Roosters and Rabbits

"Art as Therapy" sessions continue at Caraes, and today's session - May 5th, 2014 - brought some animal nature onto the canvas. Roosters, rabbits, and articles of clothing. Stay tuned for more images from these budding artists!

 

Agaseke Baskets

The design of the Agaseke basket is one of Rwanda's powerful images of craft. Made from tightly wound and sewn papyrus grass, it has grown into a symbol for redefining opportunity and even gender equality. Agaseke baskets are a canvas for creating a beautiful, geometric patterns as well.

On Friday, April 18th, Jean-Baptiste Rukundo led the particpants in the creation of images of Agaseke baskets. Starting from a simple square, our participants discovered the easy steps to creating a proportionally shaped outline of a basket. From there, it was easy to let everybody go their own way in decorating the basket with a colorful pattern.

Thanks to Claver Haragirmana, Innocent Sibomana, Beth Gatonye and Jody Byers for their help with this session!

Paintings from Ivuka

Wednesday, April 16th marked our first session with special guest artists from Ivuka Arts, Kigali. Lessons were given by Jean-Baptiste Rukundo (talented painter and sculptor) along with Charles Kizito, co-founder and coordinator at Ivuka Arts visited Caraes.

For the topic of painting, it was participant's choice! We started with how to paint an eagle. Afterwards, a heart (which was suddenly transformed into a cartoony mascot). A fun motor car and then a simple flower composed of stylish brush strokes. Everybody had a great time.

There were so many pieces of paper with paint drying - a small sample of them are below. Click on "Read More" to see them all!

Study of the Hand

We explored a pretty serious art lesson on Friday, April 4th - the fundamental elements for creating a drawing from life - Proportion, Contour, Detail, and Shading. By placing simple shapes onto paper, each participant was able to see that complex art is easily built from basic shapes.

For some, this was their first or second time at an Soul Therapy Art session. Others have been to multiple sessions. For everybody, this was their first time using these rules to create an image of a hand. The results of this lesson were spectacular! Each artist truly expressed their own style and clearly increased their skill (and their confidence).

Be sure to see the rest. Click "Read More" below:

Triangles and Glue

To continue with our exploration of isometric art, but to also shake things up from the usual markers or paint, we presented an art session where everybody could make colorful art with tiny paper triangles and some glue.

We worked from simple forms at first, such as a giraffe and a flower, but then quickly started to make whatever we could imagine. This project turned out to be very relaxing and fun!

Thanks to Claver Haragirimana, Pastor Theogene, Innocent Sibomana, Vicent Nsengiyumva, Sylvestre Twizerimana, and Uzziel Manirareba for their assistance with this session.

Open Workshop at Gatagara

 
Phase two of Soul Art Therapy was trialed on Tuesday, April 1st. Six discharged patients met up with us outside of the hospital setting to go through some formalized art training, and to discuss what they want or need from the program.

The object of an open workshop is to provide former patients of Ndera a place and means to expand their skills. Exhibiting creative skills is a good way to reverse the social stigma associated with mental illness. In time, we hope to enable artists to sell their work!

For our first session, we explored basics of visual art - the color wheel was first and we reviewed primary, secondary and tertiary colors and mixing. Following that, we explored form, detail and light/shading by drawing thumbs. Afterwards, we ended with some fun guided-drawings - a cartoon
face and a stylized lion face. Click "Read More" to see the rest:

Big Paint Day

Monday, March 31st was a big day for paint. As we trial this new art therapy program, we discover some things about the patients and how they view the sessions and their own artistic abilities. The existing occupational therapy program instills a sense of pride for work and accomplishment and it is easy to see this same sense appear when the patients play in the world of art. We are excited to see how focused and serious everybody is when trying out new art forms and techniques.

While we are definitely seeing an improvement in artistic skill, I have been told, informally, that the patients are benefiting in terms of recovery. It will be exciting to see how effective the full program will be.

Check out some of the fine painting studies everybody made. Click "Read More" to see all of the day's paintings: