When I first walked into the room, I thought I had died and entered an art enthusiast’s heaven.  A slight odor of fresh acrylic paint lingered pleasantly in the air. The walls were plastered with bright postcards, creative snapshots, exciting newspaper clippings, and bold, encouraging sayings like, “Every child is an artist!” Every possible area of table space was filled with pencils, chalks, glue, construction paper, and dozens of other arts supplies. The simple, plastic chairs were dotted with specks of paint and adhesive. And stacked high on shelves wrapped with pastel green construction paper were the most treasured items in the entire room; the artwork of the school’s many disabled students.

This paradise I had stumbled upon was the art room of the Ivymount School, a nonprofit educational center for children with mental and developmental disabilities. A close family friend, upon hearing I was considering a career in art therapy, had recommended I volunteer with an experienced art therapist at Ivymount for a few weeks during the summer. While I had been excited and eager for the opportunity, I could not have possibly imagined how rewarding my two weeks with the wonderful students there would be.

 Though still a relatively new field in the therapeutic world, art therapy has proven to be enormously successful with many persons of intellectual disabilty. Art therapy uses a combination of talk therapy and constructive art projects to offer people opportunities to express emotions and ideas that they may otherwise never have had a chance to communicate to others. Not only that, art therapy has helped show the world that everyone can give their own creative and special input on life if they are properly shown how to voice their opinions and thoughts; I saw many children at the Ivymount School who could barely write their own names or carry out the most basic of conversations create stunning and unique pictures, full of bright colors and intricate detail.

One student, Tony, especially sticks out in my mind.  Tony was about 18, tall and gangly, with big, bright eyes and a large winning smile.  Tony will probably never go to college, never live independently, and never have the large circle of friends and acquaintances most of us take for granted. He has to attend classes to learn how to use public transportation, how to carry out basic life skills tasks such as doing a load of laundry, and how to interact with others in a socially acceptable manner. In the traditional sense of the term, Tony would be described as “mentally handicapped.”  But in the art room, I saw Tony do things many “intelligent” people could never dream of attempting.

Tony had an incredible eye for color.  His works invariably involved bright shades and hues, grouped in unorthodox and often pleasantly surprising ways.  I remember one piece of his that I found particularly inspiring. It was a cityscape.  Without color, the work would have been fairly bland; it had your average set of tall, sky-grazing buildings, some roads, etc. But Tony used striking color to make his cityscape far above average; the buildings on the page seemed to sparkle and glow in the afternoon sunlight, the sky was a bright, incandescent shade of turquoise, and the roads were so vibrant and realistic, you could practically hear the cars whizzing past and smell the exhaust fumes. 

And Tony wasn’t the only gifted or hardworking student that entered the art room each day; everyone whom I had the pleasure of working with at Ivymount was incredibly dedicated and engaged in their work.  Everyday, the students would practically run into the art room, their faces lit up with big smiles. They would eagerly pull on their blue and gray smocks, rush over to the pastel green shelves, grab their most recent projects, and set to work with a flourish of activity and excitement. It was hard for me not to enjoy my days at Ivymount when the people at the school were so enthusiastic and engaged.

Helping the students perfect their drawings, mix paints, decorate their frames, and do all other sorts of activities was a thoroughly gratifying experience for me. It was wonderful to know that while guiding the students in their art classes, I was not only teaching them fundamentals of art, but also teaching them principles of other very important skills such as hand-eye coordination, self-confidence, and social awareness. The enthusiasm of the staff and students at Ivymount was so infectious that often, upon leaving the Ivymount School after a long, five or six hour day, I would find myself more invigorated and energized than when I had entered the school that morning. Most rewarding of all were the smiles and looks of pride and gratitude I received from the students upon helping them finish an art project.

Through my volunteer work with the students at Ivymount, I have not only become even more determined to pursue a career in art therapy in the future, but I have also learned the importance of assessing everyone and their personal talents equally, no matter what their background, social class, or physical or emotional state. Many of the children whom I worked with those two incredible weeks are never given the chance to prove to the world just how gifted and unique they truly are, simply because no one has ever given them the opportunity. Working at the Ivymount School taught me to value not just others, but myself, and my own special skills. Because of the experience I gained through working with these disabled students, I have become more accepting and understanding of my own flaws and difficulties, and have used these lessons to come to terms with the many aspects of myself, both good and bad, that make me, me. And I think that this is the most important lesson of all. As I work towards my goal of becoming an art therapist, I look forward to volunteering with the wonderful students at the Ivymount School for many more summers to come.