Kris Frykman: Melding Materials & Emotions in Art

Explore the power of creativity in self-discovery and healing with Kris Frykman, an acclaimed artist, educator, and art therapist. In this engaging podcast, Kris unveils how art therapy goes beyond aesthetics, becoming a vital tool for self-expression, healing, and coping with life's complexities. 
Discover her transformative work with the Suicide Survivors Club, where art therapy fosters hope, emotional growth, and connections for those facing trauma. Listen to a poignant tale from the Suicide Survivor Conference, underscoring the importance of outreach and connection in navigating and living with grief. 
This episode is not just about appreciating art—it's an inspirational dive into its therapeutic potential, guiding us towards a sense of belonging and peace amidst heartache and chaos.

Links:
Meet Kris Frykman, Canvas Rebel Magazine, January 23, 2023
Suicide Survivors’ Club
NAMI 

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Chapters

• 0:00 The Power of Art Therapy
• 20:02 Art Therapy for Creativity and Healing
• 29:26 Healing Art Workshops and Safe Spaces
• 40:15 The Power of Art in Healing

Transcript

Pat

Hi, listeners, this is a heads up that we will be talking about suicide. I thought you should know. Fill To Capacity, where heart, grit and irreverent humor collide. A podcast for people too stubborn, to quit and too creative not to make a difference. Hi, I'm Pat Benincasa and welcome back to Fill To Capacity, Today's episode "Kris Frykman: Melding Materials and Emotions in Art. I am thrilled to have the very talented here. Chris is an accomplished artist, educator, and seasoned art therapist. She is a remarkably versatile and skilled professional, blending creativity, empathy, and leadership. She leads art therapy workshops at the Suicide Survivors Club. She actively guides and inspires students as a faculty advisor and instructor at Metropolitan State University. As a working artist, her passion for art goes beyond her commission works to getting grants for community art initiatives. Well, Kris, it's so nice to have you here. Welcome.

Kris

Thank you, Pat. It's a privilege to be on your podcast and hello listeners. Wow, what an introduction.

Pat

Okay, now we're ready, as you would say, to rock and roll. Absolutely so, Kris. Your creativity seems to thrive in multiple arenas, from art making and installations to teaching, writing and leading art therapy workshops. Could you share how you navigate this multifaceted creative journey of yours?

Kris

It's a blessing to meld all of my passions together and have platforms where I'm able to offer. Whether it's guidance to students or guidance for participants that show up for self-care and healing in an art therapy workshop, and whether it be writing that I'm pursuing or artwork, it's something that you would just align with your passion. So for 11 years I was a K through 12 art teacher, there to that receiving my art degree, and, as you know, with women in the arts early on there were, it was slim picking, so to speak. So when I aligned to loving welding and foundry work, of course you're the only woman in the stratosphere of men banging away and showing you how it's done. So it was just you know, you roll up your sleeves and you join the Rosie Riveter kind of modality and game on.

Pat

Well, wait a minute Now. I got to interrupt you because, in the context of what you just said, I understand your professor asked you to teach students how to weld. Is that correct? That is?

Kris

Correct, which was a real kick in the sense of also helping out undergraduate students and I was an undergraduate student at the time just showing them how to create a mold in the foundry. It was a privilege to be trusted by the professors and, as you know, being an instructor yourself, it is something that we remember our own instructors that have influenced us, motivated us, and it's the privilege that we can give back to others. So it was truly something I'll never forget. It's very empowering and I don't know about you, pat, but on the home front, pursuing art wasn't necessarily, let's just say, there wasn't support on that end. It was slow and coming. Nobody else in the family was choosing that and when you have someone in business, that's the mentality. Only way to make money is for you to pursue this route, not this route.

So, but you know, you just follow the thread.

