Shara continues to design and facilitate meaningful community projects for McNally Hospice and shares her most recent community art therapy legacy piece titled: ‘Message in a Bottle’ on display at the Grimbsy Public Art Gallery this month.

Sharing my 2021 eco-art journey, a personal and reflective nature inspired project to honour the relationships and various connections in my life, and a way to establish a mindful, creative and sustainable daily practice in pandemic times. And, a much needed and beautiful excuse to spend hours outdoors in my garden sanctuary engaging with natural elements!

Have you thought about your self-care routine much lately? Have you noticed the need for more self-care throughout the pandemic? This post invites you to reflect on your self-care practice and provides templates and resource links to prompt that needed self-care journey in these continued stressful times.

Introducing the current Ontario Art Therapy Association Board for the 2021-23 term and a well deserved thank you to the 2019-2021 Board. Sharing in this post a couple of photo collage pages from the recently sent out 2021 OATA Tapestry Newsletter.

For those of us who participated in this recent OATA group supervision online, Hannah generously gifted us through her words of guidance, gentle questioning and wise attunement. By creating this regulating space she transported us into a virtual art therapy capsule - an open-ended, art-making, and sensory space where self-directed expression, sharing and her community supervision approach are based on the ‘one-canvas’ supervision model.

“When it was time for the 100 day project to begin in 2021, it felt really hard to come up with an idea. So I leaned into the community aspect of the project and used a poster created by my friend and fellow Art Therapist Arielle Bush. I instantly saw it as a giant feelings chart, which is something I use with almost all of the kiddos I work with as a way to check in with their feelings during art therapy sessions”.

…an unplanned companion post to Brianna’s Ghosted-Feelings post that reinforces the importance of identifying and naming thoughts and feelings.

This post shares a few sketched moments when feelings were intense and I used quick marks, listed words, and simple materials to capture my wandering thoughts.

August 2021… Sharing Canadian Art Therapy Association’s wonderful new social media series: “Blue Blob Campaign”. Every Tuesday Instagram posts will be shared to raise awareness about art therapy.

July 2021… Sharing CATA-ACAT news about upcoming 2021 virtual conference in November and their ‘Call for Proposals’ due in August.

“Fingerprints of a loved one can be a limitless source for art-making. They can become centres for flowers, the base for a burst of fireworks in the night sky, wings of a butterfly, or the bodies of snowmen”.

June 2021… OATA is excited to share the next virtual workshop coming soon on June 26th that is being facilitated by Art Therapist Hannah Sherebrin.

This is another quickly uploaded draft blog post for some professional development, creative learning and self-care opportunities. It will also be an ongoing living document as it is updated throughout the year.

This is really open - your story to share….something about creativity, interests, art as therapy, the self-care piece, health, the role of art in the Pandemic, connecting with others with your art, connecting with nature, supporting the self etc. …A meaningful story to you!.

Sharing a current listing of blog stories so you can select the topics and stories of interest. Enjoy!

As Creative Connections continues to develop (website coming soon!), we are thrilled to now have a beautiful logo to represent our collective. We look forward to future connections and collaborations with our community and are grateful to acknowledge Jenna Gregory as one of our first creative partners.

… a small sampling of professional development opportunities for art therapists in 2021.

These are the ideas of connection through an art therapy lens.

Susan and I share our expressive creations and appreciative reflections after attending the OATA 2020 experiential art making and mindfulness workshops in October.

This beautiful gesture of connection and sensory communication continues to move me to this day…

… the idea of creating art as a form of therapy and exploration of the self is not a new one.