Home
What is Art Therapy?
Upcoming Offerings
Women's Retreats
Individual Therapy
Ongoing Group Art Therapy
Professional Development Classes
Contact Me
Directions
Related Links
Art Therapy Atlanta
Individual, Group, Couples Art Therapy in Atlanta/Decatur
with Virginia DuPre
Licensed Professional Counselor & Registered Art Therapist
Complete List of Group Workshops
These group workshops last from 4-8 weeks and are focused on a topic. This list includes some groups that I have been offered in the past and will offer again. If you have a particular interest in one of these topics, please contact me.
Art as a Way of Knowing
The Artist's Way
Basic Theories and Practice of Art Therapy
Connecting with Earth
Good Parent
Inner Child
PAINT! PAINT! PAINT!
Shadow
Wild Woman
Art as a Way of Knowing (6 weeks)
Participants in this group are introduced to using process over product artmaking as a way of accessing their unconscious and their right brain for the sake of insight, growth, and healing. Participants are introduced to several art mediums including oil and chalk pastels, paints, clay, and found-object sculpture.
The Artist's Way (11 weeks)
The group is limited to 10 people.
The discussion and process Julia Cameron outlines in her book, The Artist's Way is aimed at helping people discover their dreams AND to help them take steps to make those dreams happen. Our process will include journaling, reading, and process-over-product artmaking. If you have a dream for your work or for your life, but struggle with how to make it happen, this process is extremely helpful! Since this process helps people break out of limits and expectations they and others have of them, it is important to take this class with people you DO NOT KNOW.
Basic Theories and Practices of Art Therapy
The class is limited to 10 people.
Participants in this workshop will be introduced to theories informing the use of artmaking and images in therapy. Participants will be introduced to several art mediums and, through an experiential exercise, learn some of the different experiences and feelings particular materials evoke.
Participants will be also be introduced to ways of looking at art images. Understanding images as the "language of the unconscious" is relevant to the work of counselors who seek to help clients integrate aspects of their unconscious into conscious living. It is relevant to all who want to use images and image-making to move toward more conscious living.
Continuing Ed approval for LPC's and LCSW's approved. (5.5 credits)
Connecting with Earth - Doing something about it....
This group is limited to 10 people.
Many folks struggle with what is happening to the earth and are becoming increasingly aware that their own physical, mental, and spiritual health is related to the health of the earth. Most want to do something about caring for the earth, but feel stuck or powerless as to what to do. This group is for those who are looking for support and community in honoring their connection to the earth and in getting more actively involved in caring for the earth.
Participants will work with one or two images of animals or plants of their choice. For example, I might work with turtle and ladyslipper. As we work with these specific images, we will listen to the guidance the images have for us as individuals and to what the images ask us to do in caring for the particular creature or plant we have selected.
Although we are working with specific images, the art making in this group will be process over product, that is, what comes out in the process of working with an image is more important than what it looks like in the end. This class will involve homework including journaling and some research around your animal or plant of choice. For example, I will research more about what is happening to the turtle's and ladyslipper's environment and what we can do to help them flourish.
Good Parent (4 weeks)
(Participants need to either have taken the inner child group described above or have a good understanding of the inner child through therapy work in order to be in this group).
All parents, "good" or "bad," have limits in their ability to provide for our needs. This reality leaves us with parts that have been unparented or untended. In this group we will use image and artmaking to acknowledge the parenting we received and did not receive. We will use image and image making to work toward developing a good parent within us. (Minimum of 6 participants; maximum, 8).
Inner Child (4 weeks)
We all have free, innocent parts of ourselves that we learned to "put away" when we were children in order to function and survive within our families and within our culture. We also have "survivor" parts in us that learned the family's and culture's rules and followed them in order to have a place in the family and culture. These aspects of ourselves seek to have a place in our lives as adults. Getting conscious of them is important. In this group we will use art to get to know and honor the free, innocent one in us as well as the kid in us that learned how to follow the rules. We'll explore each of these aspects of ourselves and their relation to each other. (Minimum of 6 participants; maximum, 8).
PAINT! PAINT! PAINT! (4 weeks)
Tuesday Nights 7-9
10 Weeks: Sept 12- Nov 14 (excluding Oct 24)
Paint is a material that moves easily onto the page. When we paint, it helps move things inside of us--whether we are aware of it or not. Whether you want to free up your creative energy, or move feelings through you and out of you, or move through being blocked in life, or move into your deepest knowing place, committing to 10 weeks of showing up to the page to paint will help you get there.
The emphasis will be on the process, not the product, of painting. That is, our goal will be to PAINT --not necessarily to paint something beautiful. Participants will be guided in exploring colors, making marks, and in reflecting on what the process and images are teaching them.
Each night will include an hour for painting and time for journaling. Most of the group time will be spent on painting with a brief check in and check out at the beginning and ending of each night.
On weeks 3, 6, and 9 we will take some of our time to reflect as a group on the images that have come and what they may be telling us. Absolutely no experience with painting is necessary with this group.
Cost: $300 for the ten weeks.
Deposit of $150 required to register.
Second payment due Sept 12.
Final payment due Oct 10. Limited to 8 people.
Shadow (4 weeks)
Carl Jung described the shadow as the part of our humanity which we reject in order to maintain a particular identity. The shadow contains our gold (our highest self) as well as the parts of us that we have shame about. Integrating the shadow into consciousness---getting conscious of our repressed and rejected parts is a huge part of becoming more fully our true/authentic self. Participants may want to read Robert Johnsonıs book, Owning Your Own Shadow. (Minimum of 6 participants; maximum, 8).
Wild Woman (4 weeks)
Clarissa Pinkola Estes describes the wild woman archetype as the feminine soul. It is our wise, knowing, and sensual nature. A sense of Wild Woman comes through sights of great beauty like sunsets, the ocean; sounds like a drumbeat and wailing; through poetry or words that cause us to remember deeply who we are. When we pick up her trail, it is typical for women to ride hard to catch up, to clear off the desk, clear out her mind, turn to a new page, insist on a break, break the rules, stop the world, for we are not going on without her any longer. Wild woman will not let us be bent into acceptable shapes and thoughts--she demands authenticity.
Creation and humanity deeply need and long for the energy of Wild Woman to gain space and thrive. After an intro to the Wild Woman archetype (actually a remembering of her--we all know her on some level). we will use artmaking, music, journaling (including poetry writing) to access Wild Woman and give her room to live in our lives and in the world. (Minimum of 6 participants; maximum, 8).