldn't underestimate the importance of recognising the style of a particular artist and understanding their place in art history or the culture of their time, for instance. This is where expertise comes in to help you appreciate works you would have never enjoyed before, he argues. Pepperell agrees. "Art is about heightened sensitivity and awareness," he says. "If you're a connoisseur, you'll be looking for subtleties."

Science can offer another stopping point on this journey of understanding. "Art gives us knowledge about the world. Some is emotional knowledge, some is the knowledge held by the creator and for the neurobiologist it gives us a means of understanding how the brain is organised," says Zeki.

Abstract art offers both a challenge and the freedom to play with different interpretations. In some ways, it's not so different to science, where we are constantly looking for patterns and decoding meaning so that we can view and appreciate the world in a new way.

The duchamp Code

How do we decode images to give them meaning? Context is crucial, particularly when viewing postmodern, ready-made art like Marcel Duchamp's famous installation, Fountain, which placed a urinal in an exhibition - much to the dismay of the artistic establishment.

Kristian Tylén at Aarhus University in Denmark recently looked at the way the setting of an object can alter our perception of its message. He found that an understanding of intent activates areas in the right hemisphere of the brain that are traditionally associated with linguistic understanding. This holds whether that intent is conveyed through unusual incongruities in the image, like seeing a urinal in a gallery, or through use of accepted symbols such as a bunch of flowers by a doorway. It is almost as if we "read" the unusual arrangements in the same way that we read meaning in the arbitrary signs of a language.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528732.000-get-the-picture-art-in-the-brain-of-the-beholder.html?full=true

A Prayer That Will Be Answered

Lord let me suffer a lot
and then let me die

Allow me to walk through silence
Let nothing not even fear linger after me

Make the world go on as it always has
let the sea continue to kiss the shore

Let grass still remain green
so a little frog could find shelter in it

and someone could bury his face
and weep his heart out

Make a day dawn so bright
it seems there is no more suffering

And let my poem be transparent as a windowpane
against which a straying bee hits its head

/Anna Kamienska

Dreaming of you

Dreaming of you
In the light of day.
The curvature of your face
Ingrained in my very soul.

Dreaming of you
In the depth of night.
Tossing and turning,
Longing for your touch.

Dreaming of you,
I hear your voice
Calling to me,
Whispering my name.

Dreaming of you
As I float above the sea,
All I see is you
And me...

Dreaming of you...

Jamie Antoinette Barone 2012

alienated, not belonging

Christina Bothwell

Dollies' Tea Party, 2011, cast glass, pit fired clay, 38 inches long by 24 inches wide by 11 inches high

Chair, Cast glass, pit fired clay, 18 inches high 2012


Antlers, 2011, cast glass, pit fired clay, oil paints, 14 inches high by 9 inches wide and 4 inches deep

'Angel', cast glass, oil paints, taxidermy, new born infant sized, 2012

This night

digital communication

Johan Rosenmunthe

Off II, 2010

Through digital communication like Facebook, Twitter, online dating and personal websites, the representation of our personality becomes more and more streamlined. We have the possibility to project an idea of how we are as a person into the world around us, but with the constant option of censoring information and invent fictional characteristics. Never have we had access to so much information about each other, and never has the information been so unreliable.
In this project I have downloaded pictures of ‘friends’ that I only know through the Internet, and given them a new context. The persons are only visible through a digital representation, while the surroundings are as analog as possible. The sceneries are photographed places that invited to interaction – places that missed the company of human beings. The milieu adds a new meaning to the way the digital personas act, and gives their simplified characteristics meaning and personality again, by adding a setting to their digital components.
These pictures come to life when the viewer move in relation to them – seen up close, the people are blurred and the viewer has to step back to bring the motive into focus. At the same time, the scene in which the person is placed is blurred when viewed from a distance. From a distance you can almost only identify the pixelated part of the image. So you have to move back and forth – between non-figurative colored squares and figurative representations of personality. This movement is important – metaphorically speaking too.

Website:
http://www.rosenmunthe.com/

through just channelings

script

become a possobilitarian

Kelly Rae Roberts

growth

"Growth is a spiral process, doubling back on itself, reassessing and regrouping."
~Julia Cameron

Hail the Dark Wonder

Andy Kehoe
Portland, OR.
20" x 30"
2011
"Strange Wanderings" Jonathan Levine Gallery

http://andykehoe.net/section/254317_2011.html

The Summer Day

12 Things You Were Not Taught in School About Creative Thinking

By Michael Michalko – psychologytoday.com

1. You are creative. The artist is not a special person, each one of us is a special kind of artist. Every one of us is born a creative, spontaneous thinker. The only difference between people who are creative and people who are not is a simple belief. Creative people believe they are creative. People who believe they are not creative, are not. Once you have a particular identity and set of beliefs about yourself, you become interested in seeking out the skills needed to express your identity and beliefs. This is why people who believe they are creative become creative. If you believe you are not creative, then there is no need to learn how to become creative and you don’t. The reality is that believing you are not creative excuses you from trying or attempting anything new. When someone tells you that they are not creative, you are talking to someone who has no interest and will make no effort to be a creative thinker.

