Art Therapy

Journal of the American Art Therapy Association

ISSN: 0742-1656 (Print) 2159-9394 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/uart20

Keeping the Studio

Shaun McNiff

To cite this article: Shaun McNiff (1995) Keeping the Studio, Art Therapy, 12:3, 179-183, DOI:
10.1080/07421656.1995.10759156

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 Art Therapy: Journalof the American Art Therapy Association, 12(3) pp. 179-183 Q AATA, IIIC. 1995
Keeping the Studio
Shaun McNiff, PhD, A.T.R., Beverly, MA
Abstract
In this paper, the studw is approached as a therapeutic con-
nwnittj of images where the therapistfunctions as “keeper”of the
space and atnwspheric medicines which act upon the people who
oisit and participate in its creative ecology of forces. It is not
physical suitability which determines the success of the studw. In
fact, distmctions and impe$ectkms in the space may more accu-
rately mirror the state of psyche and so induce the passionate
engagement that calls forth soulful images.
I started my first job as an art therapist at a state hospital in
early 1970. Before meeting staff and patients who lived in a huge
Victorian brick and granite building constructed in the 1870s, I
was introduced to an old wooden building in a field at the east
end of the hospital grounds. There was an identical building at
the other end, almost a quarter of a mile away. The empty build-
ing was to be used exclusively for my art therapy groups. It was
called the Art Cottage and its partner at the west end of the hos-
pital was the Music Cottage.
In keeping with the institutional treatment of the time,
there was not much happening outside the context of dmgs and
other restraints, but there was considerable “space”being made
available for art. Iwas untrained and the hospital offered no
instruction in the practice of art therapy.The possibilities were as
open as the empty rooms of the cottage. In retrospect this was a
perfect way to begin. I met the space first, and it told me what to
do: It wanted to be filled with images and people making art. The
medicines of the process would find their ways through the souls
of the people and things involved.
My noninstructions from my supedsors at the hospital
were actually quite clear. Their actions said, “Put this place to
work.” So my career began to take shape around the creation of
a workplace, a studio for soul work. Rather than focusing exclu-
sively on the individual problems of patients, I was oriented to a
physical space which called for their involvement. We began with
the need to fill a space with images and life. I could not do this
alone. I needed them to establish the sense of the place and its
function within the hospital.
The cottage had two large rooms with high ceilings, joined
by an equally large foyer. It was situated at the crest of a large hill
with fields below, the beautifd natural environment always
reminding me how the post-Civil War mental hospitals were
designed to expose people to the medicines of the physical
world. The 1870s advanced the idea of humane treatment for
emotional difficulties, and these practices grew from the
American Renaissance of the mid-nineteenth century in litera-
ture, philosophy, religion, and utopian living. The cottage had
windows everywhere, and on its south side an enclosed porch ran
along the entire length of the building. The two cottages were
179
probably built for tubercular patients who needed to be housed
separately from the main building, and whose treatment was pri-
marily focused on fresh air and light.
To inspire means to draw air into the lungs, to breathe, and
semantically spirit derives from the Latin word for breath, the
breath of the gods. The animating principle in both TB treat-
ment and art is inspiration, the inhalation of airs and sphits. It is
fascinating to imagine the therapeutic qualities of our art studio
being connected in an elemental way to the healing methods
practiced in the old TB cottage. Just as the tubercular patients
needed good air, the soul benefits from stimulating airs, poeti-
cally known as an atmosphere, ambiance, aura. My first art ther-
apy studio was set up according to this natural sense of what the
soul needed-creative breezes, breaths, and emanations flowing
from a place.
The emptiness of the large space was a stimulus for my work
with the patients. As Gaston Bachelard said, ‘The simpler the
image, the vaster the dream” (1994, p. 137). The space invoked
freedom and endless possibilities for inhabitation. It pushed me
to gather people and images. It served as an alchemical vessel for
the transformations of the artistic process. Many things hap-
pened within the cottage, and it quietly accepted them all while
shelteringeveryone involved. It was an asylum within the asylum
because of its separation from the main hospital complex.
Patients arriving at the cottage literally passed into another
world, populated by distinctly different qualities than what they
encountered on the wards. Culture and soulful creation radiated
from every part of the place.
Twenty-five years later, I see that my art studios are still
keeping the rituals initiated by the first weeks in the Art Cottage.
