Balloons and Turtles and Rocking Chairs, Oh My!

Tonight in class we were introduced to the wonderful world of tape art!! I was amazed at seeing all of the cool things artists are doing with such a simple material like tape! The  pictures of artists with their tape art showed how innovative they were with their tape; I was so amazed at how they made all kinds of cool tape people in different positions out on the streets holding different objects like street posts and dangling from buildings.
      Even though it was our first time doing tape art, I think we all did a pretty fantastic job collaborating in our groups. My group created Violet: 

We created her by making her head out of tape using a balloon and oversized sunglasses, which was one of the random objects Mr. Lewis provided for us! We added a metal scrubbie for her nose, and cut a mouth out of a sponge. She was completed by adding sparkly strings for her hair. Our group decided that Violet represents the field of TR as a whole in the fact that TR is extremely client centered, and that TR is focused on the individual needs of every person and helping them become the best they can be! We discussed how tape art is an extremely innovative activity that can be translated to work with any population, such as ours which was youth at risk. This type of project can benefit youth at risk in many ways, but a few of the benefits we came up with were: enhancing self-esteem, cooperation with others, building positive relationships, and increasing positive communication in general. However, one of the main contraindications we came up with was to make sure the youth make appropriate things out of their tape art.

Here are some other pictures of the great things the rest of the groups made:

     While I have never considered myself to be an artist, I do consider myself to be creative. I love to make bracelets, headbands and collages, but when it comes to drawing, a stick figure is as about as intricate as it will get. While I never really thought I would be able to utilize art that much in my career not knowing a whole lot about the technical aspects of it, after doing tape art I am more confident in my creative/artistic abilities that I can use in my future career.

I discovered another cool "artsy" activity online that relates to something that is definitely up my alley: "Jigsaw Puzzle Portraits." (taken from the website http://www.recreationtherapy.com/tx/txpaper.htm)

I think this is a great activity for people with special needs that is like tape art in that it can work well with any population and is extremely versatile. It really does emphasize that anyone can do art! I think the "Jig Saw Portraits" are so cool because it is not a so-called "cookie cutter" activity where all projects turn out the same. It is specific to each individual in that they can take pictures of whatever they want to make a puzzle out of that is meaningful to them. Also, this project could become a collaborative effort with the entire group where all of the puzzle pieces are put together to become a huge jigsaw puzzle! The possibilities really are endless with this project and I think it would work really well with a lot of different age groups.

         After participating in making cool things out of tape, I definitely agree with the statement that "Everyone can do art!"