Judy Bruce
For many years, I have listened to friends discuss the benefits of meditation. I have always felt that my art practice is a meditation. Why is meditation important? As the Mayo Clinic reports, it can give you a sense of calm, peace, and balance that can improve your emotional well-being and overall health. Wow! Mayo also states that you can use meditation to relax and cope with stress by focusing on something that calms you.
Louise Bourgeois, a French-American artist who died at the age of 98, famous for her giant spiders says, “Art is a guarantee to sanity. Making art was a tool for coping with overwhelming emotion.” She says, “I remember making small sculptures out of bread crumbs at the dinner table when I was a little girl, a way of dealing with my dominating father. Art was more than escape. It kept me sane.” For Louise as well as many artists, art is a healing meditation.
As Catherine McNally states in ILLUMINATION, “Art is an alternative way to meditate and find your flow connecting you to your creativity.” Art is a balance between freedom and precision with boundaries like composition, color, ideas, style, and technique. Although there are areas where you need to use your skills (straight lines, precise strokes), but you still have the freedom to express yourself. When I was teaching throwing on the pottery wheel, I found that wheel work was one of their favorites. They loved working with mud, having to focus, and the meditative nature of the clay.
Art therapy has a healing effect for a variety of ailments, including depression, trauma, and illness, and is effective across age and gender. I saw art’s healing ability almost daily when I taught junior high art. In a recent study of cancer patients, art therapy, along with conventional treatments like chemotherapy and radiation, not only diminished the symptoms, pain, fatigue, and anxiety, but it also enhanced life expectancy. I can personally attest to that!
Several Sonoran Arts League Artists have expressed those feelings by filling out cards at our League shows. Marti Niles, who coordinates the League Veterans program, said, she has been influenced since childhood by art and its stillness, calming, and healing. She states that she sees the enjoyment that art brings the veterans involved in the League programs. Deb Court also says that art helps to relieve stress and allows you to lose yourself in the process of creativity, producing a sense of calm. Alyson Miller states that art transports you to another space. Support of the arts is essential. Barbara Grey says that all ailments disappear when she is absorbed in creation.
Mayo Clinic states that some research suggests that meditation (art) may help people manage symptoms of certain conditions such as anxiety, asthma, cancer, chronic pain, heart disease, sleep problems, and headaches. I urge you all to join us at the League Studio to with mud or lines or color! Find your personal meditation as you create bowls for the Empty Bowls project or engage in other projects and classes. You Gotta Have Art!