We always begin in an empty space which we fill with people and
images. The place is transformed and ensouled as soon as the
images arrive. Or as Allan Gussow says in A Sense of Place,“The
catalyst that converts any physical location ... into a place, is the
process of experiencing deeply. A place is a piece of the whole
environment that has been claimed by feelings” (1971, p. 27).
The same principle applies to our treatment of artifacts and art
made within the studio. Guided by the values of deeply felt expe-
rience, we establish a community of creation through the most
basic actions of working together and reflecting on one another’s
expressions.
Participation Mystique
It is the images which carry transformative spirits into our
studio groups. Their sensory qualities and energetic auras have a
visceral impact on everything they touch. The environment
transmits creative forces and becomes a prinmy agent of trans-
formation.At the age of 23, I intuitivelyset out to make the space
of the cottage into “a place” through creation and the intimate
180 KEEPING THE STUDIO
relations it engenders. My lifelong practice within an art therapy
studio was constructed in those first days of beginner’s mind
which atavistically accessed the ancient continuities of a partici-
pation mystique manifested through the rituals of community. A
place presented itself to me, ready to be inhabited with a partic-
ular purpose.
My group therapy supervisor at the hospital was a consult-
ing psychiatrist who felt that the most important therapeutic
work occurred within communities of all kinds. He was deeply
suspicious of the medical model, and we didn’t have to look far
in the hospital to see its failures. He was open to what was hap-
pening in the Art Cottage, and the two of us learned about this
new, or very old, therapy through his questions.
We looked at the making of art from the perspective of com-
munity interactions, and he introduced me to the ideas of
Maxwell Jones. I started a therapeutic community on one of the
hospital wards and ran a number of different groups in locked
areas of the hospital, but I see now that the most vital and inspi-
rational work we did during those years was in the Art Cottage
where the patients, the many volunteers, and my life were being
influenced by the creative milieu. We had to get out of the hos-
pital to establish a sanctuary of soul medicine which functioned
according to a totally different vision of treatment. Within the
hospital, institutional forces swallowed every attempt at change.
As with Jones’s experiments with self-help, we discovered
that empowering the patient-artists as decision-makers and cre-
ators increased their sense of belonging and responsibility. Jones
felt that creative transformation was stimulated by a “social ecol-
ogy” involving flexible and open interaction, listening, the shar-
ing of decisions, learning from mistakes, trust in people, and a
pervasive sense that “process was more important than the goal
itself’ (1982, p. 144).
The therapeutic community “cherished risk-takers”who
spontaneously expressed feelings and established a group trust
that made it safe for others to open up. It embraced intuition and
the way people influence one another through creative conta-
gion.
Ultimately, Maxwell Jones concluded there is “little differ-
ence between treatment and training” (p. 104). He said:
My growing interest in the process of change led me to realize that
growth and creativity are, at least in part, a by-product of an open
system.... There must be a “destructuring”of what exists. One has
to take a risk and become unsecure and vulnerable to reach this
stage of transformation.... It is only through this “unknown”that a
new order and a new combination or a new identity can be discov-
ered. (pp. 150-151)
Just as Jones, a psychiatrist who began to call himself a social
ecologist, pondered whether or not medical science was the
proper vehicle for his community practice, I have been increas-
ingly concerned with whether or not the work I do in studios
today can be located within the idea of art therapy, which tends
to align itself with the clinic rather than the studio, institutions
rather than places, “populations” rather than communities, data
rather than images. When the discipline is defined in a way that
reverberates with the eternal healing functions of art and the
participation mystique of community creations, I feel an intense
identification.
Unpredictable Inspirations
In recent years I have been encouraged by the writings of
Allen (1992) and Moon (1990,1994) which honor the studio as a
vessel of creative transformation. Moon’s sense of sanctity for art
and Allen’s vision of artists-in-residencesuggest that the pmsence
of the creative process transforms life. If we imagine healing as
an energy of creative transformation, then the purpose of art
therapy would be cultivation of the salubrious force which finds
its way to people in different ways. We never can predict what we
are going to receive from a studio, and this quality of the
unknown is what most clearly differentiates medicines of the cre-
ative spirit from scientifk ones. But we go to the studio with a
sense of anticipation that we will engage a creative vitality and
spirits that will manifest themselves in different ways during each
session and in the sequences of a single session.
