After attending the course "Healing with the Arts" at the University of Florida, I am proud to present my final project, "The metamorphose of drinking" (see video below). I chose this project because I wanted to start with a negative emotion (addiction). An Emotion I would rather avoid. I also wanted to start with waste as material, so even the start of my work was ugly. While playing with this material, I was curious what the outcome would be. I will explain what the result of this experience was and what impact it has had on me.
This project is my latest example of a transformation of ugly material, representing negative feelings (about alcohol addiction), into something beautiful, which creates a sense of happiness. When I was working on this project, I felt energized. The materials I have used for "The metamorphose of drinking" are collected beer caps of my best friend with a former alcohol problem. This represents the transformation in his life, with the small caps as reminders of the past. This statue represents an example of my freedom to change negative things in life and transform the feelings associated with these negative experiences into something positive. A metamorphose by transformation is the outcome. During this journey, I have learned to work with unfamiliar raw material, without determining in advance what the outcome of this art project would be. This metamorphose is really the feeling that I experience when throwing away my perfectionism at the start of a project. As an artist, I was already used to making sculptures of stone, as you can see on this website www.nicart.nl . Stone is a material that forces me to have patience and then shows me what follows. Having created many stone sculptures, I had an artistic block in the months before starting this course. My creativity was stuck. Making other art than sculptures of stone was out of the question because I was afraid to fail and feel like a beginner. Therefore, this course was a beautiful gift for me. This final project is my latest trial of serial works with all kinds of raw materials while using new techniques during “Healing with the arts”.
I have rediscovered the joy I was constantly experiencing as a young child while creating. I was always busy making things as a kid. Sand sculptures on the beach, paper collages, and all kinds of drawings appeared from my hands, even finger paintings, just for fun, without having an idea in advance of what I wanted to create. Now I want to play again and again! This course has been a healing route for me while throwing away all my critical sabotaging thoughts. I have noticed that when I am busy creating something, my thoughts calm down, like during meditation. This artistic meditation suits me better than sitting and meditating in silence. Now I feel better about what I really want, and my flow of ideas is does not stop anymore. I enjoy trying out all kinds of new techniques and use new materials. So my newly rediscovered self-esteem from childhood stimulates me to enjoy every little artistic expression. I also see that my freshly gained energy is boosting people around me. My husband is making a lot of music, and other family members want to learn to make sculptures. My dad has started making drawings. My daughter is a photographer. To my surprise, orders for new sculptures of stone come to me without making advertisements, and fresh inspiration is flowing. Furthermore, I have lovely ideas about incorporating arts in coaching young adolescents to find their life purpose. So new exciting ideas keep coming up.
I am very grateful for this transformation in myself and in the people around me. I had forgotten that I was always enjoying making things while working with my hands, playing with materials, and enjoying music simultaneously. I would never have thought that these plays could start transformations in this great an extent. As a biologist, I am even using fungi as material in a new project right now. So, the possibilities are endless, and they combine all aspects of my life. Concluding, it is fantastic to see that, while I think I am playing along on a project without a purpose, I get more focus on life, a lot of "out of the box" ideas come to me, and all this results in a stronger connection with other people. Unbelievable!
