As you know, I’m at the art therapy conference in Dallas. Or if you didn’t know, you do now. I’m really trying to keep up with NaBloPoMo in addition to be fully present here and get myself ready for the board certification exam. I’ll be devastated if the NaBloPoMo Police come to arrest me for failing, so I wrote up a re-cap of what I did at the conference yesterday.

Yesterday, I sat through the first part of a session on organizing public exhibitions of client/patient artwork. Since the artwork made in art therapy is subject to HIPAA regulations, and because the artwork is a record of someone’s therapeutic process, there are lots of issues that have to be considered when displaying the work. I keep having fantasies about organizing a show of diabetic art though. Whether it’s client work made in therapy or just work I collect from you, or some other option I’ve not considered, I don’t know, but I hoped to garner some insights into issues that I would need to consider and what the process of making that happen might be like.

It sucks when you go to a conference and there are multiple sessions occurring at once to which you want to go during some time brackets, but then there are time brackets when none of the sessions are especially appealing. The former was true for the aforementioned session, so I ducked out mid-way to catch the session on sexuality and art therapy. It was definitely interesting, but didn’t quite get into the issue of how to use art therapy to help people with sexual problems. The focus was more on how there is a place for art therapy in helping people resolve sexual issues within a therapeutic context. I thought it would be a good session because as anyone who frequents any online diabetes community can see, there are a lot of sexual issues that can accompany diabetes, and I’d like to be able to effectively help people address those kinds of concerns. Although it didn’t quite cover aspects of the topic for which I had hoped, it certainly gave me some things to think about.

After that, I scurried down to the hotel restaurant for an informal lunch with some other medical art therapists. It was cool to meet all of them and learn about what they’re doing, but all of them work in hospitals so they talked shop about a lot of institutional issues that don’t apply to what I’m doing. It was stuff like grant funding, working in patient hospital rooms, being part of treatment teams, having an art cart versus having a studio space. Since hospitals are typically critical care facilities, the discussion also tended towards more acute illness, traumatic injury, and the like. It was a good networking opportunity though, and even though much of the chatter wasn’t directly relevant to my practice, I enjoyed it and got to meet some art therapists doing some pretty awesome things to help medically ill children.

Following lunch, I went to a session on building a private practice. Some of it was interesting, and I got some ideas. For instance, the presenter recommended doing an e-newsletter to keep clients and referral sources updated. When I have a list of people like that, I could see myself doing that. There was also a bit of discussion about identifying the niche market, but I already know what my area of expertise is. Towards the end of that workshop, we got to make art. The task was to draw our journey towards creating a private practice. Unfortunately, the association provided the art materials, and at my seat was a box of markers, half of which were too dry to use, and a box of colored pencils, none of which had been sharpened (something I plan to complain about when I get to offer my overall conference review). there was a table with other supplies in the room though, so I grabbed a box of chalk pastels thinking they were oil pastels. When I opened the box and realized my mistake, due to time restrictions, I went with them, and quickly regretted it because I ended up with dirty chalky fingers, no paper towels, and since I was wearing my business casual attire, I was afraid to touch anything. So I was kind of a mess, and because I’m not crazy about chalk pastels to start (the dust annoys me), the drawing was kind of bleh. I enjoyed making it though, so there was some merit to the activity.

Lastly, I went to a presentation on how to write a conference proposal for AATA (the American Art Therapy Association). That was very informative and helpful, and made me want to maybe submit something for next year. I’m not so sure that my specialty has a lot of appeal though. They have certain topics that they consider “contemporary trends” like autism, grief & loss, and technology. Medical art therapy is a popular area of interest, but everyone is cuckooo-for-cocoapuffs over pediatric cancer patients. I know the last three art therapy conferences to which I’ve been had at least one session on using art therapy with children who have cancer. I think people perceive diabetes as very mundane, and not the type of illness that would even result in emotional turmoil of any kind. I have no problem admitting my fear is that I’d submit a proposal, get approved, show up next year and no one would attend the session. To be fair though, people like to attend sessions that are related to their practice. Like I have no interest in attending a session on working with victims of domestic violence because that isn’t a population that interests me. Since almost no one works with diabetes patients, I’m having difficulty envisioning much broad appeal. Anyway, I’m kind of thinking ‘out loud’ on that one, and I have some time to mull this over more before deciding.

Have I totally put you to sleep? I do like to write about art therapy sometimes, and since I’m here, it’s fresh on my mind. Tomorrow, I’m taking the board certification exam, and I’m pretty scared. I didn’t study nearly as much as I should have. I’ll be sitting for the exam tomorrow morning at 9AM, central time, so wish me luck or something because I think I’m going to need a heap of it. Yup, I’m definitely freaked out…