2. Creative thinking is work. You must have passion and the determination to immerse yourself in the process of creating new and different ideas. Then you must have patience to persevere against all adversity. All creative geniuses work passionately hard and produce incredible numbers of ideas, most of which are bad. In fact, more bad poems were written by the major poets than by minor poets. Thomas Edison created 3000 different ideas for lighting systems before he evaluated them for practicality and profitability. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart produced more than six hundred pieces of music, including forty-one symphonies and some forty-odd operas and masses, during his short creative life. Rembrandt produced around 650 paintings and 2,000 drawings and Picasso executed more than 20,000 works. Shakespeare wrote 154 sonnets. Some were masterpieces, while others were no better than his contemporaries could have written, and some were simply bad.

3. You must go through the motions of being creative. When you are producing ideas, you are replenishing neurotransmitters linked to genes that are being turned on and off in response to what your brain is doing, which in turn is responding to challenges. When you go through the motions of trying to come up with new ideas, you are energizing your brain by increasing the number of contacts between neurons. The more times you try to get ideas, the more active your brain becomes and the more creative you become. If you want to become an artist and all you did was paint a picture every day, you will become an artist. You may not become another Vincent Van Gogh, but you will become more of an artist than someone who has never tried.

4. Your brain is not a computer. Your brain is a dynamic system that evolves its patterns of activity rather than computes them like a computer. It thrives on the creative energy of feedback from experiences real or fictional. You can synthesize experience; literally create it in your own imagination. The human brain cannot tell the difference between an “actual” experience and an experience imagined vividly and in detail. This discovery is what enabled Albert Einstein to create his thought experiments with imaginary scenarios that led to his revolutionary ideas about space and time. One day, for example, he imagined falling in love. Then he imagined meeting the woman he fell in love with two weeks after he fell in love. This led to his theory of acausality. The same process of synthesizing experience allowed Walt Disney to bring his fantasies to life.

5. There is no one right answer. Reality is ambiguous. Aristotle said it is either A or not-A. It cannot be both. The sky is either blue or not blue. This is black and white thinking as the sky is a billion different shades of blue. A beam of light is either a wave or not a wave (A or not-A). Physicists discovered that light can be either a wave or particle depending on the viewpoint of the observer. The only certainty in life is uncertainty. When trying to get ideas, do not censor or evaluate them as they occur. Nothing kills creativity faster than self-censorship of ideas while generating them. Think of all your ideas as possibilities and generate as many as you can before you decide which ones to select. The world is not black or white. It is grey.

6. Never stop with your first good idea. Always strive to find a better one and continue until you have one that is still better. In 1862, Phillip Reis demonstrated his invention which could transmit music over the wires. He was days away from improving it into a telephone that could transmit speech. Every communication expert in Germany dissuaded him from making improvements, as they said the telegraph is good enough. No one would buy or use a telephone. Ten years later, Alexander Graham Bell patented the telephone. Spencer Silver developed a new adhesive for 3M that stuck to objects but could easily be lifted off. It was first marketed as a bulletin board adhesive so the boards could be moved easily from place to place. There was no market for it. Silver didn’t discard it. One day Arthur Fry, another 3M employee, was singing in the church’s choir when his page marker fell out of his hymnal. Fry coated his page markers with Silver’s adhesive and discovered the markers stayed in place, yet lifted off without damaging the page. Hence the Post-it Notes were born. Thomas Edison was always trying to spring board from one idea to another in his work. He spring boarded his work from the telephone (sounds transmitted) to the phonograph (sounds recorded) and, finally, to motion pictures (images recorded).

7. Expect the experts to be negative. The more expert and specialized a person becomes, the more their mindset becomes narrowed and the more fixated they become on confirming what they believe to be absolute. Consequently, when confronted with new and different ideas, their focus will be on conformity. Does it conform with what I know is right? If not, experts will spend all their time showing and explaining why it can’t be done and why it can’t work. They will not look for ways to make it work or get it done because this might demonstrate that what they regarded as absolute is not absolute at all. This is why when Fred Smith created Federal Express, every delivery expert in the U.S. predicted its certain doom. After all, they said, if this delivery concept was doable, the Post Office or UPS would have done it long ago.

