Art in the construction of self: Three women and their ways in art, therapy, and education (Mary Huntoon, Friedl Dicker-Brandeis, Austria)

This study looks for and at the lost artistic roots of the field of art therapy and at the lives of women who gave form to themselves through artistic endeavors. In so doing, it investigates the lives of two women artists---Mary Huntoon (1896--1970) and Fried] Dicker-Brandeis (1898--1944)---whose life work drew from and contributed to art, therapy, and education; it also explores the work of a third woman who teaches from a studio perspective in which art and therapy and education merge toward an embrace of artmaking in the construction of self. There are connections between the lives of these women, the lost artistic roots of art therapy, and the construction of self through art.; The women in this work selfed through personal artmaking and through facilitating the artmaking of others. In finding Huntoon and Dicker-Brandeis, the official history of art therapy is left behind to inquire into the lives and practices of these women in an effort to discover the nature of selfing in the context of the art studio. While the construction of knowledge goes hand in hand with the construction of self, the relationship between knowing and selfing aligns with artmaking: For makers, making and selfing are potentially parallel processes. Finally, the work examines an approach to teaching art that supports making toward selfing. Making art in studios is a way for makers to create self in individual realities. The study, then, has the potential to commence the formation of an artistic history for art therapy while also exploring an artistic philosophy for the field of art therapy that considers art's roles in becoming.