From the studio we learn that the agents of transformation
are more likely to be in the atmosphere, the ambiance or vibes,
than within the person. This is why a true therapy of the arts is
so closely identified with spiritual traditions where the focus is on
the person’s relationship to something other than the self.
Within the studio the spirits act upon us. The carefully cal-
culated and replicated procedures of scientific medicine are far
removed from the wily and unpredictable movements of cre-
ation. A truly artistic therapy is forever breaking down structures
in order to make new ones. The creative ecology works in ways
that parallel Jones’s descriptions of open social systems. Patterns
and themes run through a person’s and a community’s creations,
but the effects of a creative process can never be known in
advance. Art’s medicines are based on surprises, unlikely twists,
and the infusion of fresh contents into our lives. My years of
working in studios repeatedly show that these contents come
upon us daimunicaUy, often when we least expect it and fre-
quently against our wills. I can also report to those beginning to
work in this way that I never know in advance what a person
needs to receive. I want to get people involved in the meditations
of the creative process which open to a deep personal dialogue
with images and feelings that will present the needs of the soul.
It seems that I am forever being surprised by the unexpected
results of a person’s work in the studio.
So we can say in summary, that the essential medicines of
the art therapy studio are conveyed by the environment. They
are spirits and forces that impact people in different ways. As a
“keeper” of a therapeutic studio, or “caretaker,”my primary
function is to kindle the soul of the place, to maintain its vitality
and its ability to engage people in highly individuated ways. I
might carefully plan what materials we are going to use or how
our time is structured, but the spirits of the process cannot be
predicted, and this is what most thoroughly distinguishes the
medicines of the studio from those of positive science. Going
into a studio can be likened to visiting the oracle, a temple, or the
healing place of Asklepios where the person simply arrives and
sleeps in order to dream and receive whatever contents the noc-
turnal messages deliver. We go into holy places to pray with a
similar openness to the movements of the spirit. In using art,like
any other spiritual medicine, we never know beforehand what
remedies will be delivered and received.

What Places and Materials Do
I recognize that art’s medicines are comprised of forces gen-
erated by distinct substances and physical spaces which are the
most predictable elements within an art therapy studio.
Different materials and environments will emit expressions in
keeping with their structures. Although they are both involved in
constantly changing and uncertain relationships with artists and
groups, the materials and studio space have a relative constancy
of expression. The free-flowing nature of watercolor evokes dis-
tinctly different psychic states than do thick oil paints. Sculpture
made from wood and metal will arouse feelings distinct from a
clay construction.The materials are carriers of emotions and psy-
chic states that are unique to their beings. The same thing
applies to studio spaces. A small, but well-organized workplace
full of people will generate a crowded energy that moves creation
in a distinctly different way than a large and open space. One is
not necessarily better than the other.
For years I have said that research in creative arts therapy
should stay closer to the studio where we can experiment with
these different material expressions and spirits like physicists or
chemists in their labs. Dutch art therapists, in keeping with old
European beliefs that cures to internal ills are found in external
things, were studyingthe therapeutic properties of materials well
before the formulation of art therapy training in the United
States. Because we have valued only what the art object says
about the artist, we have overlooked what it presents in itself and
how its expression has inherent therapeutic properties.
I don’t protest art therapy’s humanism, but I feel that a one-
sided orientation to the person who makes the object obscures
how the material and the artmaking space are the defining qual-
ities of the art therapy profession. The studio and its creations,
our object and image-centeredness, are what distinguish us from
all of the other person-centered therapies. We need to research
materials and environments and what they do to us.
After retiring from her practice of art psychotherapy, Helen
Landgarten returned to her studio. I am especially intrigued with
the yet-to-be discovered effects of her re-entry into a full-time
life of painting. In keeping with what I said about the therapeu-
tic studio, the artist cannot know in advance what she will
engage, and she cannot anticipate the impact it will have on her
future life or the practice of art therapy. The basic framework of
consciousness when entering a studio is an attitude of, “What will
arrive today? What will happen over the course of the next year?“
The artist may start to work with an image in mind, but in order
for the spirits of creation to start cooking, there must be a melt-
ing of control and a surrender to the spontaneous movements of
expression which will always deliver contents outside our frames
of mind.
