By Julie Shapiro
Volume 21, Number 3 | THE NEWSPAPER OF LOWER MANHATTAN | June 6 – 12, 2008, 2008
TOP: Cynthia Chan, 13, with a draft of the design she made for the 9/11 door mural. BOTTOM: Art therapist Susan Firestone guided the students in making the mural.
Students’ art therapy class creates healing near and far
The silhouette of the Twin Towers rises from a grassy green island, near the bottom of the mural. Tendrils of roots wrap around the towers, shooting upward to form an enormous tree that blossoms with bright roses and magnolias. A bird perches in the tree, looking at a hole in the trunk, as a tear spills out of its eye.
This is the mural I.S. 89 students painted for a middle school in New Orleans that survived Hurricane Katrina. The 22 students, most enrolled in an art therapy class, painted the mural on a wooden door as part of Doors of Hope, a program sponsored by CITYarts. The door is one of seven created by New York City schools, and it was recently shipped to the New Orleans middle school.
Susan Firestone, an art therapist, guided the students through designing and painting the mural as part of her art therapy classes at the school in Battery Park City. Firestone has run art therapy sessions at P.S. and I.S. 89 for the past three years through the 9/11 School Recovery Program funded by the Red Cross. She meets with about 50 students in small groups once a week, letting conversation guide their artwork and their artwork guide conversation. She places few limits on either realm: No topic is off-limits, and students can create art using any medium or subject matter they can think of.
For the New Orleans mural, Cynthia Chan, 13, designed an eye with a globe in the center, which represents “humanity looking out for the earth,” she said. The blue and green colors of the globe should send a message of hope, even while cautioning people about the consequences of global warming, which include Hurricane Katrina, she said.
During a recent art therapy class, Chan was painting another hopeful picture: a ballerina with her hands above her head, one leg thrust upward and the other pointed toward the ground. Circles of rainbows emanated from the pointed toe, radiating out to fill the background.
“It’s very healing, a place to relax,” Chan said of the art therapy room as she painted. “Art therapy is a place to let your emotions flow and just be yourself, you know?”
Talking about the issues going on in her life can inspire her and the other students to create artwork, Chan said.
The students talk about anything that’s bothering them, from stressful schoolwork to family problems. The constantly shifting social circles of middle school make a frequent appearance. Firestone never mentions 9/11, but waits for the students to bring it up, which they do with regularity, even though it was half a lifetime ago for them. This year’s eighth-graders were in second grade on 9/11, and many of them live Downtown.
When designing the door for New Orleans, the I.S. 89 students reflected on the similarities and differences between two disasters: Hurricane Katrina and 9/11.
“During Katrina, they lost a big part of their city,” said Vincent Jessel, 14. “On 9/11, we lost a big part of our city. What we share is that it was a hard thing to overcome.”
For the door, Jessel helped design a view of New York’s skyline, dark against the setting sun, with the Twin Towers standing as they had on the morning of 9/11.
What he and the other students wanted to convey was optimism for the future, not sadness for the past.
“We lost a lot of people, and they lost a lot,” Jessel said. “But there’s always ways to rebuild things that have been lost.”
Grace Berger, 12, came up with several of the door’s fundamental symbols: a tree of life in the center, flames at the bottom representing the hell of 9/11 and clouds and flowers at the top representing a secular heaven.
The goal of the door is to help survivors of Hurricane Katrina move on and return to their normal lives, but Berger thinks New York still has a ways to go on that front.
“We’re uptight now,” said Berger, who has pink-streaked blonde hair. “Security is huge.”
Hurricane Katrina is different, because “it wasn’t like anyone planned to kill thousands of people,” Berger said. And while some New Yorkers and New Orleanians are scared that a similar disaster will happen again, the fear in New York is of people, not nature.
“It’s not like they’re freaking out about security,” Berger added.
Aside from global warming and terrorism, the main topic on the eighth-graders’ minds right now is graduation.
“I’m sad,” Rose Huang, 13, said during a recent art therapy class. “We’re going to lose our friends.”
Firestone told Huang and the other students they’ll have to make more of an effort to stay in touch, but that they will be able to stay friends if they work at it.
Each year, Firestone chooses the groups of art therapy students carefully, often because they have talent and interest in art but have a difficult home life or problems fitting in with their classmates. Then Firestone tries to build social skills, confidence and trust among them.
“There’s so much pressure on these kids to do well,” Firestone said. “Art gives them an identity. They might not be stars in other areas, but they can be stars here.”
Several students each year apply to specialized arts high schools, and Firestone helps them build the portfolio and knowledge of art that they will need to gain admission.
The art therapy room moved this year as the overcrowded school sought more classroom space. It now sits in a back room of the library, crowded in by shelves of books, with just enough room for a table that seats six.
Firestone’s $22,000 grant is up this year, and the future of the art therapy program is uncertain. Other Lower Manhattan art therapy and school counseling programs are also in jeopardy as the Red Cross funding ends.
“It would be too bad if [the program] had to end, because it really met a need,” Firestone said.
She sees the group sessions as outlets for stressed students, regardless of the connection to 9/11. Students dawdle after the class period ends, reluctant to leave, and they often stop back during the day to say hello. When Firestone asked them if they thought the program should continue next year, they responded with a resounding “Yes!”
As a recent class drew to an end, Firestone looked at a calendar and was surprised to find that the busy end-of-year schedule meant that she would only meet with her group once more before summer vacation.
At that realization, Cynthia Chan, who had just finished explaining how talking to Firestone inspires her artwork, had the strongest and most immediate reaction: “No!” she said.
Julie@DowntownExpress.com
