Our Logo was Designed by Sr. Ellen LaCapria, DC
Sr. Ellen LaCapria created our logo as a reflection on the healing power of symbols in sand. She uses creativity through multiple forms of expression.
“It is a gift I have received from my ancestors, and I nurture it every day. I am a Board-Certified Art Therapist and have a BSN in nursing. I am enrolled in Spiritual Formation for Soul Care in the Vincentian Spirit. This training is in preparation to practice as a Spiritual Director sponsored by Restoring Connections based in Denver, CO.”
Sr. Ellen LaCapria, DC
Reflecting on the Logo
By: Dr. Dee
One of my passions is to pause and immerse in the richness of the imagination. To flow with poetics. The image of the logo is anchored below in two aspects of wonderment — the methods that provided fertile ground for the space of imagination, the framework for Narrative Sand Therapy, and a brief touch of personal amplification, the wonderment of meaning.
Our logo was originally designed for the Center for Culture and Sandplay. This has been the home of sand therapy professional training since 2000. Process with symbols in sand was grounded in my cross-cultural research, a critique of presumptions embedded in Western analytic psychology, creating space for indigenous voices. The initial critical questions were, how is culture represented in sand scenes and how do we respond to layers of cultural identity? This is now described as intersubjectivity. Emergent questions concerned how we understand and respond to identities that are visible and named, as well as identities, experiences, that we cannot access, that are invisible to both client and clinician. How do we validate experience that can not be spoken, that does not have a voice or conscious structure in story?
My research method to explore those questions was an integration of psychology’s hermeneutic circle, phenomenological field work, indigenous myths, and cultural psychology. This design laid the framework for a model to understand and respond to sand scenes, symbol engagement, the experience of the person creating the scene, and the experience of the clinician. The framework set the stage for clinical training in the use of symbols as a projective process. That was the science and art of discovery.
A process of interpretation moves through iterations of meaning from a starting grasp of representation, a naming, through iterations of meaning, arriving back to the original understanding with new insight and clarity.
Our experience with an image connects to thousands of associations, memories, metaphors, and experiences . . . known and not known. When we name, we temporarily make conscious a single thread of meaning. It is one temporary thread among thousands. We can re-immerse to locate threads not taken. The hermeneutic circle evolves. The never-ending stories continue.
Art expresses experience, the existential and ineffable, and is meaningful from the point of view of the one who creates and receives. I offer my reflection below in gratitude to Sr. Ellen La Capria and appreciation for the logo.
Wonderment
By Dr. Dee
My eye goes to locate a center. There are many centers, never just one.
I take in the full circle, the dark blue edge, a universe, the depth of darkness of space beyond, out there and inside, the edges of a blanket of blue, a boundary, perhaps comforting but beyond comprehension.
Going inward, ripples . . . the blue . . . a pond, an ocean, a teardrop of blue echoing outward, maybe inward, simple circular movement. A hint of flow.
Is this grief or thirst, an invitation to immerse?
A portal to depths within?
The flow of sand . . . which way does it flow? Do the hands circle, switch places? Do the fingers touch and part? Do the palms open, to hold an image, to frame, or dig into the sand? Who holds these hands? Does the flow give or receive, a gift, a return, a gratitude, an acknowledgment?
Collaboration, cooperation, reclamation?
The vibrations of green, the ripples of blue, the sands that part and return and renew.
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