Students de-stress with art

By Caitlyn Linder //

Hood College students are helping other students to express their feelings through art.

Mackenzie Tucker and Kayla Orcutt, third-year students in Hood’s psychology graduate program, are holding expressive arts group therapy on Thursday nights to help undergraduate and graduate students express their feelings.

“As counseling interns, we are required to complete 700 hours of fieldwork under supervision,” Tucker said. “A certain percentage of these hours must be group hours, meaning interns must facilitate or co-facilitate group counseling sessions.”

Each session includes introductions, a small psychoeducation lesson about coping tools, or why brains work the way they do, led by Orcutt, and then a loosely structured art activity that correlates with the lesson, led by Tucker.

“[We’ve] discussed difficult life transitions and how to anchor ourselves amid those changes. We painted smooth river rocks from Whidbey Island, Washington. On the rocks, members were asked to paint something that represents something that persists during change, uncertainty, and stress,” Tucker said, recalling a recent meeting.

Art is a powerful tool that Tucker likes to involve in any counseling work she does. She says that by focusing on the act of making art, you are forced to focus on the present, and this helps with healing through expression.

While the art group is more than halfway done this semester, Tucker is hopeful about the future of the project. “We hope to facilitate another 10-week expressive arts group for the spring 2025 semester,” she said. “Hopefully, future counseling interns will continue this group after I graduate in May.”

The expressive art therapy group meets every Thursday from 6 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. in Blazer Hall, Room 112. Oct. 10 will be the sixth meeting in a series of 10.