For 35 years Appalachian State University’s Expressive Arts Therapy Program—the nation’s only expressive arts program at a public university—has been educating and training caring professionals to integrate all of the arts into their work and way of being in order to support human growth, development, and healing.
In celebration of the 35th anniversary of the Expressive Arts Therapy Program, which is housed in the Department of Human Development and Psychological Counseling, a special exhibition of expressive arts work is currently on display at the Turchin Center for the Visual Arts. This juried exhibition features the work of students, alumni, and current and former faculty of the Appalachian Expressive Arts Therapy Program. Tour the exhibit from home - watch now!
Jurors’ Statement
The expressive arts use imagery, storytelling, movement, music, drama, poetry, dreamwork, and visual arts, in an integrated way, to foster human growth, development, and healing.
The works gathered in this exhibition by Appalachian’s Expressive Arts Therapy Program faculty, students, and alumni offer poignant examples of attunement to present moments, both mundane and calamitous. They contemplate questions about, and notice deep connections to, grief, suffering, joy, nature, community, identity, spirituality, and social movements for change. Each piece also elicits in viewers a heightened sensitivity, inviting us to tune in empathetically to the emotional states and life conditions of others.
Expressive arts therapy embodies a radical democratization of creative expression, rejecting typical dichotomies between expert vs. amateur, paid vs. useful, and art vs. craft, insisting that we all have within us creativity we can learn to use for searching inwardly and serving outwardly.
Expressive arts work, then, is process-oriented work. When viewing expressive artwork, we are viewing a product that represents a process of self-discovery, growth, and knowledge building. For this reason, we encourage you to read the Artist’s Statement that accompanies each work in the exhibition’s Gallery Notebook.
Harnessing the human need and capacity for creativity to promote physical, emotional, and spiritual healing and growth, for both individuals and communities, the art in this exhibition serves as a powerful testament to the value of multi-modal creative expression.
What is Expressive Arts Therapy?
Expressive Arts Therapy is the practice of using imagery, storytelling, dance, music, drama, poetry, movement, dreamwork, and visual arts together, in an integrated way, to foster human growth, development, and healing. It is about reclaiming our innate capacity as human beings for the creative expression of our individual and collective human experience in artistic form. Expressive arts therapy is also about experiencing the natural capacity of creative expression and creative community for healing. Appalachian offers a concentration at the graduate level and a graduate certificate in Expressive Arts Therapy.
Expressive Arts
