“Beautiful hands are not always supportive, but supportive hands are always beautiful.”
Connecting Hands.
From Art School Sketch to Art Therapy Logo
A 2020 Reflections Art Story
Summer 2020… I am reflecting upon the hand as a meaningful and evolving image in my own art making and art therapy practice. The hand as maker, explorer and creator of cool things.
There is such form and function in the connecting hand as image and symbol. It can suggest a loving connection when we reach out to others, show support or comfort and a welcoming or gentle hello.
The hand as an art image transcends cultures and differences, celebrates universality and highlights our similarities as humans navigating this tricky journey called life. As a relational-based image it can interweave process and product with self and others.
Early in my art therapy work, I began using the image of my hand for my art therapy logo and stationery. Although I originally thought that I would not use something so literal … I then realized how significant the hand as metaphor was in my long-term-care focused therapy practice. The hand represented a genuine tool for art making, a therapeutic means for myself as practitioner to provide accessible art-making spaces for those I work with (related to mobility and the art therapy ‘third hand’), and ultimately and most profoundly within the relational context of support, and the need of human connection and touch.
A hand image has also become an integral part of the recently designed Creative Connections art therapy logo.
“It is in our hands to create a better world for all who live in it..”
Art Notes
HAND Posts on The Connections Blog:
✿ My Connecting Hands story continues in an art therapy blog post.
〰 reflections on art therapy and older adults with dementia
✿ Introducing Creative Connections: our logo story and the incorporation of the connecting hand.
✿ ‘Supportive Hands’... The Origin Story. A Journey of Creativity, Hope, and Connection 〰 a very personal project with my LTC colleagues
✿ Supportive Hands. A Connecting and Creative Legacy Project. 〰 sharing a community art therapy story 〰 Ten Years of Supportive Hands Projects
〰 Post Coming Soon: The Community Hand Mandala is a long-term care art therapy art-initiative facilitated by myself and art therapist Meghan Scott in 2015.