Literally, under your skin, deep inside our bodies where our organs and bodily systems exist, are truths. Untold stories waiting to be given voice and shape. Hidden inside us, they are poised, ready to be brought forth for self and community healing. Going into the Bodyscapes process to create poetry and drawings, helps us discover a new way to depict a part of our story we would not have the courage to share if we had to speak about it out loud.
Where do our bodies hold our self intimacies?
Bodyscapes Experience for members of Honoring Our Experience, the Long-Term Survivors of the AIDS pandemic, a program of the Shanti project.
The Red and Orange House is a non profit 501(c)(3) organization, based in San Francisco, California. Since 2014, we have been creating magic for people who would not have the opportunity to use art-making as healing for themselves and their community.
redandorangehouse@gmail.com
Diane Sciarretta is an experienced art educator whose core vision and practice is to make art with people suffering with serious illness, with illness itself as the subject of their art. She developed the Bodyscapes Technique from her own experience with serious illness as a method of transforming her students from victims of illness to interpreter/artists whose goal is to find meaning in the experience of coping with serious illness.
She has since expanded Bodyscapes to encompass and serve not just those suffering from illness but also those facing any serious challenge—physical or mental—in their personal or professional lives, particularly health care professionals who work with patients coping with serious illness.
Diane Sciarretta received her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from The Boston Museum School and Tufts University, where she was awarded the Allie Pratt Traveling Art Scholarship. She majored in expressive figurative oil painting with a minor in literature. She went on to earn an art educator credential from The Massachusetts College of Art. Diane worked as a public high school art teacher and special education consultant using art to re-engage low performing students.
Twenty years ago, my teaching career was interrupted by serious illness. During my recovery, I began to develop what would eventually be named The Bodyscapes Technique. It came out of my personal need to find meaning amid the disruption in my life and to communicate my experience to my family.
One year into my journey with illness, suffering from crippling migraine headaches, I gained a crucial insight. I realized that I did not know what the inside of my head looked like. I consulted a medical anatomy book and began to create colorful pastel illustrations of my brain, representing simultaneously the embattled parts of my physical body and my experience combating illness. Art making soothed my soul and tapped into my personal source of healing power. Now that my pain and illness had been given form, texture, and color outside of my body and my inner experience, I could see that my ailing body was not to blame. There were no words written inside my skull where my migraines lived indicating my perceived failures as an artist, a teacher, or a daughter. I also gained a new language to talk to my family that cut through my feelings of loneliness and alienation.
Six months later, a friend living with liver cancer came to visit. Her daughter was examining the drawings of my migraines and stomachaches. “I’ve only ever seen a liver on my mom’s x-rays,” she said. “Would you teach me to draw one so I can make a picture to help heal my mother’s liver cancer?” In that moment, I knew that creating this type of artwork would help the girl deal with her confusion and find hope. Every day while her mother napped, the girl placed the drawing on her mother’s liver to help heal the cancer. Through art, the girl and her mother discovered a new way to communicate about the cancer that would soon separate them. The mother told me that I had found my calling.
Once I regained my health, I continued to develop Bodyscapes. In 2001, I organized and managed a weeklong art-making workshop with master therapist, Joseph Zinker, author of the seminal work, Creative Process in Gestalt Therapy. In the summer of 2009, I helped children who had lost a parent to cancer express themselves through uplifting art projects at Camp Kesem in South Florida. In July 2012, I obtained a Certificate of Completion in the arts in a Healthcare Summer Intensive at the University of Florida’s Shands Hospital where I studied the history of and funding for transforming the heath care experience through the arts. In 2014, I founded The Red & Orange House Foundation. In 2015, she was awarded a grant from the Anne Goss Foundation to conduct a Bodyscapes Art Workshop for the Child Life department at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis. In 2015, she was awarded a Lloyd Symington Foundation grant to conduct two Bodyscapes Art Workshops at The Women’s Cancer Resource Center in Oakland, California, and to produce an art catalog featuring the work created during the workshops. The Red & Orange House is returning to WCRC to fulfill its 2016 Symington Foundation grant.
Once I regained my health, I continued to develop Bodyscapes. In 2001, I organized and managed a weeklong art-making workshop with master therapist, Joseph Zinker, author of the seminal work, Creative Process in Gestalt Therapy. In the summer of 2009, I helped children who had lost a parent to cancer express themselves through uplifting art projects at Camp Kesem in South Florida. In July 2012, I obtained a Certificate of Completion in the arts in a Healthcare Summer Intensive at the University of Florida’s Shands Hospital where I studied the history of and funding for transforming the heath care experience through the arts. In 2014, I founded The Red & Orange House Foundation. In 2015, I was awarded a grant from the Anne Goss Foundation to conduct a Bodyscapes Art Workshop for the Child Life department at Riley Hospital for Children in Indianapolis. In 2015, I was awarded a Lloyd Symington Foundation grant to conduct two Bodyscapes Art Workshops at The Women’s Cancer Resource Center in Oakland, California, and to produce an art catalog featuring the work created during the workshops. The Red & Orange House is returning to WCRC to fulfill its 2016 Symington Foundation grant.
Most recently, I was awarded an Anne Goss Foundation grant which brought me to Arkansas Children's Hospital where I conducted three workshops for teenagers receiving dialysis and two workshops for the Child Life & Education staff. I also produced an art catalog featuring the Bodyscapes poems and drawings created during the workshops and held a reception in the Dialysis Waiting Room for the teen artists , their families and the larger ACH medical community.
