BABE #367: DEVON SCHLEGEL - Artist + Art Therapist
As an art therapy fellow with the Cathedral Arts Project, Devon hosts therapy groups for children with autism, and mentors teaching artists on classroom accessibility. She’s also the co-owner and clinical director at Indigo Art Therapy Studio, where she works with individuals of all ages and with varying mental health diagnoses. Pivoting from in-person, intimate and oftentimes delicate art therapy sessions to virtual meetings hasn’t been easy, but Devon is incredibly committed to her patients, and goes above and beyond to ensure they receive quality care, despite the distance.
The Basics:
Hometown: Frostburg, Maryland (middle-of-nowhere, Appalachia—an awesome and weird place to grow up)
Current city: Jacksonville, Florida
Alma mater: Drexel University for Master’s, Flagler College for Bachelor’s
Degree: MA in Art Therapy, BA in Psychology
Very first job: As a waitress at a pizza place. I was awful.
Hustle: Art Therapy Fellow, Cathedral Arts Project; Part Owner & Clinical Director, Indigo Art Therapy Studio
The Interests:
Babe you admire and why?
Hands down, no question, my mom. My mother is a classically trained concert cellist and holds a PhD in musicology. She has an incredibly impressive resume that I could easily brag about, but I want to share one vivid memory that I have of her from my childhood instead. We would often get letters sent to the house addressed to “Dr. and Mrs. Schlegel,” acknowledging my father’s PhD and not hers. My mom would often correct the letters and send them back. As a child, this type of brazen behavior made me wince but she would shrug me off. “I worked too hard for it to not say anything,“ she would say. She is now retired and serves as creator, researcher, and host of a radio show on WFCF in St. Augustine called “Music of Our Mothers,” which highlights female classical composers. I’ve spent my entire life watching my mother tell women’s stories through music and having the privilege to observe her passion for the arts, her independence, and her tenacity has made me who I am today. I always joke that between my mother, the musician, and my father, who is a writer and poet, I had no choice but to go into the arts. I’m so fortunate to have been raised in a home that valued creativity and arts.
Favorite medium to work with?
Oil paint. I’m indecisive and oil paint takes a while to dry, so I can change my mind a million times.
Dream concert to attend (past and present musicians)?
Fun fact about me is that while I was in grad school in Philadelphia, I worked as a production runner for Live Nation, which meant that I got to work with a lot of artists and run errands for them (I bought Kelly Clarkson Spanx, Barbara Streisand a dog pee-pad, and Justin Timberlake some cheesesteaks, for example. I also accidentally destroyed Madonna’s concert outfit once.) I’ve been fortunate enough to see a lot of concerts, but my dream concert is probably Phoebe Bridgers. Her songwriting makes me feel all the feelings. I had tickets to see her at Daily’s Place in June, but it’s been cancelled so I’ll have to wait for that one.
Favorite place you’ve traveled to?
Philly is my favorite place to return to, time and time again. I lived there for almost eight years and that city still has my heart. Plus, my best friends keep having babies, so it’s a nice excuse to keep having to travel back.
Favorite way to unplug?
Yoga. Over the past couple years, yoga has become such a huge part of my life, I need it for my sanity. I take my yoga time seriously, even in quarantine, and put my phone on silent for an hour while I practice.
The Hustle:
Tell us about your hustle.
I juggle two awesome positions right now: I’m an art therapy fellow with the Cathedral Arts Project (CAP), where my job is to run art therapy groups for children with autism and mentor teaching artists on how to make their classes more accessible. I am also a co-owner and the clinical director at Indigo Art Therapy Studio, where I work with individuals of all ages and with varying mental health diagnoses. My typical day looks very different since quarantine. I’ve found that I have to be pretty strict about structure while I work from home, or else I feel lost. I try to wake up early, make coffee, and walk my dog. I practice yoga for an hour and then transition to work-mode. I typically have a couple virtual art therapy sessions for Indigo each day. In-between those sessions, I catch up on clinical notes and work on various items for CAP, whether it be recording a “mindfulness and art” video, collaborating with any of the awesome teaching artists on staff there, working on an upcoming “Art as Coping” newsletter, or adding to our Art as Coping Instagram page.
Have you always been passionate about art? What led you to pursue work in the industry?
When I was teenager, I developed an eating disorder that became too severe to treat with outpatient therapy, so I was sent to stay in a residential treatment facility. By that point, I had cycled through several therapists with varying therapy styles and nothing quite clicked for me. The idea of sitting across from a stranger and talking about why I couldn’t eat and why I was so unhappy was intimidating, and I responded in anger. A lot. But this treatment center offered art therapy and it was the first time I felt like I could express how I was feeling without needing to put words to it. That realization was incredibly liberating. It was a huge aha moment for me. I’m about eight years into my career now, and I still feel as passionate about the healing power of the arts as I did when I started, because I have witnessed it time and time again and I have experienced it for myself as well.
How has your work as a therapist influenced your work as an artist?
I’m not sure if being an art therapist has made me a better artist necessarily, but it has certainly helped me create more and take better care of myself, while giving me the language to use when I don’t have the words. When I first started painting, my pieces were pretty superficial and held little personal meaning. But through my work with clients and witnessing their growth through artmaking, I’ve been inspired to explore my own inner world and personal symbols more confidently, I suppose. Most of my work is abstract and explores themes like past traumas, relationships, and mental health. Because I work with symbolism in artwork every day in therapy sessions, I think that has helped me to be more comfortable working in abstract; it’s allowed me to accept the imperfections in my pieces and move past the idea that art needs to be “pretty” to be good.
How do you use art to help your patients explore their emotions, process trauma, and foster self expression?
This is a big question and the answer to that question really differs from client to client, based on their needs. But, to start with, artmaking itself can build self-esteem and a sense of accomplishment; you’ve created something when minutes ago, there was nothing! But it’s also much more than that—making art about complex emotions or about a traumatic experience allows you to share your inner world with someone else in a way that is less threatening and holds a deeper meaning, because it’s more than words. Our emotions are more than the words we might assign to them, just as trauma memories are deeper than the language we might use to describe them. Incorporating art into healing accesses our sensory, kinesthetic, and symbolic memories and facilitates expressive communication in a way that allows meaningful reflection.
How has your job changed because of COVID-19?
I don’t think I realized how spoiled I was when I was able to provide art therapy sessions in a studio filled with supplies, or prep for art therapy groups with a ton of materials at my fingertips. Aside from the more obvious obstacles of providing therapy virtually (like how to work with younger children who need frequent adult supervision, manage connectivity issues, respond when my dog barks loudly while a client is processing something painful, or the strangeness of navigating a therapeutic relationship from a distance), I think the biggest challenge has been how to facilitate artmaking in a therapeutic, responsive, and intuitive way with limited resources. I can’t expect clients to purchase a wide variety of supplies, so a big part of my job is now trying to figure out how to turn household items into tools for creativity and artmaking. Spices found in the kitchen cabinet can be mixed with glue to make sensory paints. Food coloring, water, and cornstarch can make liquid sidewalk chalk. Flour and oil can make a sensory dough. It’s meant more planning before a session than I am often used to, and I’ve had to work through my own guilt at times of not being able to be as flexible or adaptive as I would like to be because of these limitations. Additionally, I’m on social media platforms like YouTube and Instagram more than I ever thought I would be as a therapist! Recording artmaking videos, making graphics for our Instagram, learning how to create interactive newsletters to send out to parents, and learning how to use programs like iMovie. On my optimistic days, I’m proud of my ability to pivot and learn these new skills. On my more frustrating days, I’m just tired of looking at my computer.
How have your past professional and academic experiences prepared you for the work you do today?
There was something we learned in graduate school that I reflect upon often: the idea of the therapist being a “wounded healer.” It’s the idea that most, if not all, people that go into a helping profession like therapy are drawn to that profession because they have been through something traumatic themselves. While graduate school gave me the tools and the education, I think processing my own past traumas and experiences have allowed me to be the best, most empathetic, and most creative therapist I could possibly be. It also keeps me humble and grounded, and has helped me feel less shame about my past struggles. I remember once, one of my best friends told me: “I used to be intimidated by therapists because I thought they had their lives completely together. And then I met you and now I know that’s not true!” I laugh about that still, especially because I was a complete and total mess when she said this to me, but it is so true. I don’t have the answers and my job isn’t to give anyone the answers; it’s to offer a safe space to explore and process and create.
How can readers support people in your industry right now?
Make art, whatever that means to you. Make art by yourself, with your kids, with your friends, with your partner. We need art in times of crisis; we need the arts now more than ever. And I can’t say this enough: support the arts, as well. There are tons of amazing nonprofits such as Cathedral Arts Project that are still serving various populations through virtual arts programs. Arts provide an outlet to process scary events such as the ones we are all collectively experiencing right now. Arts teach confidence, creative problem-solving, perseverance, and instill a sense of self-worth and accomplishment. Arts give us perspective. So, if you are fortunate enough to have financial stability right now, donate to your local arts nonprofit. And, once again: make art.
How are you balancing your demanding role right now with your own health and wellness?
Figuring out a work-life balance is something I’m struggling with now because my “work” and my “home” spaces are one in the same. When I was working, I used my commute home as a ritual to transition into home-life: to process what I dealt with in sessions and try to leave it at my doorstep. But now, I don’t have that. It sounds ridiculous, but what I’ve been doing is changing out of my “work clothes” (a professional top and usually yoga pants) and into my “home clothes” (just a different pair of yoga pants and different top) and walking my dog, often with a glass of wine in hand. I have a desk that is only for my work duties and I put everything away and out of sight over the weekend. Trying to establish a ritual has been helpful but I haven’t perfected it yet. I also just started going back to therapy as well.
How has being a woman affected your professional experience?
The vast majority of art therapists are women, and the majority of those women are white; I really wish we had more overall diversity in our profession and I hope to see more growth in that area in the coming years. Representation matters. That being said, I think my biggest obstacle when I was first getting into this field was how to advocate for myself and for art therapy as a legitimate therapeutic intervention, in settings that either didn’t value or didn’t understand what I was doing. There are many misconceptions about art therapy; one I run into a lot is that anyone who is an artist or has art supplies can provide art therapy. There is a lot of skill, research and theory behind what I do. Coworkers in the past have been surprised to learn that I had to go to two years of graduate school to get my master’s in art therapy, then I had to get board certified. After that, I worked to get my LPC (licensed professional counselor, in Pennsylvania) and LMHC (licensed mental health counselor, in Florida) licensures as well. When I first started out, I was really uncomfortable challenging these misconceptions due to many of the same reasons women choose not to speak up in their own careers: I didn’t want to sound like a bitch, I didn’t want to brag, I didn’t want to make waves. As I became more confident in my skills, my thought processed evolved: I worked really, really hard to get to where I am now, I have a bunch of letters after my name because I studied my butt off, I completed internships and supervision, I spent a lot of money on education, on licensing exams, and on credentials and continuing education credits, and I deserve to be referred to as something more than the “arts and crafts lady” (I used to get this alllllll the time). I can’t tell you how freeing it feels to finally be in two work environments that fully understand, value, and support what I can offer.
What’s one thing you wish the general public knew with regards to the pandemic?
Whatever it is you are doing right now, you’re doing enough. I’ve been talking with some of my clients recently about Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. In a nutshell, it’s the theory that until one’s basic needs are met, higher needs cannot be reached. Maslow created a pyramid image to represent this idea, with physiological and safety needs at the bottom, creating the foundation for the pyramid. With the stress that comes from financial and health insecurity like we are all experiencing now, it’s unrealistic to expect that we can reach the higher levels on the pyramid (which are love/belonging, esteem, and self-actualization). The idea that we need to be using this time to “improve ourselves” or learn a new skill, or bake bread, or whatever it is—this can be unhealthy because our basic needs are threatened. What you are doing is enough.
Career and/or life advice for other babes?
Breathe. Many of us go through our days holding our breath, clenching our jaws, biting our tongues, repressing our impulses to speak up in fear of being “too much.” Check in with your breath and your body a few times a day. Practicing small bits of mindfulness during the day can make a world of difference. Oh—and make art. Obviously.
Connect with Devon:
Personal IG / Art IG / Indigo Art Therapy / CAP / Email
This interview has been condensed and edited.
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