As the semester comes down to its final week, our teacher instructed our class to create a self-reflection piece as part of our final. Having this be part of our final, this really stressed the importance of taking the time to reflect and creating a piece after. Our teacher gave out 8×10 canvases to each of my classmates. One week later, each student came in with their own beautiful reflection with their own story behind it. Our teacher suggested everyone create their own pieces, then she would put them together in a quilt like form to hang in the hallway section of our building. I am happy to be a small part of the art that everyone gets the chance to see throughout the summer!
For my reflection piece, I incorporated a silhouette of a face among roses drawn in ink with watercolor over top of them. Process shots are posted below! There were parts of this process that became frustrating, but the constant drawing of the roses made me feel better and distracted me from me any mistakes I made. After this long, stressful spring semester, these soothing and relaxing feelings were extremely needed. Throughout this semester, there was not a whole lot of time to set aside for self-reflecting through art. Although 8×10 is a smaller size, it was the perfect size of canvas to reflect just enough. Some were simple paintings, some were mixed media pieces, some were strictly 3D pieces, each individual piece had its own story behind it. Although we all reflected privately, this final assessment brought our class together uniquely and gave us the chance to learn about each other more.
As my classmates and I discussed, everyone seemed to really get into their reflection and take it very seriously. This really flipped the switch and showed us all that we do not always have to be giving out the directive and teaching others to take time to de-stress. Art therapists (and everyone else) should take the time to express themselves through art and take the chance to escape reality for a little while within a different medium. It was a very rewarding process and I am excited to see the final canvas quilt hung!
Featured Image:[One more shot of the process!]
