How the Arts Can Help to Process Grief and Trauma

Jeff Desender, owner of Frozen Fire Studios and founder of the Light the Flame for Mental Health Initiative, invites local artist Katy Martin for a conversation on how the arts can help us through tough times. Both have had their own individual struggles with mental health which have informed the art they create and the process by which they do so.

Several years ago, Martin and her husband lost their first child, and Martin used her painting as an outlet to handle that grief. Her exhibition, which we are able to tour during the interview, reflects that process, including visual representations of her own stages of grief as well as depicting the stories of others and their own similar journeys. Martin also wrote a book documenting her journey, which she says “just poured out of her” when she was finally ready to talk about it.

“We’re afraid of those big emotions,” says Martin, "but they don’t go away, so leaning into them and allowing ourselves to feel them helps us to heal."

It is the process of creating art, both Martin and Desender agree, that is beneficial for them, and not necessarily dependent on the result of that process. While both of them are professional artists, Martin a visual artist and Desender a musician, they agree that a person does not need to be “good” at an art form to be able to use it. It is the act of creation that provides the outlet for emotions that feel too big to handle in other ways.

Martin is also a teacher at the local high school and says that having art in the schools helps students express their own big emotions. One of the revelations in her classes is that vulnerability is contagious, and when one student opens up about their art and its meaning to them, others follow. The teen years are a tumultuous time, and Martin hopes that developing that connection now can not only help her students navigate high school but also give them a healthy outlet to turn to going forward in their lives.