Landgarten is making a clear statement about priorities. She
came to art therapy as a distinguished painter, continued paint-
ing throughout her career, and now immerses herself in the life
of the studio. I am not as concerned about making direct links
between Landgarten’s actions in the studio and the clinic, as I am
in observing how a life in art therapy has only seemed to deepen
her personal commitment to the studio and its spirits. I cannot
explain how one place influences the other. My sense, though, is
that there is a vital partnership between the two. The studio is
the base from which she reaches out to therapy. It is the source
181
of the vision to which Landgarten must maintain a vital connec-
tion. This is the model our profession needs to contemplate.
My personal experiences in the studio have always shaped
my commitment to art therapy. I feel things in art that I want to
bring to others, and as I see others absorbed in the creative
process, it recharges my own artistic desires. The studio is an
ecology of mutual influences.
I just returned from leading a week-long studio in New
Mexico and stayed afterwards for two nights in art therapidartist
Howard McConeghey’s studio. The artist was away, but his spir-
its were stronglypresent in the art space. Like Landgarten he has
retired from the practice of art therapy to paint. Iknow that
many more art therapists are doing the same thing. What unpre-
dictable impact is clinical work with the arts having on a person’s
desire to be in a studio? What impact will the full cycle of this
ecology in the long-term have on the practice and imagination of
art therapy?
McConeghey’s studio is in a separate building close to his
house, apart from the living quarters by a garden. The piace is a
sanctuary, a temple of sorts. Ihave the same feeling about
Landgarten’s studio. Do we live our lives in art therapy as an
expression of our longing for the studio? Does service to others
give us the freedom to imbibe what Landgarten calls narcissistic
self-expression? It is the indirect suggestions, the subtle mes-
sages and inspirations,that I feel when visiting both Landgarten’s
and McConeghey’s studios. They want to be in the studio. I sin-
cerely hope this desire sweeps through the soul of the art thera-
py profession.
I emulate art therapists like Allen, Landgarten,
McConeghey, and Moon who maintain a passionate personal
commitment to the studio. They keep me attuned to the basis of
the work, to the importance of my own expression, to the main-
stream of art. Art therapy thinks it is involved in a technical fix-
ing of problems, but the real work has more to do with what the
Romantic poets called flying sparks which jump from person to
person, image to person, person to image, image to image.
A Therapeutic Community of Images
In my therapeutic studios, art leads the way. The images and
movements are always a step ahead of the reflecting mind and its
professions. My practice draws heavily from psychotherapy and
depth psychology which help us access the medicines of images
and groups. What I do today in studioswith art therapists, artists,
and what we call “healthy people” is not far afeld from what I
did in the mental hospital 20 years ago. I have stayed with the
medicines of the studio, and I have brought them to a broader
spectrum of participation.
As I reflect on what we did in the early 70s,I see that a com-
munity emerged from the making of images. I am doing the
same thing today. Little has changed within my essential studio
practice where rituals of community and creation continue to
happen spontaneouslythrough our actions in a particular place.
For 25 years I have practiced almost exclusively within p u p s .
After the first session of a studio, I am always in awe at the way
the space is transformed and the soul is opened as soon as the
images arrive.
Every studio repeats the experience of beginning in an
empty space, like the Art Cottage at Danvers, which soon
182 KEEPING THE STUDIO
becomes populated by creations. I keep telling participants that
our group is composed of the many images we make, as well as
ourselves. Even in small groups this rich multiplicity takes us into
the realm of community. I have stayed with group practice in stu-
dios because year after year I see it working deeply on people. I
keep saying how the group-mind is more intelligent, creative,
and resourceful than any one of us. My therapeutic style involves
a careful watching of the group process, in both art and inter-
personal interactions,with a faith that soul will treat itself if given
the proper environment and support. Like Maxwell Jones and
other early group therapists, I work within an emanation model
and “trust the process.” If we open ourselves, stay committed,
and patiently wait, things will happen through the soul’s epipha-
nies.
The pup-studio chemistry is based on the process of indi-
vidual people performing the intimate and isolating rituals of
painting within a communal environment. They are drawn
together through what I call the “principle of simultaneity”in
which the solitary activities of the visual arts are accompanied by
the parallel creations of others. In addition to the shared energy
of working, participants give attention to each other. We witness
and receive the expressions of others and open to what the
images have to say. It is this process of making art together and
then bearing witness to the arrivals in a sacred way that estab-
lishes the healing imagination of the environment.
