This work will be on view from Oct 5 until Oct 29 at The Upstream Gallery, 8 Main Street, Hastings-On-Hudson, NY. The opening Is this Sunday 10/8/23 From 2-5 Pm. Please drop by. I will be holding a reiki healing circle with reiki master Alice Shapiro in the gallery on friday 10/13 from 7-9 Pm. Space Is limited to 10, so please register with we at [email protected]. These works are a direct result of my doctoral studies and research in body-based methods of therapy. In winter of 2021, I was given an assignment to do Arts-Based Research in an area of my interest. I have been a reiki energy practitioner for close to 30 years and when I became an art therapist I wanted to combine these two Interests. Naturally for Arts-Based Research I chose a project that involved art, energy, and the body. Arts-Based Research (Or ABR) is a form of analysis that uses one method of art-making to analyze another. In my process I used a body-meditation based on polarities – connecting two parts of the body in order to create more energy flow. These meditations focused on the elements of ether, air, fire, water, and earth and their corresponding chakras. After each meditation, I made a drawing/painting of the internal sensation of each element. I recorded each drawing process with video and then created a poem in response to the drawing process. The creation of poetry is the ABR process of analyzing one art form with another. The creation of a short movie constituted another form. In the last two years I have lived with these five drawings and encouraged many others to do similar works as part of my dissertation project. It’s taken me this long to determine how to transform them further, take them to the next level of my own personal embodiment. In addition I created two traditional body tracings, which are a classic art therapy method. One is of myself and the other of a reiki master friend. Each shows us in three poses representing the complex unity of parts that makes one human being. Finally, I have lived with reiki symbols for so much of my life that they are embodied in my being and engrained in my mind. These images are my interpretation of the sacred symbols of healing as they are held in my and as they exist in the world. I hope that you enjoy and feel their blessings. ****************************************************************************** For those who are interested there will be a reiki healing circle in the gallery on Friday 10/13 From 7-9 pm. Capacity is 10 people so please register in advance with [email protected]. SOMATIC ART THERAPY GROUPS – IN-PERSON & ONLINE IN-PERSON GROUPS in Hastings, NY: THURSDAYS 10 to 12:30 pm 4/20, 4/27, 5/4, 5/11, 5/25 SATURDAY 5/13 10 to 2:00 pm or SUNDAY 6/25 10 to 2:00 pm (Clinicians only) ONLINE GROUPS: MONDAY 6 TO 7:30 pm EST 4/17, 4/24, 5/1 , 5/15 (Clinicians only) TUESDAY 7:30 TO 8:00 pm EST 5/2, 5/16 Explore the possibilities of body-based artmaking whether you are someone looking to expand your creative potential or a clinician wanting to experience embodied methods. Somatic Experiencing, Focusing, Reiki-informed practices including body mapping and body-based meditations. For more information and to register please contact: Mia de Bethune, ATR-BC, LCAT, ISP/SEP [email protected] I am very excited to announce that I'll be a part of the exhibit DRAWING THE LINE at The Pelham Art Center in Pelham NY. The show runs from February 16th to April 2nd, 2023 with an opening on the first day from 6:00 to 8:00 pm.
Artist, writer and curator Nancy Egol Nikkal put this show together and wrote a profile of me for her blog The Art of Collage. I am so pleased and honored to be featured. You can access her blog here: https://artofcollage.wordpress.com/2023/01/10/mia-debethune-the-woven-line/ Additionally, I've been making new woven paintings. Here are a few: Part of the "Art from the Site Lines of Nature" Exhibit at Catwalk - The Kobbe Project weave installations will be on view to the public from 2 to 5 pm on Sat, Sept 12th at Catwalk Institute, 4 Rt 385, Catskill, NY. A productive and enlightening time working as a group to "weave" the landscape at Catwalk Art Residency. Despite the wind, rain, poison ivy, and ticks - a vision was realized or at the very least is incubating. Ideas have been planted in the trees and the fields. We'll see how they fare over the summer and look forward to "Reflecting on Art from the Site Lines of Nature" on September 12th in conjunction with the Cross River exhibit at Olana and the Thomas Cole House Museum. Participants: Mia de Bethune, artist weaver, Nelly Gupta, writer, weaver, Valeria Koutmina, artist weaver, Dean Wetherell, filmmaker, Jennifer Wiles, dancer, choreographer, and Madeline Wilson, photographer, weaver. http://vq.vassar.edu/issues/2015/01/beyond-vassar/Catwalk.html
A place where they buried horses. Rendered their bodies for dog food, leather, gelatin from the hooves. Madeline finds their bones. What washes up are shoes and condoms and ceramic dishes from the eighties, sixties, forties, nineteens, bottles, glass, blue, green, amber, pale orange, rusted with the salt water, melted rubber ball and tires, baby doll heads, ceramic medicine bottles, the landfill of life constantly washing and scoring memory among the pilings reeking of gas, oil, pcbs and tar....grasses and bittersweet grow among the trees along the shore hiding the archeology of NYCs castaways. A cat licks its paws in the late afternoon sun.
Weaving has become the way for me. For me to regain myself.
In weaving its all in the knots. Sometimes they slip and its taut or not. The spiders spin from a sack between their legs, sticky perfect, imperfect, row after row deep in the forest. In the first dew of morning. Sometimes its just a tangle and the unweaving is what counts. I have learned to balance and rebalance. A little tension here makes a little slack there and on and on - so it goes. I look for trees with a certain gap between them - a place that shows in sunlight or reflects in water. I like the fibers that blend in like they belong. Even better the ones that vibrate...clash. Call out their artifice in the green. Among the trees. Cause rubber necking on the parkway. Weaving is done in a zone where time stops. No one sees me when I weave because I'm invisible. Who expects a spider web made with neon yarn? I come and go before the dawn. At the end of dusk. The spiders tell me, "wake up early enough we'll show you the way. |
Mia de Bethune
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April 2023
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