Tag: Arts

The time of this program has been changed to 10:00-11:30am EST. In order to participate and receive the Zoom link, please click on the RSVP button above or email programs@smithcenter.org.

You will receive the Zoom information no later than the morning of your program.

with Annie Levy

Creative expression has often been used in the healing process and it is at the core of Smith Center’s philosophy, but fear of judgment and “not being an artist” can often prevent us from tapping into its healing power. Join us for Outside the Lines, where a facilitator will help you reclaim art-making as a healing tool through guided creative projects. Participants who feel comfortable working on their own projects are also welcome to do so.

For this session, Annie Levy will host “Conversations in Photography.”

Conversations In Photography is Annie Levy’s unique program that allows us to see and have conversations about the most important subjects in our lives – heavy, light, sad, funny and everything in between. An enjoyable and engaging way to discover and see new things about ourselves using a visual language to help us unlock who we are.

My Most Important Photos – Who I Am, Who I Hope To Be, One Small (or Large) Next Step To Move Toward That

Annie will join us and offer a specially tailored Conversations In Photography workshop that will focus on the joy of discovering who we are and envisioning who we are and want to become through the lens of our most important photos. Sometimes it is difficult to put into words answers to questions such as:

What matters most to you?

What would you like more of in your life?

Are you at a crossroads – either by design or because of circumstances?

Images can help us see and articulate these things! Show up as you are and simply bring a photo you love or one that has particular meaning to you in each category: Who I Am, Who I Hope To Be and One Small (or Large) Next Step To Move Toward That. You do not need to know why you love it or even why it has special meaning – that is what our workshop is about and what we will discover together.

PRIVACY NOTICE:

We prioritize your privacy and the confidentiality of your participation in our program. Rest assured that any photos shared during our sessions will remain strictly within the program’s confines. These images will not be shared, published, or used outside of our program sessions without your explicit consent. Your comfort and trust are paramount, and we are committed to safeguarding your personal experiences and creative expressions.

Suggested donation: $10 per class

Our programs are open to the community, and tailored to meet the needs of people affected by cancer. Classes and workshops are free or low cost on a pay-as-you-can basis, ensuring that our programs are accessible to everyone.

About Annie Levy

Annie works with leaders in philanthropy, for profit and non-profit organizations, individuals and small groups from a variety of sectors to help them discover what matters most to them and create ways forward into those experiences. People from all walks of life feel comfortable in working with Annie
and trusting her with their most important photos. From national leaders in medicine and healthcare to teens in military families to groups looking at what longevity means to them – they have all had the joy of working with Annie in looking at their own images and those that have special meaning to them as a way to discover themselves and the futures they want to create.

Annie has her BFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts where she studied writing and photography and her LMSW from Silberman School of Social Work where she learned to work with groups and counsel individuals. Her training and experience have proved to be the ideal combination of skills to do this work.
She is a sought after speaker and has presented about her work at a host of conferences including those for Google, the Cleveland Clinic, the Center for Health Care Design, Cornell Center for Healthy Futures, the International Longevity Center, and the National Academy of Medicine, among others.

This session has been cancelled and rescheduled to Wednesday, August 21st from 10:30am-12pm EST on Zoom. In order to participate and receive the Zoom link, please email programs@smithcenter.org.

You will receive the Zoom information no later than the morning of your program.

with Annie Levy

Conversations In Photography is Annie Levy’s unique program that allows us to see and have conversations about the most important subjects in our lives – heavy, light, sad, funny and everything in between. An enjoyable and engaging way to discover and see new things about ourselves using a visual language to help us unlock who we are.

My Most Important Photos – Who I Am, Who I Hope To Be, One Small (or Large) Next Step To Move Toward That

Annie will join us and offer a specially tailored Conversations In Photography workshop that will focus on the joy of discovering who we are and envisioning who we are and want to become through the lens of our most important photos. Sometimes it is difficult to put into words answers to questions such as:

What matters most to you?

