The Need to Paint

Lately I just cannot seem to stop painting! This is a good thing of course (except for the fact that I am running out of room in my studio:) Here are a few new paintings from the past week...

Last day of orientation

Today was the last day of orientation at Mount Sinai Kravis Children's Hospital. The three of us (interns) met so many different people; all of them are an integral part of the Child Life team there. There is so much information to just absorb that I found my head spinning at the end of the days during orientation. I cannot get over how well run this program is, and how many different facets there are - so many unique services offered to child patients and their families.

Next week I will be shadowing and observing my supervisor as she does individual and group art therapy sessions. I am really looking forward to this piece, particularly since this was not really a component at my last internship.

And now, the weekend! Time to relax, enjoy my time with Adam, and rest up a lot for the coming week!

First Day of Internship

Today was my first day of orientation at my 2nd year internship at Mount Sinai Kravis Children's Hospital. The Child Life & Art Therapy Internship program at Mount Sinai is an amazing program, that addresses the needs of hospitalized children and their families through a large array of services, therapies, and creative programming. Here is a link to their website - I suggest visiting it if you're interested in learning more!
www.mschildlife.org

Mount Sinai really invests a great amount of time, energy, and education in their interns, as is already clear by my first day there. In return, the program requires a lot of the interns and includes supplemental seminars and reading/writing assignments and presentations in addition to the regular internship work. Although I might be working my butt off for the next year, I know this will be an invaluable and enriching learning experience, and this is one of the main reasons that I was drawn to this site.

Over the next few days we will be getting a tour of the hospital - the different Pediatric Intensive Care Units (PICU), the libraries, the Zone, floor play areas, and the hospital in general. During the internship we will be rotating through placements on different floors and working with children and adolescents with varied medical conditions.

I am so pleased to be there, and look forward to a challenging but very rich year or learning and experience!

Hungry Ghost Drawings

I recently started to sketch out a figure, that seems to have pushed himself into the border of my consciousness. He's a masked and cloaked figure and because of the mask his expression is almost impossible to read. He seems playful and slightly sinister all at once. He makes me think of the "hungry ghosts" in Buddhist stories - that wander the realm looking for physical sustenance when what they truly need is spiritual nourishment. I think this character is very reflective of the place I seem to be in at the moment...a bit restless, searching for something, but not quite sure what it is yet - in limbo really. The drawings are done in light gray marker and black pen and so they might be a little hard to see online, but perhaps this is also due to my character's ephemeral nature...