New York Expressive Arts writing
WRITING ABOUT THE EXPRESSIVE ARTS

Featured writer: Karen Beetle

Glass Lake Studio founder Markus Alexander led a creative adventure at NYEA in March. Below are a few photos by Sharon Melius, along with Karen Beetle's reflections on the experience.

That Pink Thread is a Lifeline
March 17, 2009, 9:00 am

Last Friday night, I was brought back to a beloved world that I haven’t visited for a long time. Immediately I felt at home and felt the joy and delight of reconnection. That world is the amazing, inner discoveryland of expressive arts. Markus Alexander was the founder of Glass Lake Studio now New York Expressive Arts. He was in town to share about his most recent work in Peru with earthquake survivors and to do what he does best — to facilitate a creative adventure.

“Deep Play” is how he refers to the joyful work of self-expression using the arts. The depth comes from our ability to settle into our own experience and to feel our roots reaching deep into the Earth. This quieting and centering practice becomes the base for the flowering of our expression in the world. This unique expression is facilitated by the arts and results in a deepening capacity to act from our inner knowing as we walk through our days. Expressive arts play involves simple, expressive materials: paper, fabric, thread, tissue paper, beads, sticks etc. Think nursery school and remember the joy of using materials for no goal at all. Remember the feel of the glue and the pine cones and your fingers pressing and sticky. Remember the satisfaction and freedom you knew as you ran off to the playground and hung wtih sticky fingers from the monkey bars. 

On Friday night, I ripped paper dots into shreds and threw them in the air and chased them with gold tissue paper and felt the urgency and joy that play evokes. As human beings, we are meaning makers, and the swirling dots were the edge of my relationship to what is nowable in this world of air and change.  I played with my own capacity for impact in the swirling unknown.  I have seen again and again in my play therapy sessions with young clients — that to act in metaphor is to build a road home. For an earthquake survivor, there are scraps of life that remain — an uncle and a house, but no parents. Parents and siblings, but no work and no school. Every day is about walking in rubble with torn scraps of paper. And yet the capacity to know waits under the surface — an untapped reservoir of hope. 

Expressive arts and play remind us that we can know. The red tissue paper goes there and the pink thread winds around to the left. Crumpled paper forms an arduous path, but there is just enough pink thread to make it all the way back. As the sticky fingers wind the thread — pushing and sealing — the road is built. The heart lightens and the body quiets — just enough so that the soft rays of the rising sun appear to dance in the rubble and in that moment — all is not lost. The long path back from despair begins with these quiet moments of possibility. That pink thread is a lifeline.