What would you like more of in your life?

Are you at a crossroads – either by design or because of circumstances?

Images can help us see and articulate these things! Show up as you are and simply bring a photo you love or one that has particular meaning to you in each category: Who I Am, Who I Hope To Be and One Small (or Large) Next Step To Move Toward That. You do not need to know why you love it or even why it has special meaning – that is what our workshop is about and what we will discover together.

About Annie Levy

Annie works with leaders in philanthropy, for profit and non-profit organizations, individuals and small groups from a variety of sectors to help them discover what matters most to them and create ways forward into those experiences. People from all walks of life feel comfortable in working with Annie
and trusting her with their most important photos. From national leaders in medicine and healthcare to teens in military families to groups looking at what longevity means to them – they have all had the joy of working with Annie in looking at their own images and those that have special meaning to them as a way to discover themselves and the futures they want to create.

Annie has her BFA from NYU Tisch School of the Arts where she studied writing and photography and her LMSW from Silberman School of Social Work where she learned to work with groups and counsel individuals. Her training and experience have proved to be the ideal combination of skills to do this work.
She is a sought after speaker and has presented about her work at a host of conferences including those for Google, the Cleveland Clinic, the Center for Health Care Design, Cornell Center for Healthy Futures, the International Longevity Center, and the National Academy of Medicine, among others.

This program is being offered virtually through Zoom. In order to participate and receive the Zoom link, register by clicking the RSVP button above or by emailing programs@smithcenter.org.

You will receive the Zoom information no later than the morning of your program.

with Martina Sestakova 

Visualizing Home: A Place of Safety and Joy (Meditation & Collage Workshop)

No matter what ‘home’ may mean to you, the idea will inspire us during a guided meditation and a visual exploration of ‘home’ in watercolors, colored pencils, and magazine cutouts. By the end of the workshop, you’ll have created a one-of-a-kind artwork communicating a place of safety and joy. No experience needed.

Martina Sestakova, your instructor, will create a sample artwork combining colored pencils, watercolors, and magazine cutouts.

 

Suggested Materials: 

  • Colored pencils
  • Watercolors
  • Brush
  • Watercolor paper
  • Magazines
  • Photographs
  • Cup with water
  • Paper towel
  • Pencil
  • Pen
  • Paper for notetaking
  • Glue

(You are welcome to use any materials for a collage that you enjoy even if they are not listed.

Suggested Donation: $10

About Martina Sestakova

Martina Sestakova (owner at RADOST) engages in textile design, painting, and art education. Martina creates scarves that invoke stories of life experiences. Her scarves have been featured on Voice of America and at the Smithsonian American Art Museum (DC). In her paintings on yupo, she communicates words through colors and shapes. Her artworks have been shown at the Adah Rose Gallery (MD) and Latela Curatorial (DC) and other art institutions. As an art educator, Martina offers workshops and brings creativity to the public and communities with limited access to the arts. Martina Sestakova resides in Kensington, MD.

This event has been postponed until the Spring 2020 season. Please check back for new dates in the spring!

Participants are expected to attend both classes, beginning on Saturday, October 26th. Please click here to register for this series.

with Kay Chernush

A 2-day photography immersion designed to help participants see with new eyes and in new ways, and to improve their picture-taking skills.
The course is designed for people living with cancer and facing the chaos, uncertainty and fear that that disease or any life-threatening disease brings. Armed with cameras, participants will begin a process of learning “how to see,” gaining new understandings of themselves and the possibilities around them. The workshop will help you discover your “inner eye,” tap into your own creativity and to look at things from different perspectives. Subjects for discussion, reflection and shooting might include:
• Point of View
• Facing Another
• Stop Action, Pan and Blur
• Shallow and Deep
• Shadows and Reflections
• Beauty and the Unbeautiful

Participants are asked to bring their own lunches. Digital point-and-shoot camera will be provided if you do not have one.

