Commentary on Community-Based Art Studios: Underlying Principles

When we founded the Open Studio Project in 1995, Dayna Block, Deborah Gadiel, and I agreed to state unequivocally that the work we were doing was not art therapy. This choice stemmed from a respect for the intention of the Ethical Guidelines of the American Art Therapy Association (AATA) to protect the recipient of art therapy services from the potential harm that is inherent in any non-equal relationship, for example, by protecting confidentiality and the like. However, our choice was also influenced by my understanding, after over 20 years of clinical practice, of how profoundly “linked to the medical concepts of identifying and treating pathology” (Vick, 2008, p. 4) art therapy practice was at that time. By stepping out of the world of art therapy and its language of “treatment,” “therapy,” and “diagnosis,” we were making an essentially political statement that creativity is more closely aligned to an individual’s health than to any disease process. Additionally, we were stating our willingness to abandon the role of expert by eschewing the role of therapist in favor of the role of artist-in-residence. We viewed the latter role