New York Expressive Arts writing
WRITING ABOUT THE EXPRESSIVE ARTS
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MARKUS ALEXANDER • SUSANA ARMBRUSTER • YVONNE LUCIA • STEVE PODRY • JUDITH PREST • DENIE WHALEN • REBEKAH WINDMILLER

Featured writer: Rebekah Windmiller
Rebekah Windmiller is a graduate of Glass Lake Studio NYC and the post-graduate program in Expressive Arts Therapy at EGS. Currently she provides expressive arts therapy for patients at the Interfaith Medical Center in Brooklyn, NY. She is the Founder and Director of the nyc Epressive Arts Studio located in Brooklyn, NY. To contact Rebekah, click here.

An Interview with Rebekah

When and how did you get into EXA?
My bachelor's degree was in Music Therapy. My training was very activity oriented, and being an artist, this approach felt unimaginative and stifling. When I worked, I noticed that I felt limited by using music alone, and I often brought in dance and visual images. At this time, I also was discovering my love for dance and choreography and this ultimately pulled me into it, and away from the arts therapies. I never worked in MT but spend 10+ years working in NYC as a dancer/choreographer. Eventually, the hardships of the artists life weighed on me and I needed to get out of my "B job" in accounting. I thought I'd go into the arts therapies again because I might just 'like' it, as opposed to hating accounting. Knowing I could not pursue traditional arts related therapy because of the psychological interpretation prevalent there, I sought out something else, although I did not know what I was looking for at the time. Through an internet search I found Glass Lake Studio and EGS. This was in 1999. I had many pressing questions about the arts and therapy together, and all of my teachers allowed me question with veracity, and without imposing a theory onto my thinking. I think this quality of open-ended thinking is what enabled me to stay in expressive arts. It was critical to me that I could develop as a thinking artist.

What drives you to do this work?
I could not do this work without community. The qualities that I love in EXA -- playing, messing around in paint then disturbing space with my moving body, inspiring others to MAKE STUFF and making lots of stuff myself, sensing the world (seeing deeper, listening more closely, touching what I love), phenomenology (breaking down the inner/outer duality, SURFacing with the DEEP, ripping things apart), love, beauty, unanswerable questions, permission to not-know, rolling on the floor as truth, mark-making as knowing, singing my way into and out of longing, writing until I make a new way of conceptualizing the world, continually re-imagining life -- all of this is held within a community of PEOPLE: PEAPS!; Teachers Turned Friends Turned Colleagues Turned Teachers; Students Turned People Turned Professionals Turned Friends; My jazz musician friend, Adam Armstrong who talks to me about improvisation; My Analytic Art Therapist Friend, Lyn, who gives me ground to push against; Rebekah Lancto, who asks questions and inspires me!

In what capacity do you use EXA? work? personal? therapy, education, consulting?
I work with buffons: psychiatric patients and drug addicts.
I attempt informal research on beauty by drawing, writing and dancing, until the work develops into a formal research.
I teach others to find their own way into expressive arts.

What was it like to learn how to work intermodal?
Fun! It was a relief because I always felt drawn to intermodal work. Learning to use my voice was profound -- it still is.

What is your personal philosophy about EXA?
If there is anything that holds us together, making art can do it, for a moment or two.
Making art is terrifying, necessary and beautiful. We need courage to step into it.
Art is a life-giving resource for all people.
Art can be destroyed. Art is repaired destruction, sometimes. I am not talking about a psychological repair.
Sometimes, art-making is the only possible response to loss.
While art is sacred, we have to rip apart the sacred to keep it so.
Art gives no answers, only clues. We live best in the ambiguity of intuitively sensing our way.

If you were to give future EXA students advice what would it be?
Make a lot of art. Dance everyday, if you can. Sing with your friends. Send poems to your lovers and enemies. Ask a lot of questions. Be brave. Be sincere. Be honest. Take risks.