About Kay Chernush

Kay Chernush is an award-winning photographer with more than 30 years experience in commercial and fine art photography.  Based in the Washington, DC area, her assignments have taken her all over the world   for major magazines, Fortune 500 corporations, and both nonprofit and governmental agencies. Her fine art work includes an exploration of prejudice and empathy, “The Us & The They,” and a series of self-portraits entitled “Self-Examination,” a meditation in words and images of her experience with breast cancer.

Kay earned a B.A. from Sarah Lawrence College and was the recipient of a Fulbright grant to India. Prior to becoming a professional photographer, she worked for the New Yorker Magazine, the New York Times Paris bureau, the Peace Corps and the US Agency for International Development.  It was while on an assignment for the Peace Corps in West Africa that she fell in love with photography.  Self-taught, she considers her career an on-going process of learning how to see.

In 2005 an assignment for the U.S. State Department brought her face to face with the evils of human trafficking and modern slavery. Challenged and appalled by this gross human rights atrocity, Kay began working with individual survivors and anti-trafficking organizations in cities around the world. The innovative approach she developed uses collaged and constructed imagery to dignify trafficked persons and re-frame how their stories are portrayed.

Kay founded ArtWorks for Freedom in July 2011. A unique non-profit organization that uses the power of art in the fight against human trafficking, ArtWorks for Freedom builds awareness, amplifies the voices of survivors, and inspires anti-trafficking activism against this worldwide crime against humanity.

Her fine art work is included in the permanent collections of the World Bank, the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, and the National Institutes of Health, private collections both in this country and abroad, and has been exhibited widely in solo and juried group shows.

Kay’s images can be viewed at www.kaychernush.com and www.artworksforfreedom.org

 

This event has been postponed. Please check back to register for the new date.

With Tina Lassiter

Collaging, Co-Listening & Cancer infuses collage art with the art of listening as participants are invited to share stories about their cancer journey and the path they are walking with a partner. Come create/“conversate”/listen in a mindful space; bring an open heart, mind and spirit. No arts experience is needed.

About Tina Lassiter

Tina Scott Lassiter is an Integrative Healthcare Consultant & Practitioner who, in the spring of 2016, launched mindful to a T., an entrepreneurial venture that showcases her passion for the healing arts and training in mindfulness/mind body medicine; programs, retreats, & workshops developed for both organizations and individuals are tailored to meet the needs of the client (www.mindful2aT.com). She is certified in Divine Sleep Yoga Nidra, Reiki Levels 1 – 3, and Acupressure and is also a Certified Pediatric Massage Therapist and Infant Massage Teacher. She completed coursework in Integrative Training for Healthcare Professionals; Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction; initial and advanced Mind Body Medicine; Touch Therapy for the NICU; and corporate wellness. One of her personal mindful/art practices was featured on the online version of Spirituality & Health magazine; she was selected to post on the Wellness Within website; and her first book, “morsels of peeps…mindful musings, inspirational thoughts, quiet images” was published in 2018.

In addition to her work in health and wellness, Tina is an accomplished artist and photographer (www.tinascottlassiter.com). Her intricately designed collages, some which focus primarily on the female body form and are referred to as goddesses, had their debut exhibition at Smith Farm Center for Healing and the Arts, have hung in several other group shows in the DC metropolitan area, and were featured in Body & Soul Connection, a national magazine published by Spirituality & Health; Ms. Lassiter was the featured artist in this same issue. Her goddess series and a body of work addressing issues that affect women serve as the inspiration for workshops designed to tackle self-esteem, body image issues, and current events; enlightening conversation and self-reflection have been provided to participants across the country during these sessions. In 2013, she was commissioned by the Capitol Breast Care Center to create a goddess image that came to represent the strength, courage and resilience of any woman and later received a Community Service Award for her work in the healing arts from Lambda Kappa Mu, a women’s business and professional organization.