8. Trust your instincts. Don’t allow yourself to get discouraged. Albert Einstein was expelled from school because his attitude had a negative effect on serious students; he failed his university entrance exam and had to attend a trade school for one year before finally being admitted; and was the only one in his graduating class who did not get a teaching position because no professor would recommend him. One professor said Einstein was “the laziest dog” the university ever had. Beethoven’s parents were told he was too stupid to be a music composer. Charles Darwin’s colleagues called him a fool and what he was doing “fool’s experiments” when he worked on his theory of biological evolution. Walt Disney was fired from his first job on a newspaper because “he lacked imagination.” Thomas Edison had only two years of formal schooling, was totally deaf in one ear and was hard of hearing in the other, was fired from his first job as a newsboy and later fired from his job as a telegrapher; and still he became the most famous inventor in the history of the U.S.

9. There is no such thing as failure. Whenever you try to do something and do not succeed, you do not fail. You have learned something that does not work. Always ask “What have I learned about what doesn’t work?”, “Can this explain something that I didn’t set out to explain?”, and “What have I discovered that I didn’t set out to discover?” Whenever someone tells you that they have never made a mistake, you are talking to someone who has never tried anything new.

10. You do not see things as they are; you see them as you are. Interpret your own experiences. All experiences are neutral. They have no meaning. You give them meaning by the way you choose to interpret them. If you are a priest, you see evidence of God everywhere. If you are an atheist, you see the absence of God everywhere. IBM observed that no one in the world had a personal computer. IBM interpreted this to mean there was no market. College dropouts, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, looked at the same absence of personal computers and saw a massive opportunity. Once Thomas Edison was approached by an assistant while working on the filament for the light bulb. The assistant asked Edison why he didn’t give up. “After all,” he said, “you have failed 5000 times.” Edison looked at him and told him that he didn’t understand what the assistant meant by failure, because, Edison said, “I have discovered 5000 things that don’t work.” You construct your own reality by how you choose to interpret your experiences.

11. Always approach a problem on its own terms. Do not trust your first perspective of a problem as it will be too biased toward your usual way of thinking. Always look at your problem from multiple perspectives. Always remember that genius is finding a perspective no one else has taken. Look for different ways to look at the problem. Write the problem statement several times using different words. Take another role, for example, how would someone else see it, how would Jay Leno, Pablo Picasso, George Patton see it? Draw a picture of the problem, make a model, or mold a sculpture. Take a walk and look for things that metaphorically represent the problem and force connections between those things and the problem (How is a broken store window like my communications problem with my students?) Ask your friends and strangers how they see the problem. Ask a child. How would a ten year old solve it? Ask a grandparent. Imagine you are the problem. When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

12. Learn to think unconventionally. Creative geniuses do not think analytically and logically. Conventional, logical, analytical thinkers are exclusive thinkers which means they exclude all information that is not related to the problem. They look for ways to eliminate possibilities. Creative geniuses are inclusive thinkers which mean they look for ways to include everything, including things that are dissimilar and totally unrelated. Generating associations and connections between unrelated or dissimilar subjects is how they provoke different thinking patterns in their brain. These new patterns lead to new connections which give them a different way to focus on the information and different ways to interpret what they are focusing on. This is how original and truly novel ideas are created. Albert Einstein once famously remarked “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”

And, finally, Creativity is paradoxical. To create, a person must have knowledge but forget the knowledge, must see unexpected connections in things but not have a mental disorder, must work hard but spend time doing nothing as information incubates, must create many ideas yet most of them are useless, must look at the same thing as everyone else, yet see something different, must desire success but embrace failure, must be persistent but not stubborn, and must listen to experts but know how to disregard them.

About the Author

Michael Michalko is the author of the highly acclaimed Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques. His newest book Creative Thinkering: Putting your Imagination to Work has just been released and is now available at most major bookstores. www.creativethinking.net

http://wakeup-world.com/2012/01/23/12-things-you-were-not-taught-in-school-about-creative-thinking/

JME

Much better now

A bookmark is stuck in a forgotten book that is one day knocked over by wind. It experiences its environment by surfing the pages that turn in to ocean-waves, enjoying the ride of its life. As the book cover closes light reveals new challenges

In each moment, you write your own story.
/Earthschool harmony

Guim Tió

heart

The Sufi says, 'The Kaba, the divine place, paradise, is the heart of the human being'. That is why he has respect for every heart. Every heart is his Kaba, his shrine. The human heart is the place toward which he bows, for in this heart is God."

--Hazrat Inayat Khan

Image/Mystic path to cosmic consciousness