Professor David E. Gussak: Creativity Heals in an Uncreative Place: Art and Art Therapy with the Imprisoned
| Saturday, November 16, 2024 |
| 10:50 AM - 12:00 PM |
Details
Artists and art therapists who wish to work in prison may believe that they will be operating within a highly structured and regulated system that restricts true creative expression and healing. Yet, for an environment that is perceived as stifling, desolate, and rigid, there are surprisingly inventive displays of creativity that occur within the walls. Counter-intuitively, innovative artistic expression is inherent –even championed--within this subculture. The ability to create tangible artistic items is often a status builder inside, while the process of art making is recognized as therapeutically beneficial, providing opportunities for open expression of vulnerabilities and challenges, and a way to redirect frustration, anxiety and anger. The presenter will draw from his over thirty years of experience working as an art therapist in various carceral systems presentation to explore not only the value that art and art therapy offers this population, but the drive to create as well. In doing so, this presentation will illuminate the numerous creative means that allow art to flourish and creativity to heal in this uncreative environment.
Speaker
Professor David Gussak
Florida State University
Creativity Heals in an Uncreative Place: Art and Art Therapy with the Imprisoned
Biography
David E. Gussak, PhD, ATR-BC, HLM is Professor for the Florida State University’s Graduate Art Therapy Program and Project Consultant for the FSU/FL Dept of Correction’s Art Therapy in Prisons program. He has presented and published extensively internationally and nationally on forensic art therapy and art therapy in forensic and carceral settings. These include, amongst others, Art on Trial: Art Therapy for Capital Murder Cases (2013), Art and Art Therapy with the Imprisoned: Re-Creating Identity (2019), and The Frenzied Dance of Art and Violence (2022), He is also the co-editor [with Dr. Marcia Rosal] and contributing author for The Wiley Handbook of Art Therapy. He currently serves on the editorial board for several publications including Art Therapy: The Journal of the American Art Therapy Association and Arts in Psychotherapy. In 2022, Dr. Gussak was granted the American Art Therapy Association’s Honorary Lifetime Member (HLM) award.
