Hey, thanks for the plug! I hope to see you there with your best Richard Nixon shadow puppet ready to rock.

I want a ribcage rub. You could charge a cover for that.

I just want to clear something up so there isn’t any misunderstanding about the work I did out at Coffee Creek, or do with any group under the care of a public institution (Juvenile Detention, the PACE Program, the YWCA transitional housing program, White Shield, etc.). We call programs like Empty & Meaningless: the Box Project (E&M) an Applied Arts Program, or a Therapeutic Arts Program – not Art Therapy – because the program is facilitated by a “normal” person rather than a board certified therapist.

I’ve training as an ontological coach – and the project incorporates many of the conversation-based tools used in the coaching profession, however I do not have any training in psychology or psychiatry. The therapy parts before and after my workshops at Coffee Creek were handled by the Psychologists, Counselors and Psychiatric staff – I just got to facilitate this amazing program and they used its transformative power to further the work they were already doing with the inmates.

I know that this may seem to be a slight distinction, but I know that were there any problems in the room that dealt with a client having a psychotic break of some sort, or becoming overwhelmed by an emotional monsoon, I would not have been equipped to handle it. The amazing staff who were in the room while we explored E&M were trained for just those kinds of situations and could handle them.

So although I had the honor and privilege of leading the workshop I'd developed, I would not have been able to do it without the unwavering support and presence of the treatment teams out there.

Kudos go to those folks for the amazing and difficult work they do with the helping the incarcerated change their lives. And thank goodness that I get to remain merely an artist who is damn good at creating arts-based programs that change lives for the better. ;-)