Knowing the roots.
I grew up in a predominately white, middle-class Connecticut (USA) town of about 15,000 people. My father, raised by steadfast civil rights activists, often shared stories of his youth and parents fighting Jim Crow laws deep in America’s South. His parents, Ruth and Art Jette, moved into segregated communities of color, strategizing with local activists on how to raise the Black vote, which had dropped from 90% in 1877 to a mere 3% in 1940 due to Jim Crow and the black codes. In the 1940s and ’50s, they worked tirelessly to raise the Black vote in Savannah and Atlanta, Georgia. Then, in the 1960s, they moved to New Haven, CT, and worked with LatinX communities fighting for equality in education, voting, housing, and employment. Thus, as a child, I was privy to narratives of confronting social injustice outside and inside the home. I wasn’t aware of it then, but an underlying family narrative venerated questioning authority and deeply valuing human rights. For example, I remember Ruth and Art explaining their commitment to the views of The Hemlock Society (Right to Die) over Thanksgiving dinner. As such, my dissenting grandmother promptly schooled dinner guests who held a patriarchal-colonialist mindset. I honestly thought all grandmothers behaved like this, and I watched her closely. As I got older, my eventual transition toward work with disempowered individuals became urgent and necessary.
In 2014, to reconnect with creativity and social justice roots, I offered art classes at a resettled refugee agency in Bridgeport, Connecticut. The African women spoke Swahili and tribal languages. I only spoke English. We used art and laughter as a bridge. Eventually, images of war trauma began to materialize in their artwork. Without proper therapeutic training, I felt unequipped to close our sessions. There was also a deep need to serve their children. I returned to school to solve the therapeutic gap and become an art therapist. To serve the children and expand reach, I founded Art in Common, Inc., to fund and provide large-scale graffiti murals and art programming.
Art in Common, Inc. is a community outreach non-profit charitable organization based in Ridgefield, CT, whose mission is to promote creativity, increase community awareness around critical social issues, and foster connection across diverse populations. Creative connection focusing on what we share facilitates compassion and understanding. The organization works directly with families and individuals, bringing art workshops and programming to underserved populations, and holding art events at galleries and large public and mural spaces to connect distinct communities in new ways. Working with the resettled refugees fueled my need to understand and support those navigating profound crises.
In the Master of Creative Arts Therapy Counseling program at Hofstra University, I found inspiration in Viktor Frankl, Rollo May, Bruce Moon, Dan Siegel, and Allan Schore. Viktor Frankl felt that finding meaning even in dire circumstances contributes to awareness and motivation. Rollo May felt just expressing the human dilemma (through talk or art) was life-affirming and healing. Bruce Moon suggested a course of existential action incorporating dream analysis and narrative between client and therapist, resulting in an existential path of action. Dan Siegel and Allan Schore root their work in the psychological theory of attachment and suggest that art can improve relationships impacted by trauma. In my work with teens and adult women who have experienced significant trauma, art therapy has contributed to cognitive improvement and executive functioning, which may help with parenting, positive self-regard, and self-concept.
I also embraced the idea of temenos; the sacred space in which transformation happens. Therapeutic presence consists of moving back and forth fluidly between discursive and non-discursive states. Non-discursive (primary) communication consists of fantasy and dreams, is impulsive, visual, and uses all senses. Discursive, or secondary process communication makes slow and careful decisions, is time-oriented, analyzes, and assigns meaning. As therapists/thinkers/teachers, we must shift seamlessly between the creative (primary) and logical (secondary) processes, creating the tertiary space. This effort is essential when observing, facilitating, contemplating, and creating art and ideas.
Other deeply influential individuals include Ta-Nahisi Coates, “Between the World and Me,” Ibram X. Kendi, “How to Be an Antiracist,” Bryan Stevenson, “Just Mercy,” and Bree Newsome. In 2020, during the Black Lives Matter protests, I used art therapy with police officers during a resilience and compassion campaign. After that, Dr. Anne Goelitz, editor, asked me to co-author the chapter “Trauma, Policing, and United States Social Work Practice” in Shared Mass Trauma in Social Work, (Routledge, 2022).
In 2021, I commenced an MFA in Painting. View paintings at www.aimeejetteartist.com. This is a very short list of artists who inspire my large, abstract work.
Julie Mehretu Middle Grey, 2008-2009, Ink and acrylic on canvas, 120″ x 168″ (10 feet x 24 feet). Middle Grey is the most striking of the six in her series. Her work addresses social/political disorder and uses the concept to guide her intuitive mark-making rather than overtly convey her ideas (Mehretu, 2022).
Cia Guo-Qiang Travels in the Mediterranean, 2010, Gunpowder on paper, 8128″ x 762“. He uses gun powder as a struggle between self-control and self-exertion. Guo-Qiang draws upon mythology, cosmology, and social issues to inform his work. (Guo-Qiang, 2022).
Phyllida Barlow explores space and has a fascination with abandoned industrial objects. She researches space by creating more minor works before larger ones as part of her process. Barlow questions the rules of painting and then breaks them. Her work is about expressing the suppressed (Barlow, 2022).
Theaster Gates focuses on systemic racism and urbanized government-structured slums. He uses clay, tar, and renovated buildings to create opportunities. In addition, he is interested in how art improves space and teaches others to see (Verner, 2019).
The threads of social action, individual and community healing and art that run steadily through my life, they are the most prominent root systems in my narrative. As an art therapist, I offer talk and creative approaches to find the best path toward healing, together. There is a vital and restorative quality in the contemplation of art, artists and our own creative processes, and writing. I’m constantly researching methods that are most congruent with my lived experience and that of my clients. This allows me to give back in meaningful, impactful ways that support the communities I serve.
Warmly,
Aimee
References
Barlow, P. (2022, August 6). Untitled: corral; 2019. Hauser & Wirth. https://www.hauserwirth.com/artists/2826-phyllida-barlow/
Guo-Qiang, C. (2022, August 6). Travels in the Mediterranean. Artsy. https://www.artsy.net/artwork/cai-guo-qiang-cai-guo-qiang-travels-in-the-mediterranean
Jette, A., & Sacks, T. (2022). Trauma, Policing, and United States Social Work Practice. In Shared Mass Trauma in Social Work (pp. 66-89). Routledge.
Mehretu, J. (2022, August 6). Middle Grey. Guggenheim. https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/25120.
Verner, A. (2019). Theaster Gates explores the troubling history of a coastal community forced out of home. Wallpaper. https://www.wallpaper.com/art/theaster-gates-amalgam-palais-de-tokyo