Tina served as the Director of Creative & Therapeutic Arts at Children’s National Health System for 15 years.  She spearheaded efforts to bring a comprehensive complementary and integrative care program targeted at patients and families to the hospital organization, delivering her unique brand of mindfulness practices to thousands of patients, families and staff. After developing a complementary care model for caregivers in a medical setting, she was invited by Decision Health to present at several healthcare conferences which led to conducting a webinar for Ernest Health, followed by an interview for an article in the Joint Commission newsletter on the topic of Caring for the Caregiver.  During her tenure, Tina developed and instituted the first organized system for selecting, purchasing, installing, and cataloging art throughout the hospital in addition to establishing a criteria for accepting art donations.  Working closely with area schools and visual arts organizations, she and her staff secured then installed art in all 25 of Children’s off site clinics throughout the area; she collaborated with area interior designers to choose artwork created by children for the annual Show House to benefit the hospital for two years. Her curatorial effort to diversify the types of artwork on display at Children’s brought to the forefront the work of children living with AIDS; young artists with disabilities; a photographer who compiles a photographic record of children with life-threatening illnesses for their families; and local girls who are the victims of or exposed to violence via The Clothesline Project. Not only did she move the latter display to a prominent and highly visible gallery in the hospital, she also added a writing of narratives component, and eventually established and hosted an annual evening of awareness and education for staff, parents, and children; the DC Rape Crisis Center later joined as a hosting partner bringing in artwork and awards for children participating in Who Would You Tell?. She co-designed a forum that provides pediatric medical residents with comprehensive training in the importance of the arts in a medical environment; she was instrumental in the creation of an arts-based program which led to a five-year $1.2M Science Education Partnership Award; and presented at numerous national conferences and seminars discussing the value of arts programming and art in a pediatric setting.

Ms. Lassiter serve(d)s on both grant related and judging panels for various arts organizations; spoke at numerous conferences and seminars on the importance of art in a healing environment; was Art Editor/Columnist for NEWORLD Renaissance, a New York-based multicultural magazine of the arts; and sourced then visited galleries/artists around the country to select art for Black Enterprise Magazine. She is a former Adjunct Instructor for Smith Center for Healing and the Arts where she facilitated a variety of workshops using the cultural arts combined with mindfulness meditation; graduated from the Arts in Medicine Intensive at the University of Florida Center for the Arts in Healthcare Research & Education; holds an MBA in Marketing from NYU’s Stern School of Business; and a BA in Communications with a minor in Social Work from Howard University.

With Rebecca Wilkinson, MA, ATR-BC, LCPAT

In this workshop, we will explore the challenges we have encountered and honor the process that helped us survive and even thrive in the face of such adversities. We will create shrines using small boxes with an inspiring collection of found objects and art supplies to honor our resilience and perseverance.

Previous art experience is not needed in order to benefit from this arts, healing, and creativity program. This workshop is designed for all ranges of artistic experience–you need not consider yourself an artist to attend. Boxes and materials will be provided but you are also invited to bring your own box and any personally meaningful objects that you might want to include in your shrine.

“Consider how truly elegant the design process is that created us so that, in the face of the most difficult time of our lives, there is the possibility—not the certainty but the possibility—of access to states of awareness and experience that enable us to cope with these crises better than we otherwise could.  And consider how remarkable it is that these states of awareness make many people say that they feel more alive and more … than they ever felt before.”  Michael Lerner, Executive Director, Commonweal

About Rebecca Wilkinson

Rebecca is a Registered and Board Certified art therapist with twenty years of experience in mental health and in facilitating training and workshops. She serves as adjunct faculty at George Washington University Graduate Art Therapy Program and provides continuing education and development through the Potomac Art Therapy Association. She facilitates supportive workshops for those affected by life-threatening illness and the professional providers working with them. She is a co-founder of Creative Wellbeing Workshops, LLC, which provides training, consultation, and clinical therapy designed to reduce stress, prevent burnout and increase life satisfaction and wellbeing.