Art therapy in a box
Three Taos County organizations that support children, teens, adults and families in crisis are about to receive the gift of art to aid their clients, thanks to one Taos art therapist’s drive to share her own experience with art therapy.
Seated in her studio surrounded by piles of art supplies she has been methodically packing into 250 boxes over the past couple weeks, Alexis Tonioni explained why art therapy is an effective tool for children, teens and even adults struggling to make sense of the world they live in.
“When you’re making a piece of art, you might not know what you’re doing or what you’re making until we see the final product,” said Tonioni, a registered art therapist and licensed counselor. “And we see all of these connections from inside the brain that maybe you didn’t even know that you were drawing until the art therapist is there to say, ‘What’s that? OK, that’s interesting, how is that connected?’
“Also, for non-verbal people, like [people] with autism, they can communicate their whole life story through an image,” she added, “but they might not be able to verbally tell you — so it gives a voice to people. Art therapy, instead of just talk therapy, it has the potential to go even deeper. It works directly with the psyche itself.”
Tonioni works for the Coloradobased company Healthy Young Minds, which offers online therapy sessions for kids and teens. The organization also runs a private practice called RISE Therapy.
A graduate of Southwestern College in Santa Fe, Tonioni interned at Taos Behavioral Health, the destination for 100 of the art boxes. DreamTree Project is set to receive 100 boxes, while Community Against Violence (CAV) will get 50 of them.
The LOR Foundation funded Tonioni’s project with a $2,115 grant.
“Art Therapy can be a powerful tool for teens dealing with anxiety, depression or trauma,” according to a LOR Foundation press release last month. “Through the creative process, participants can gain greater self-awareness, process difficult emotions, and develop new coping mechanisms. However, under resourced teens in Taos can face significant barriers when it comes to accessing art therapy, including cost and a limited number of practitioners.”
LOR Foundation is always looking for other community-oriented projects to fund, Tonioni noted. Visit lorfoundation.org to “share a solution.”
LOR is always excited to support community champions with ideas big or small that improve quality of life, whether that be direct funding support, connections to resources, or information sharing,” Sonya Struck, Taos community officer for the foundation said in an email.
We consider requests up to $30,000 and do not have a formal application process or deadline,” she added. “We simply work at the speed of the community and are interested in learning what ideas the community has that require support. We support ideas across many elements: housing, water, transportation, health, engagement, environment, education, and economy.”
Each art box contains two packets of clay, a sketchbook, pastels, water colors, and a brush, as well as colored pencils, two regular pencils, and a pencil sharpener. (Boxes going to DreamTree are minus the pencil sharpener, Tonioni said.) She expects the need is so great in the community the boxes will be distributed within a week.
The boxes also contain a card with suggested exercises like “draw a tree and write your strengths on the leaves,” or “create a picture of your ‘safe place’” and “use the clay to make the animal you feel like today.”
Tonioni said she hopes to one day market art therapy boxes to bookstores and the like.
“They’re child friendly and safe to be done without a therapist,” Tonioni emphasized.
Tonioni said, “If one kid out of the 250 that get the box becomes obsessed with art and just starts doing it, that’s a win for me. That could really change the trajectory of their life.”
“I know when I was in high school I was going through tough times, got sent to Catholic school, all the things, and I had this journal making art — it basically saved my life,” Tonioni said. “Because I could just sit in my room and just dump all my [expletive] on the page and do art. It was the one constant thing when everything else was changing.”