Pat

I agree with you. When we were coming up, women weren't really that encouraged, and I can remember in my undergrad I had one professor who would only make eye contact with the male students, and if we talk about that today I think people would gasp and say no. But there was a time when women and it's not that long ago that we had to work our way into doing different art mediums. Well, thank you, Kris, for that context. At this point I'd like to move towards art therapy and I'd like to give listeners a brief Cliff Notes version about art therapy. Art therapy merges the creative process of making art with psychological theory and practice. It's rooted in the early 20th century, and it gained momentum from the insights of Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, who recognized art's power in expressing the human psyche. Then, after World War II, the field expanded significantly, reflecting a growing public interest in mental health. So, coming full circle back to what you do, chris, how does being an artist affect your art therapy work, especially in encouraging others towards self-expression?

Kris

You acknowledge that key aspect of art is being therapeutic, in the sense that it is all about the expression, taking trauma from within and giving it a platform for coming out, and there's so much manifesting for participants that come to a workshop. They are there to embrace in a step-by-step process that can create a forum for healing. It doesn't replace one-to-one therapy by any means. However, as you know, the neurotransmitters in our brain are influenced. There's a shift that manifests when you give someone art materials, a non-threatening material, such as cutting out collage from magazines. It's very accessible, something that people can do outside of a workshop and continue on their own. It is a way for when you offer guided steps for participants in a workshop to engage in intentional creation, what happens is that visual symbols manifest, whether they're aware of it or not. Once the participants are able to talk about what they've created and others get to witness that process, what happens is a lot of times aha's kind of just naturally occur where someone might say oh, I didn't realize, this is how I think. I haven't talked about this before, and it's showing up right on my page here where someone else might say can you tell me a little bit more about what you created here in the center of your collage, and usually something that's in the center is central to that what's happening in the psyche of that person. So it is a real privilege to set a safe space or healing to manifest. And one of the techniques that I employ if it's on Zoom, I invite people to have something that brings them joy, to set it next to them in front of their computer so that as they're working and sometimes, I like to have calm music in the background too, so it's more multimodal calms the central nervous system down and that way it is a self-grounding technique. If one is feeling a little overwhelmed, they have their object of joy next to them and I oftentimes will have flowers around me, or a candle lit just as a way to model that.

And in-person groups, the forum is creating a safe space, giving directives that all emotions are welcome. Everybody has their own individual packets of Kleenex. I'll have packets of decaffeinated green tea so that they can mindfully infuse the antioxidants. Take that with them for self-grounding after the workshop. But the key thing for me is creating that safe forum where people feel safe in sharing their journey and their traumas. As you know, I've been working with the Suicide Survivor Club, and it is an organization that is focused on reducing the stigma of suicide and providing resources and tools for survivors, those that have experienced loss, family loss, death by suicide and practice, presenting safe messaging such as to create a reduction in reducing stigma. The term "commit is no longer in the vernacular. It is died by suicide or something to the effect that mental health challenges was the cause of the death, and so by mirroring the conversation back to everybody you know pretty much, it starts that shift, that ripple effect and inviting people into a conversation that they might otherwise not feel comfortable with.

Not feel comfortable talking about, but it's necessary.

Pat

You really raise an important nuance. We are our words, we are our language. And just to take that phraseology, "commit suicide and stop it, because that it's so.

Kris

So that's why it is important to interrupt the flow of someone's conversation and just have an educational moment.

And say, the vernacular is "died by, or mental health challenges got the best of this person, and you know people go through a dark night of the soul and we have many reasons for that in our society right now, where there is a cultural manifestation of trauma that we have. We've survived in many ways, even though COVID is still underway. It has impacted the globe and has invited isolation and people are feeling how do I process my overwhelm or all of my intense emotions? And by having resources such as tools for as a therapeutic modality, can be very beneficial for anyone that is needing some emotional grounding.

Pat

You know I was going to ask you what an art therapy session would look like, but you've kind of laid that out. I got to ask this question. You must get people that they come into this art therapy session saying I don't have any artistic talent; I don't know what I'm doing here. Am I supposed to know? You know that kind of concern. You got two things going. One, self-consciousness, like well, I'm not an artist, how do you deal with that? And then you did talk about making people comfortable to express themselves and talk about what it is they're making. But how do you get them in the beginning not to be self-conscious? And I'm not an artist, what do I do?

