Active Imagination // workshops // One on ones // series
The Ethos: Art is Medicine, and we Humans, can employ Art to understand our intuition, feelings, ourselves, each other.
In Active Imagination, you'll explore expressive art, ie, abstract painting, writing poetry, reflective prose, and performance as methods for developing social-emotional awareness, confidence, and a mature sense of play; learn how to self-reflect creatively by challenging old ways of being to deepen selfhood and empathize with others.
Visual Art brings image to feeling.
Drawing and painting can be used to express big emotions. It avails to the artist/creator a non-verbal outlet by externalizing grief, anger, and anxiety; and makes more space for joy, self-acceptance and non-judgmentality.
* Reduces Stress
*Boost Self-Esteem
* Builds Social Connection
*Enhances Communication
*Coping with Illness and Disabilty
Writing helps one get clear on convoluted feelings.
Writing poetry, short stories, and reflective prose helps one put experiences into words, forces and or encourages you to organize and clarify, while reducing emotional intensity, promoting insight.
*Sense of Control
*Memory Integretion
*Slowing down racing thoughts
*Mental Venting Without Judgment
*Problem Solving and Self-Discovery
*Cognitive Reframing/Creativity as Catharsis
Performance Art encourages one to get through feelings.
Performing, embodiment, acting, dance, music making, singing, and spoken word can allow one to express, release, and transmute internal experiences. When used in communal settings encourages comfort with being seen, heard.
*Safe Risk Taking
*Reclaiming the Body
*Validation & Witness
*Mind-Body Integration
*Stepping into Another Identity
*Empowerment Through Agency
*Cartharsis Through Storytelling
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Multimodal Art, that is, putting it all together, mirrors the way the human experience is layered.
*Visual Art engages imagination, emotion, and spatial reasoning
*Movement taps into somatic memory and the body's wisdom
*Music/Sound regulates emotion and rhthym in the nervous system
*Writing organizes thoughts and reveals inner narratives
* Drama allows for roleplay, empathy, and safe distance from trauma
*Thus Multimodal Arts lets your whole self speak
Dez’Mon Omega Fair is an artist and writer living in the Seattle Washington Area.
A member of The Film and Video Poetry Society, leading expressive art workshops at its biannual symposium; sat on the board of Carnegie Picture Lab, a nonprofit providing art-based programming for Walla Walla county public schools, where he facilitated Art Scholars at Davis Elementary, a social emotional learning course using art to navigate one's inner life, and is currently an artist mentor with Arts Impact, that is, teaching teachers how to use Art to teach STEM through project based learning; including Voices from the Field, which provides arts experiences for middle school students in Washington State’s Migrant Education programs. Dez'Mon is also a teaching artist with SilverKite Community Arts, an artist founded company focusing on art engagement for seniors and folks experiencing memory loss and Parkinson’s.