This experiential online workshop will introduce the fundamentals of using art explorations and activities in clinical practice, and applications for working with clients experiencing loss, life transition, and death. The day will include lecture, small and large group discussion, experiential activities, and art making.
Participants will explore using art in clinical practice, and considerations for practitioners that are not Art Therapists. We discuss overall concepts around loss and death in our society and clinical work, then focus on cultural differences when saying goodbye, rituals of death and celebrations of life; and ways in which we can use art to help our clients shift from avoidance and denial, to embrace.
Participants will engage in at least two interventions that focus on helping clients transform their loss and grief using art. Participants will explore ways in which racial and ethnic identities inform loss, grief, and the creative process.
There is no need for a clinician to be artistic or have many art supplies accessible in order to engage clients in expressive interventions that can push the treatment through an impasse through visual means.
After this workshop, participants will have the ability to:
- Explain basic principles and practices around using art in clinical practice with specific application to grief and loss.
- Engage in at least two interventions that focus on helping clients transform their loss and grief using art.
- Explain ways in which the art process and the art material selection will support clients’ cultural intersectionality.
Maru Serricchio-Joiner, PhD, LMFT, ATR-BC is an active clinical art psychotherapist, marital and family therapist, and full time professor at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. Born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and growing up in Mexico City, Maru has a diverse background and multi- systemic lens. Maru recently completed her PhD in International Psychology, with a concentration in Organization and Systems, at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology, were she researched bereavement support in Mexican workplaces. Maru is very interested in helping organizations creatively lead and function with intention and awareness, in order to create an environment for the BIPOC population, and for all employees, to be acknowledged and valued.