Kris

And it's a great question, Pat. Well, I'm going to have experience in the classroom as well, and I know you have, I'm sure, in your experiences teaching through 12. What I do is invite, it's all by invitation, and just saying, while everybody's permitted, just be yourself. You're here to take care of yourself and nobody else. That's the role. Create a safe space is just to transfer power back to the person that's feeling powerless, and one of the things I'll set up tables where there are supplies available to someone that's chosen to show up for self-care, and so these are the tools that will be having the opportunity to use today.

Cool things here, there are many cool things, of course is you're not alone. Look around you. We start with brief introductions and kind of go through the safety protocol while you are here and then you know list the rules. Are there anything else that anybody in this group would like to add to that, so that you are furthering empowering someone to participate in the role Making course, you know, with any session two hours and if someone needs to use bathroom, you just you know kind of direct.

These are the areas that you take care of yourself. Or, if you need to debrief, something, should be a trigger we are going to. You know, practice, a grounding technique. I often begin with a breathing exercise, inviting participants if they feel comfortable, to practice it. Nobody is required. So if they just choose to sit there and be witness to everybody else, that is their choice. But if they choose to engage, I just really emphasize the non-threatening approach. There's no wrong way to do this. Your process may be similar, the process ripping or gluing and positioning or overlapping imagery and actually adding words to the collage if you feel like it. So it's all about choice and saying the emphasis is not on the end product, it is about the process. And then you will be invited to talk about it again, your choice.

And by the end, what I found is those that have been reticent about speaking up realize when someone takes that bravery mic, so to speak, and chooses to open up that it is oh, I can see myself in their story. I can do this, I can do this. And if puddles of tears seem to manifest during that school we talk about, you have your Kleenex tissue in front of you so no one feels obligated to take care of anybody else here, and that way no one's going to be passing a tissue to you. You get to choose if that's what you want.

What has happened sometimes in a therapy session, or a therapeutic session is when someone hands someone a tissue, it's like saying stop that, and if they need to just release, well, so be it. And so by just allowing that to happen and say I see you, I witness you, I feel the pain, it's good to let it out, and that's part of the reason why they are there. There's usually a protocol. If someone is just freshly even traumatized yes, you know, they do some one on one and when they're ready to participate in a support group or supportive to our workshop, then that would be ideal.

Pat

You touched on this kind of global stress levels for a lot of reasons. There's so much going on in the world right now Post COVID, the wars that are happening, political divides so there's a lot swirling around us. I want to shift here. We're discussing art therapy in a professional setting. Could you suggest ways for individuals to practice art therapy at home to relieve stress? For example, would keeping a doodle journal help somebody? What other activities would you recommend?

Kris

That's great. Yes, there's research that shows just one can definitely have a doodle journal and by doodling can be a self-regulating technique to just stay focused at just giving your hand. Opportunities just go off on its own unconsciously to create a doodle. And that's actually kind of fun in many ways because then you can see pictures in the doodles and then take it from there if you choose to. But it is a way to help somebody self-regulate and just calm their central nervous system down. And if you combine that with focusing on your breath and staying present and staying present for a lot of people is hard.

People are seeking tools, resources. There are platforms like Calm, as an example, where you can get an app, and there are guided meditations that are offered. If one is willing to lean into that, that can be very helpful. I want to personally know when I was first practicing listening to body scans and breathing techniques and I was finding I was in a this was long, long time ago, but you know I was feeling irritable at the tape or the CD because I was thinking I'm not there yet. I was feeling agitated by the tape. So I share that only because someone's just starting out and thinking. Everybody says focus on the breath, and I'm tired of focusing on the breath. It just takes practice and even focusing or thinking about your favorite color to bring you back to a calm center. Do what's right or for you.

Pat

I'd like to go in a different direction, as working artists were constantly immersed in our creative practice. Now, aside from the professional aspects, do you use your art and writing as a way to relieve stress or as a way to understand the world?

Kris

That's a great question, Pat. I know if I use my art to relieve stress, I use it as a form of just being able to express myself. It's an expression of sometimes of what I'm, I guess, when I'm thinking or feeling, an interpretation of what might be happening in the world. Everything you create, as you know, is personal. It is like a mini memoir, in a way. We put your workout. It's like you sent a baby into the world. So I know there are two purposes for art. Of course you can manifest your art for the purpose of stress relief and in the outcome could be that it is a piece of art. If you are doing fewer expressive stress relief, it is about the process and not the product.

