New altered books workshops in the new year!

I am very excited to be given the opportunity to lead two art therapy altered book workshops in early 2010!




The first one is for adults on Saturday, January 16,from 10am -3pm. I'm co-leading with Rebecca Wilkinson, ATR-BC, in Washington, DC, at Smith Farm Center for Healing and the Arts and we'll be focusing on using Altered Books to explore creativity and identify strengths. See sidebar or smithfarm.org for details-sign up quick though, if you'd like to come because it's filling up. I'm so looking forward to it as we'll be using our altered books to record and capture positive emotions as we identify our strengths. This work is very inspirational..

The other event is a series of four Saturday morning workshops for teens ages 12 to 16 who have experienced adoption. The focus will be on creating books about “our story –where we have been and where we are going, and who we have become on the way." We all could benefit from making a book like this, I think! I'm co-leading with Patty Pearson, MA who is the UMFS Adoptive Parent Liaison. If you are interested in this workshop and live near Alexandria, VA contact Patty at pattylpearson at yahoo dot com. I'm really excited about this opportunity because in '07 I wrote an article on using altered books in art therapy with adolescents which was published in the Journal of the American Art Therapy Association. The article was inspired by the altered books young people in foster care made during art therapy with me at the Adolescent and Family Growth Center in Springfield, Virginia. I worked there for seven years, and really miss the amazing people there. So I'm really grateful for Patty's interest in art therapy with teens who are adopted to help to me return to this work.

Altering books provides a symbolically rich means of exploring reflection and transformation, especially when we make art intentionally for healing and to engage in growth and change. Jenny Navarro, ATR-BC presented about their use in art therapy supervision at the recent American Art Therapy Association conference in Dallas She titled it Altered Art/Altered Perspectives, which I thought was very apt title. Thanks, Jenny! You reminded me there are lots of ideas and new directions to come using this art form.

I'm anticipating some positively altered perspectives in 2010!

Enjoy the New Year!

-Gioia

Presents that will transform your life

This year I'm giving and giving these two books by the outstanding women leaders in the feild of Positive Psychology, both are awsome and fun to read:http://www.amazon.com/How-Happiness-Scientific-Approach-Getting/dp/159420148X/ref=reader_auth_dp#noop

Lyubomirsky, S. (2007) The How of Happiness. London: Penguin Books.
and
Fredrickson, B. L. (2009). Positivity. New York: Crown Publishers.

Creating Original Artwork on Computers

Hey, we have smart boards at work and this email was sent around with amazing computer art sites - very cool! If you don't hve a smart board, your computer will work just fine also!

Enjoy! Gioia

SMARTBoards and Creating Original Artwork
Posted: 14 Sep 2009 08:51 AM PDT
Here are five of my favorite websites for creating original artwork. These sites go way beyond just drawing a picture on the computer and they all work great on the SMART Board. Enjoy!
http://artpad.art.com/gallery/
artPad
This is one of my favorite sites for creating original artwork. In addition, you can do various things with your artwork like playback the drawing, include the drawing in a art.com gallery of other paintings, and view and modify other drawings in the art.com gallery. The interface is fantastic and it works great on the SMART Board.
http://bomomo.com/
Bomomo
This is a very unique painting site that uses abstract paint brushes to create extremely imaginative and beautiful artwork. One of the things I like best about this site is the ability to save your artwork directly to a "jpg" file.

http://www.mrpicassohead.com/create.html
Mr. Picassohead
Believe it or not, the name of this says it all. You create your own Mr. Picassohead using various "picasso-like" features for face, hair, eyes, nose, etc. It's really quite engaging and definitely a lot of fun.
http://repper.studioludens.com/
Repper
I'm really addicted to this site that allows you to use your own images to create patterns. This site is very easy to use and the patterns you create can be used as backgrounds. The site has a short video that shows you how easy it is to use Repper and take the pattern that you create and share them or use them in various ways.
Thisissand
This is sand. Yes it is. To use this site, you touch on the SMART Board and sand will begin pouring from where you are touching. You can change colors of the sand and you can drop the sand from anywhere on the screen. Click on the small box in the upper-left corner of the screen for instructions. One of the neatest things to do on this site is look at the gallery of images other people have created. Some of them are simply amazing.
Sharing is Caring!