As a leader my primary functions are protection and inspi-
ration. I ”keep” the sanctuary and “maintain” the space for the
participants. I set up an ecology in which the process takes peo-
ple where they need to go. For years I avoided the term tmst the
process because it seemed like the most outrageous cliche, but
now I see that it is the fundamental quality of the work. The free-
dom of the studio environment allows the soul to move accord-
ing to its purpose.
Itry to keep the structures and procedures elemental
because Ihave found that depth and simplicity are bound
together. If we overcomplicate the purpose of art, we interfere
with the wisdom of the process. I keep returning to the image of
the simple, empty space of the Art Cottage as the hypostasis of
my work. I prepare an open studio that receives the participants
who fill it with their art and souls. Within the studio each person
goes on a distinctly personal journey, yet they paradoxically trav-
el together and construct a therapeutic community of images.
Although I have worked alone with many patients in studio
settings, my experience of the strongest creative medicine is
associated with groups. When we gather to look at images and
work with them, the atmosphere changes from that of a conven-
tional art studio to one that conveys qualities of therapy and spir-
itual community. We look at the pictures through the eyes of soul
rather than the more technical perspective of the art school. This
way of viewing art does not impair aesthetic quality-to the con-
trary, it tends to make images more expressive, authentic, free,
unusual, and passionate. There is a sacred sense of witnessing
rather than an orientation to analytic judgments and labels.
People respond to one another, and to the images, from the
heart.
One person’s artistic expression stimulates an equally soul-
ful response from another. The flow of the group holds an ongo-
ing stream of creative emanations where one artistic expression
follows another. Verbal explanations have their place in the stu-
dio, but they do not dominate the atmosphere. We find that
responding to art with body movement, improvisational sounds,
and performances gives everyone a much deeper and clearer
sense of how the person is affected by an artwork. We also share
dreams that come the night after painting to interpret our works
in ways inaccessible to the reasoning mind. The introduction of
dreams and other artistic expressions into the studio enhances
the psychic environment and expands its resources.
In summary, in a therapeutic studio it is the overall pres-
ence, the soul of the place, which grows from the people and
images while simultaneously acting upon them. A s a keeper of
the space my function is to maintain the presence. I do this
through example, support, and constant guidance.
Imperfect Environments
Often the places where we work generate very unattractive
auras and disturbing environmental forces. I have constructed
many hundreds of nomadic studios throughout my 25 years of
practice. I feel like a Bedouin traveler who keeps putting up and
taking down his tent. In my travels I don’t think I have ever
worked in an ideal studio. There is always something that could
be better organized in the space. I have contemplated construct-
ing an ideal place, but maybe I should not. The perfect studio
could establish an unrealizable standard. It may be better for me
to keep working with whatever materials I find in the different
places I visit. In this way we demonstrate to others how the stu-
dio can be set up anywhere.
Groups repeatedly teach me how to maintain a spiritual
presence amidst the din of a work area. If the keeper of the
process relaxes, this helps everyone else to do the same. The
reverse is also painfully true. Everyhng depends on our con-
centration and faith in the process.
Although I prefer to work in the best space possible, I have
repeatedly discovered that the vitality of a studio has more to do
with the creative presence generated than the physical features of
rooms. Distractions and imperfections may even perversely feed
the creative spirit because they are not unlike our often
disheveled psyches. There may be a wondrous medicine released
by filling an unattractive space with the soul’s expressions. We
medicine the disquieted places, and this spatial transformation
has a corresponding effect on us. The presence of the creative
spirit can be felt everywhere when a group is fully committed to
its work. A sense of passionate engagement is emitted that cloaks
the space.
Where Does Soul’s Studio Belong?
I have never taken art therapy for granted, and I often won-
der whether it is an appropriate “location” for my practice of
soul-making. Years before I heard about art therapy, my interests
were focused on the sacred functions of art, the relationship
between creation and depth psychology, and multidisciplinary
cooperation between all of the arts,the humanities, and sciences.
