Displaying items by tag: Art Therapy

by Anna Oldroyd

Kathryn Wingard is a ceramics MFA candidate within the department of Art & Art History as well as a licensed mental health counselor and registered art therapist within the U of U hospital system. This fall, Kathryn Wingard will again be teaching her special topics course, FA 3801 “Visual Arts & Health.” The course offers a unique intersection of visual arts and mental health.

In this combined studio/seminar class, students will be introduced to concepts related to cognitive and psychological elements. These concepts engage the visual arts, with a recurrent subtheme of relationships and empathy. The class will cover the idea of art making and viewing as (potentially) empathetic experiences involving relationships. These relationships include the artist’s relationship with artwork, the viewer’s relationship with the art, and the viewer/artist relationship.

Student Emily Comstock said “Kate’s Visual Arts and Health class was a consciousness-expanding and productively complex course that transformed my thinking about responding to art, art-making, and the nature of my own artistic practice. My experience was defined by a highly supportive and dynamic environment which integrated the very concepts of thinking and engaging with what we learned about.”

Students will produce 2D and 3D art with a variety of materials. They will review cognitive and psychological themes involved in the process of creating, such as the flux between order and chaos, gestalt, goal attainment, conflict resolution, problem solving, distress tolerance, and interpersonal effectiveness. They will also cover theories about the use of art as coping and art as confrontation. Concepts related to art as a mindfulness tool will be introduced to the artist and the viewer, as well as the somatic, visceral experience of engaging with art.

“This course has been my absolute favorite class,” said Eden Merkley, who was enrolled in last year’s Visual Arts & Health class. “Kate is incredibly student-centered and the material that we cover is interesting since it is widely applicable in the outside world; both personally and as an artist. It taught me how to have an open dialogue with artworks, and to value/see the importance of materials. This has helped me grow as an artist as I'm able to explore my intention for creating pieces.”

The course is open to all students, with or without fine art experience.
Course Catalogue: FA 3801 Special Topics in the Fine Arts; #15546, Sec 001: Visual Arts & Health
Date and Time: T/TH from 3:40-6:40 PM
Room: ART 273
Credits: 3 elective credits (unless approved for substitution of curriculum requirements)

by Noelle Sharp

Ceramics MFA Candidate, Kathryn Wingard, is everything you want in an Art Therapist. She is incredibly kind, approachable and speaks with a calming ease. It just so happens she is also an incredible artist. Wingard is going into her final year of schooling in the Department of Art and Art history as well as teaching a course this fall through the TA Fellowship program at the College of Fine Arts.

Wingard originally started her career at Boulder University, working towards her MFA in Ceramic work, when she had a life changing experience that led her to pursue a career in art therapy. She then decided to switch her degree and graduated with a Masters in Art Therapy and Clinical Counselling from Mount Mary University, Wisconsin. 

A transplant to Salt Lake City, Wingard is now going on a year and a half at the University Hospital at UNI (University Neuropsychiatric Institute), where she works as an Art Therapist and an Associate Clinical Mental Health Councelor (talk and drawing therapy). During her time working at UNI, Wingard was still making ceramic work and one day decided “I still am an artist in my core, above and beyond anything else.” She then applied for the MFA program at the College of Fine Arts in ceramics and was accepted. 

The material clay has been an integral part of her life and identity. Wingard sees incredible overlap between the studio work she is currently working on and her art therapy work experiences. The main themes she is looking at in her studio research are intimacy, vulnerability and communication which in its own way is a reflection of the work done during art therapy.
Her previous work involved abstract sculpture and was very process orientated. Her present-day clay work is more interdisciplinary as she works with sound, video and clay.

Wingard began independent study hours with Professor in the Art & Art History Department, Beth Krensky and was soon encouraged to apply for the TA Fellowship within the College of Fine Arts. Wingard jumped on the opportunity and submitted a proposal introducing a class about visual arts and mental health which was accepted for Fall 2018.

The class is not designed as an art therapy class but touches on what happens to your mind when you are creating and the literal reactions of what happens to your brain when you are working with and creating with different materials (such as the psychosomatic responses to chalk vs painting with your hands vs clay vs graphic design on a computer).

The class (open to any undergraduate student) objective is to obtain the knowledge of a variety of psychosomatic experiences of engaging with art as a creator and as a viewer. The class will be in three sections: the experience of creating, art as conflict resolution and art as confrontation. Recurrent themes in every section are empathy and relationships; what is the relationship between artist and object? What kind of work does an artist make when they engage with object/material and with having empathy/having a relationship? What kind of relationship does the artist have with the viewer? What kind of relationship does the viewer have with the object?

Wingard’s hope is to learn together as a group, both teacher and students. She is a big supporter of art therapy because “A lot of what we already do as artists is what is done in therapy, reflective therapy. Processing and engage. Step back and question.” says Wingard.

Clay is the material that drew her to being an artist and her current studio work consists of an investigation of why she is working with clay and taking a look at her relationship with the materials. “There are some fundamental things about the material that I absolutely love, and that make me want to stick with the material. It’s incredibly responsive, it’s responsive to touch, I can sink my hands into it, my whole hands, I can sink my body into it if I wanted too and it would respond to me. “

Wingard’s latest exhibition, “To Open Into Each other”, opens today 6/22 at The Miri Gallery. Join her for sound, video, clay, and some jiggly pie filling!
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“To Open Into Each Other”
When: 6/22, 6-9P
Where: Miri Gallery, 3605 W Temple C, Salt Lake City, UT