JOINT BASE LEWIS-MCCHORD, Wash. -- On canvas a clown touches a window pane. Visible through it stands the home he can't touch. Painted by a Vietnam veteran, the face paint represents his struggles with post-traumatic stress, the glass symbolizes his alienation, and out of reach beyond it was home, the place he loved the most.
The work communicates a profound reality that the artist found difficult to put into words.
"We can talk around a problem, but art therapy forces you to get to the most primitive areas of your brain where words aren't even connected," Maureen Harvey, an Oklahoma City Veterans Administration Medical Center art therapist, said at Joint Base Lewis-McChord last week.
Harvey was a core trainer for a two-day workshop, called "Resiliency through Art," which made its second stop on its three-installation tour, March 26 to 27. The U.S. Army Installation Management Command program is supported by the Army's Comprehensive Soldier Fitness program and the American Art Therapy Association.
Multiple art projects during the two days encouraged creativity and self reflection, while accompanying information sessions included topics like PTS and traumatic brain injury. Civil servants from across JBLM attended the "train the trainer" event developed by a team of AATA art therapists to support CSF. The team members, all accredited by the Art Therapy Credentials Board, are experts in military health care, art therapy and resilience training.
"The Army is already on board with (art therapy,) I just think the issue is the persistence in sticking with it. Given the opportunity to express themselves, people will stand back and realize 'I didn't even realize I was feeling that way,'" Harvey said.
She stressed art therapy's benefits to Soldiers and Airmen who have served on multiple deployments during America's longest conflict, enabling them to clarify thoughts and get in touch with complex, sometimes hidden emotions.
"They can reframe a lot of what's been going on with them, then be able to pull back and see what's important to them," she said, "see the family they care about and not only just the pain they're dealing with -- see the bigger picture."
Gloria Rodgers, arts and crafts director of the JBLM DFMWR Community Recreation Division, attended the workshop and said she's looking forward to sharing the information she learned.
"We need this," she said. "(Art therapy skeptics) need to sit in on one of these classes; I think it would change their minds completely."
Rodgers, an Army civilian at the former Fort Lewis since 1972, said she has a stress outlet similar to the projects she tackled last week, so she knew of their therapeutic values.
"I crochet one-of-a-kind items and I don't concentrate on anything but that blanket," she said. "This is the same really. These are projects that practice overcoming obstacles."
Other Soldiers and Army civilians from installations as far as Fort Huachuca, Ariz., came to JBLM for the two-day training.
Jean Neal, an employee of IMCOM Community Relations who coordinated the three-installation swing, said its first stop at Fort Hood, Texas was very eventful.
"We had people come over from their (Warrior Training Unit) and the military family life consultants," she said. "We had a Soldier who was assigned to WTU's arts and crafts. He worked there during the day and in the evening he'd go into the wood shop and work on building a guitar. He wasn't too engaged in what was going on (during the day,) but he did follow the activities.
"On the last day, we made a circle and he spoke about the guitar and how his grandfather, who was a carpenter, taught him how to build one. The social worker and the arts and crafts director there said that was the most they had ever heard him speak or open up."
Neal and the program's core trainers will meet with local trainers and students when they converge on Fort Drum, N.Y., April 23 to 24.
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