Art therapy appeared in my life in 1970, and our interests
merged. To the extent to which art therapy embraces the diverse
and unpredictable ways of soulwork, I have felt deeply attached
to the profession. Like many people involved in art therapy, I
 McNlFF
have found that the art education context has a one-sided orien-
tation to technique and cognition which overlooks soulfuldepths.
My studios encourage an active cooperation between the two.
Art therapy has been most useful in providing me with a
community of colleagues who serve the same archetypal fmc-
tion. Just as psychotherapy cares for individual souls estranged
from religion, art therapy welcomes the expressions of ordinary
people alienated from art. But these sanctuaries may be tempo-
my. Soul is inventing new ways of attending to her needs and
envisioning a creative future in which the arts once again act as
contemplative disciplines in daily life. Even though the main-
stream of the art therapy community appears to be increasingly
committed to a sacred function of art, the pressures of clinical
regulation, written examinations with multiple-choice questions
and a general distrust of imagination, may ultimately restrict the
free spirits of the studio so that they migrate to other places,
more hospitable to the ways of soul.
If we are to keep the soul in art therapy, we must preserve
the studio as the practical and spiritualbase of our praxis. I would
feel much better about the profession if the medicines of the stu-
dio were the foundation of a collective vision. But I see that the
values of soulwork do not figure prominently in the official per-
sona being constructed today. In place of our former efforts to
establish professional standards by looking at the creative portfo-
lios of art therapists and their experience in practice and super-
vision, they will now be assessed by written tests which have so
little to do with praxis.
Art therapy is at an historic point of definition. For over two
decades the profession skillfully maintained an inclusion and
respect for every conceivable way of imagining what it could be.
As the American Art Therapy Association now prescribes and
evaluates courses of graduate study, nowhere in all of the regula-
tions is there a requirement that art therapists be involved in an
ongoing studio experience during their training and professional
practice.
Don’t read this criticism as a plea for a new requirement. I
prefer a discipline which is perfected through inspiration, like
the spirits I describe acting on me as 1walk into a colleague’s stu-
dio. The vitality of the place feeds my desire and encourages me
to act in a similar way. In studios we learn through subtle sug-
gestions and influences. The impressions are not always con-
scious but they work on us nevertheless.
The profession of art therapy cannot avoid benefiting from
increased practice w i h n studio environments where the unique
medicines of the creative process can be cultivated. My purpose
here has been to draw attention to how places influence the soul.
Art therapy has overlooked the transferences between people
and environments. The idea of therapeutic change has been
restricted to what happens between a patient, a therapist, and
the artwork with which they interact. My experience indicates
that there are so many other forces at work within a milieu, and
the notion of a therapeutic studio embraces this diversity of pos-
sibilities.
183
Led by the Space
In this paper I reflect upon the practice of art therapy from
the perspective of the physical space, instead of from the more
conventional assessment of a patient’s problem. When Ilook
back at the beginning of my practice, the space is a formative
force. I don’t wish to dismiss the treatment of symptoms and
complaints; I am only trying to show how they can unconscious-
ly deter the practices of a profession when it tries to accommo-
date itself to something other than its essential being. Rather
than a genesis myth that says, “In the beginning was the symp-
tom,” art therapy might try imagining itself from a nonmedical
perspective of, “In the beginning was the space,” or even, “In the
beginning were the art materials and the people who used them.”
Symptoms are of course welcomed and they are vital play-
ers in the creative process, but they can be engaged from the
perspective of art, or within the studio model versus the medical
model. What does the space do to us? How does it move us to
create an environment that becomes the primary carrier of the
therapeutic process? As a therapist or leader, I am one of many
agents within a more comprehensive gestalt or presence. The art
studio functions like a spa, a watering place for the soul. The ele-
ments of the therapeutic studio are never limited to the patient,
the artwork, and the therapist. As the therapeutic properties of
the spa are discovered, people will come to it with a sense for
what they need. Or they will come with an open and flexible
mind, knowing only that they are in need, and that the thera-
peutic environment has many things to offer. The treatment will
emerge through the process of a person’s interaction with the
place.
We reframe the practice of art therapy by focusing on what
the studio does, what the materials do, and how artworks creat-
ed by ourselves and others affect us. When we look at art thera-
py through the eyes of the soul, we see an ecological field of
forces, a total presence of creation, that simply does not fit the
linear language and concepts of behavioral science. The main-
stream of art’s medicine will always flow from the studio.
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