How does working with soil, plants, and cycles of growth create metaphorical and sensory experiences that can be documented through expressive arts therapy?
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Gardening as a Multi-Sensory Performance
Gardening as a Multi-Sensory Performance
Prompt:
"I’m a gardener planting flowers, with my hands leaving behind glowing trails of movement, the earth beneath me responding with musical vibrations, and abstract sketches of their gestures turning into lines that surround."
Gardening & Farming (Movement + Tactile Art + Sound)
Gardening & Farming (Movement + Tactile Art + Sound)
Movement: Digging, planting, and watering are embodied, rhythmic motions.
Tactile: Soil, leaves, and water engage the hands in sensory-rich interactions.
Sound: The rustling of leaves, water pouring, or wind adds an organic soundscape.
Research Problem:
Research Problem:
Gardening is commonly studied for its ecological and mental health benefits, but it is rarely examined as an intermodal expressive arts practice involving movement, texture, rhythm, and sound. There are some works of note, however.
Research Questions:
Research Questions:
How does gardening engage intermodal expressive arts therapy principles, integrating touch, movement, and sound as part of an embodied research process?
How does working with soil, plants, and cycles of growth create metaphorical and sensory experiences that can be documented through expressive arts therapy?
The gardener digs in another time, without past or future, beginning or end. A time that does not cleave the day with rush hours. Lunch breaks, the last bus home. As you walk in the garden you pass into this time – the moment of entering can never be remembered. Around you the landscape lies transfigured. Here is the Amen beyond the prayer. —Derek Jarman (Modern Nature, 1994, p. 30)
Indigenous Plant Diva (9 min, 2008), dir Kamela Todd
Kamala Todd's short film is a lyrical portrait of Cease Wyss, of the Squamish Nation. Wyss is a woman who understands the remarkable healing powers of the plants growing all over downtown Vancouver. Whether it's the secret curl of a fiddlehead, or the gentleness of comfrey, plants carry ageless wisdom with them, communicated through colour, texture, and form. Wyss has been listening to this unspoken language and is now passing this ancient and intimate connection down to her own daughter, Senaqwila.
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