Drawing Alone: Making Art in Solitary Confinement. How drawing helped a female inmate survive solitary confinement. Solitary confinement (aka segregation, administration segregation [Ad Seg] or “the hole”) began in the early 1900s as a means of rehabilitation. However, it has shown to have had the opposite effect--leaving inmates devoid of human contact and stimulation, and causing many to become mentally disturbed. The mission statement of most correctional institutions underscores an intention to rehabilitate their wards into contributing members of society upon their release. Yet, it seems antithetical to strip away everything that makes someone human for extended periods of time through such confinement. This post introduces a distinctive perspective on confinement by comparing the different experiences of two female inmates. One was in a maximum-security institution; one was in a low security correctional facility. Upon return to general population, one tried to commit suicide, the other claimed it worked for her. What was different? One contributing factor may have been that one was given a 3-inch long pen and a few sheets of paper. * * * Six months ago, for my third and final art therapy practicum training I expected to be placed in ‘a prison’. Instead, I found myself a privately owned correctional facility housing female inmates with an emphasis on rehabilitation. The site was within the prison’s department of mental health; I received supervision from the institutions head psychologist and the art therapy faculty from the FSU art therapy program. I saw many women, in groups and in individual sessions. About mid-way through the semester, something interesting happened that compelled me to delve into the world of solitary confinement. My supervisor referred a client to me who she felt could benefit from individual attention with an art therapist. Normally I would have hesitated working with someone new with only a month remaining in my practicum. However, this particular woman had an extremely complex history of trauma, an affinity for and desire to create art, and had recently transferred from a maximum-security institution where she was looking at a life sentence. I agreed to see her, believing that an art therapist could offerthe inmate unique strategies to cope with such a huge transition. We began meeting twice weekly. Her once dismal sentence reduced, she spent many episodes over the past 13 years in solitary confinement for various aggressive acts before being transferred to my correctional facility. Her main concern was the anxiety she felt in being exposed to such an overwhelming influx of stimuli - including 1,500 other women living in open dormitory style buildings. During our sessions, more deeply rooted issues rose to the surface and became the primary focus of our discussions and her art. Detailed visions and descriptions of her experiences growing up in an extremely abusive family, how she killed her grandmother, what it was like to spend so much time in solitary confinement and her effort to end her life by hanging were relayed most effectively through her newfound desire to paint (she had only used pencils before). continue below... #Art #Alone #Confinement
Posted on: Thu, 30 Oct 2014 10:34:59 +0000
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