The R & O House is a 501(c)(3) foundation,
EI #30-6346085.
The Red & Orange House relies on generous donations to bring free of charge Bodyscapes Healing Art Workshops. In 2017, we hope to provide our interactive, joyous art-making workshops for transgender teens and women living with and having survived breast cancer.
You can use the link below to connect to an online platform where you can watch my educational video and donate via the site, generosity.com, an online platform
for socially minded fundraising for causes big and small.
https://www.generosity.com/education-fundraising/fund-bodyscapes-healing-through-art-workshops
“Today's teen art reception was a phenomenal day…I thought I had an idea of what these teenagers were going through, but this was the first time I truly was able to see what they felt like living with dialysis. It is a very restricted life. ” She added: “Bodyscapes allowed them to be normal. I saw freedom in their artwork. This show was so loving.”
Hi Diane,
thanks a lot for the presentation. We both really enjoyed it and I think this will be a great collaboration.
“Diane, what an honor and pleasure it was to spend time with you yesterday as you shared your gifts with our team! That hour of self care has reached far and wide as I continue to hear people reflecting on their experience. Your passion and energy to help others is so evident in all that you do, from the effective presentation to your connection with people to how you explained the high quality art materials, we soaked it all up. I am thrilled to have had the opportunity to meet you in person and experience your Bodyscapes Technique ~ eye-opening and healing at the same time!”
“The Bodyscapes process was very useful to help me look at how and where I hold my stress. But more importantly, I thought how wonderful it would be to do Bodyscapes with our clients. I imagine just how much more I would get to know them. Some of whom I have worked with for years. I would see a new part of them. A part they never get to show me.”
It was an inspiration to meet with Diane Sciarretta, learn of her mission, and attend one of her healing sessions with a group of caregivers from Riley Hospital. Her enthusiasm and skill in communicating the benefits of using art as therapy to help overcome life's stresses, helped make the process approachable and effective. We were able to reflect on our similar missions - using creativity and self-expression to help cope with illness - one that the founder of Creating Hope, Jeanette Shamblen, also found through her personal experience.
"The word aspect of the Bodyscapes Technique is surprising and unexpected. I came up with words and meaning that we truly surprising. And the drawing aspect was very pleasing. I learned a lot about the process. And to my surprise, I produced something worth looking at."
Thanks Diane, very creative presentation. Your attention to detail is something I love, also your attention to time is something else I love. ~ Karen
"My experience with Diane and the BodyScapes process was deep and revealing. While I have come to terms with my ongoing tinnitus the writing part of the process
allowed me to return to the feelings about it and release any unwanted or negative words about it and left me with a beautiful poetic vision of my inner condition.
Diane holds sacred space where I felt safely supported to explore the vulnerability I feel with the tinnitus"
"Now, when I have a migraine, I will think of this pretty yellow, orange and red light. I will think of it going out of my head into the world. It's strong brightness can help other migraine sufferers sitting in the dark as well."
"Thank you very much for the opportunity to put my thoughts and emotions into an artistic expression.The experience really opened up my mind to a deeper awareness of my feelings regarding the loss I have felt after my Mother and my Husband died."
Diane, the process really helped me look at that whole situation with a new perspective and to see more layers that are present. There is something to the work with the dictionary and thesaurus that left me feeling validated and backed. Thank you!
"I have spent years in hospitals. The only patients who get well are the ones who say they have reason to get well. The Bodyscapes Program gives people the time to search to see where they have meaning. We patients search through the dictionary and thesaurus to find ourselves, wondering who we are right now in this moment, sitting before Diane, supported by books which give meanings and ideas to meanings and pictures of the inside of our bodies."
The experience of art therapy with Diane was really powerful. Through the process of breaking down definitions and words that have personal meaning to me, I was able to uncover a lot of feelings and rediscover my path to healing. Diane is very warm and inviting and helps you feel comfortable to explore your emotions through the medium of art. Through drawing, I was able to connect with my injury in a way I never had before. I especially loved using the soft and smooth textures of the pastels. I hope to work with Diane more in the future.
"Diane, I just put my poem up next to my bed. I re-copied it, written now on my favorite color. I titled the poem, "becoming Whole". Thanks again for the meaningful experience." -
"My bodyscape experience was emotional for me, my personal disability being the topic. I really enjoyed the artwork process. By emphasizing my ankle, I was able to go deeper within myself."
"We began, using this small bit of information and the Bodyscapes Process to systematically uncover layers of my lifelong sense of self-identity. Soon, the two initial words expanded into more and more specific words and phrases. Patterns emerged which up to that moment remained unconsciously embedded in my psyche. To watch them take form on the page was no less than startling and absolutely cathartic."
"Working with Diane's process is powerful, not as painful as therapy and a lot more fun."
"That was incredible, Diane! I had no idea how deep your process could bring me to a new understanding of fatigue."
"Bodyscapes allowed me the opportunity to bring language and visual representation to my headaches. I truly appreciated Diane’s patience, energy, spontaneity and spirit of collaboration in the process. After reflecting with the drawing I created with Diane, I realized, I need to do some inner work on my stressors to overcome my headaches. Also when I feel the onset of a headache I remember the drawing and try to sort where the pressure is coming from. It greatly assists me in reducing the stress and intensity of the headache knowing the root. Thank you again Diane!"
“Hi Diane, once again, thank you. It was a profound experience. It truly helped me move some of my grief. I miss my mother so much but it helps so much to have a colorful visual. I am so touched that you gave me this opportunity. xoxo Lynn”
