Art Therapy -or- Stair Descent and Downhill Walking Addendum: Rough-Hewn Granite Stairs With No Bannister, Outdoors, On a Rainy Day (part one)

A Sunday a month ago, it rained and I was sad, so I went to my favorite museum in Massachusetts, the DeCordova.

Someone we ran into at the local Starbuck's who was wearing a "D" sticker (which is what you get to wear after you pay your $9.00 admission to the DeCordova) as well as esteemed correspondent Leslee of  3rd House Journal, had told us of an exhibit currently running called "Going Ape," which is all about various aspects of the human relationship with other animals, at least our artistic relationship with them.  Strangely, I don't remember feeling any real anxiety that this kind of exhibit might be painful for me in the state I was in, though I did think about it.  It felt more like going to a hospital -- not an actual hospital, but a place of real emotional healing.  Art and this museum in particular are always, always good for me.  They help, even when they catalyze pain.

Besides, there probably weren't going to be any cute, fluffy pictures of kitty cats.

Besides, it had been literally years since I'd last visited, and for goodness' sake, I live in just the next town over.  Since moving to Massachusetts, I have always lived in just the next town over, even when I lived in a different town than the one I live in now.  I've just been so busy, so very busy.  I didn't even know that the DeCordova had begun charging admission to the park as a whole.  It used to be that visitors only had to pay to go into the museum proper, but that anyone could visit the grounds and freely roam the sculpture garden and the hiking trails as long as the sun was up.  Sadly, though, it costs more than the museum was collecting to keep all that up, so unless you are a Lincoln, Massachusetts, resident, attending a class at the museum's art school, or strictly there to browse the gift shop, you now have to pay $9 at the entrance just to walk around the property outdoors.  But then you also get to go into the museum.

I won't write here about my thoughts on the exhibit.  I kind of already did that over at Leslee's place, in comments.  I will just say that I climbed the stairs with all the monkeys hanging over them, really a lot of monkeys, and I wended my way up from ridiculous stop-action film and ethereally miraculous ink drawings (paintings, really) through creatures that seemed part boat, part plane and past tbe sad eyes of lab chimps and the brightly adorned wings of large insects.  I giggled watching a film about that little part of everyone that yearns to be a dog.  I dined in the café while editing a piece of writing, and found myself making other art with the digital camera I would be forced to rescue, traumatized nearly fatally, from my boyfriend's trashcan only a week later.

When I arose from my table, I glanced out this window I had just been photographing and saw my first bluebirds, ever, ironically in the rain, me in my happiness-out-of-sadness mood, and them perched upon a piece of sculpture which was made via a process of digitally creating, well, amputated limbs, manipulating and collaging them, animating the collage, and then choosing one image from which to sculpt. 

I was too slow to photograph the bluebirds.  I was too busy telling other people in the café that they were there, and inviting them to the window to see for themselves.

One woman came and she noticed my cameras, my beautiful old Contax RTS, still my favorite for making art but less convenient than the little doomed-to-trauma-and-salvation Optio.  She told me she liked to take pictures, too, and asked me what I was photographing.

I pointed to the ikebana on the table.  I pointed out the vines creeping up the screens, the way they shot roots into the screen, toeholds that will ultimately destroy its fabric, sometime long after they have passed needing it.  I described the moiré pattern the screen makes on a digital camera, and ran my hand along the shape of the curves and lines and waves of tiny details. 

"It's all about the details for me," I told her.

I turned to take my trash away and saw the woman at the table behind me quickly -- furtively ? -- capping and putting away -- hiding? --  her own camera, which had been aimed toward us or toward my window, I couldn't say which.  She did not smile back when I looked her in the face and beamed happily, practically beatifically, so suffused with love and joy of that moment that I wanted to embrace everyone I could see and just squeal.  She looked a little caught. 

Whatever.  It was time for me to walk outside and meet my hubris.

As you may recall, a couple of months ago I went on a long walk and averred with complacent certainty that it was highly unlikely that a transfemoral amputee who went forth prepared into the world would ever find herself in a cultivated garden that had steep unstepped slopes or similar difficult terrain, and that if she did it was her own fault for not bringing along a cane or crutch or something.  Let's quote me directly:

[I]t is highly unlikely that you will encounter steeply sloping, unstepped, gravel-and-debris strewn paths in a cultivated garden....  If you do find yourself in this kind of situation, I've got to think it's highly unlikely that you got there entirely by surprise.

Yeah, well...

And then there's stuff like this.  And I will tell you that up is not the problem here.  And that no, I was not prepared.

Sadly, I shall have to leave you now and pick this up tomorrow.  The post is already quite photo-intensive, and besides, I'm in NaBloPoMo, you know, and we silly people doing this have pledged to file a post every day, on our honor, on the date shown and not backdated or anything.  I might brush it up a bit in the minutes just after midnight, just after I've saved it properly for today, but you have to allow me that.  After all, it's just symptomatic of the very obsessive-compulsive disorder that drives the whole exercise. 

For now I'll just tell you now that I learned something, I didn't break my leg, and I'm going to show you how that worked out.  Tomorrow.

Comments

[Ron Sullivan]

Omigod. A clifffhanger with stairs!

[Sara]

A "stairhanger" just doesn't imply the same thrill, does it?

There will be a cliff, too, later. But nothing about that will be scary, alas.

[Martina]

Art therapy is a form of expressive therapy that uses art materials, such as paints, chalk and markers. Art therapy combines traditional psychotherapeutic theories and techniques with an understanding of the psychological aspects of the creative process, especially the affective properties of the different art materials. The purpose of art therapy is much the same as in any other psychotherapeutic modality: to improve or maintain mental health and emotional well-being. But whereas some of the other expressive therapies utilize the performing arts for expressive purposes, art therapy generally utilizes drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, and other forms of visual art expression.
-------------
Martina