Pat

I think there's two different sets of purposes for one creating so well, in a sense, this kind of leads to a backdoor truth in our conversation, and that's about the joy found in the act of creating or making. Now, sometimes I can get so engrossed in tasks, deadlines or self-imposed expectations about how a painting should look that it starts to sap the joy out of my work, and when that joy fades, I'm stressed. Now, listeners, has this ever happened to you? You get so hell bent on doing something that you forget why you're doing it and the joy it brings you. So, Kris, in your creative process, how do you maintain or rediscover the joy of making, especially under pressure of deadlines? How do you do it?

Kris

Oh boy, yes, you speak my language, Pat and everybody else out there that are creative souls. When you are in the process it's a blast for the most part. Where you're really in this zone, creating and you feel one. With whatever it is that you're creating, you feel maximize joy. But, yes, you get to that platform where you're stuck, or you just need to walk away and come back at a later date. And sometimes, when you come back at a later date, you just want to redo the whole darn thing because you know there's something to be said about the flow, staying with it, because you're executing one style and mine can shift If I'm in a different mood. You know I'm going to make different marks on a painting, as an example, or with a sculpture. Perhaps my shape or form of that sculpture could shift by that. But to your point, to your question. So I was, a couple years ago, the beginning of coven. I decided to.

I love working with driftwood and I love the idea of having driftwood that's taken out of context, from its original riding livelihood, from being a tree and having spent quality time in a river or a body of water, you have transformed its look and then taking it from one location, transporting it to a new location and then constructing pieces of driftwood invite ring lengths so it has somewhere like a staccato effect and suspending it through the air. And I had this idea of making driftwood connections in the Solana State Forest, which happens to be in McGrath, Minnesota. So I grabbed my ladder and my materials, rented a cabin. It was just me and my all the knots and things I was making with filament, so it looked like the connections were invisible, and so you'd experience the floating driftwood over your head and through the forest and so forth.

And yet I was dealing with horse flies and ticks and all these lovely sentient nasties that were out there, and I was at me while I'm trying to put this together. So there was a point where my joy was how much bug spray can I put on me to? You know this focus? And I only had a week to create this, and it was an eighth of a mile long. So it is through perseverance that we get to the other side, is, I guess, what I'm saying.

Pat

I think one of the things bubbling up from our conversation is fluidity being fluid, and that means that we can dip into all sides of ourselves. So for you, you can dip into being the instructor teaching, you can go to art therapy, you come back, you do your work. Sometimes people don't give themselves permission to be fluid. Sometimes people think, well, I do this one thing, this is what I'm supposed to do. And for those people, they like to compartmentalize, and I know, because I did that early on in my life, I would compartmentalize everything. As I've gotten older, I don't know where the compartments went, but I think they kind of dissolve. You know, it's more a question of fluidity and allowing ourselves to be fluid, to allow ourselves to express what we're feeling. Would you agree with that?

Kris

Yes, I think it. For many people, you know, identifying, being fluid in one's areas of passions could be simply a love for creating a new dish, something that they've cooked up and gardening, as an example, and having, maybe, you know, their grandparents. Those could be their fluidity. So I don't think it is necessarily having to be job specific, but it just happens to be for me and for you and many of the listeners out there probably too, where I see intersectionality in the things that I'm doing. They're creating and empowering and I'm passing the empowerment baton to people that I have the privilege of getting to know and work with, and or for someone that's choosing to purchase some of my work, as an example. It is just nice to have that intersection because for me it just fortifies my spirit. I feel more congruent, being able to do those things.

Pat

So let's go back to art therapy for a moment. One of the impressions I get is that when people come into an art therapy situation, they've been traumatized or experienced things that they can't give voice to, and so they come into that, taking art materials, and whether they're cutting out collages and putting them together, the idea is that they're finding a way to express themselves, which is really about self-healing. Can you share a memorable experience you had with art therapy that significantly helps someone in their journey towards healing or self-understanding?

Kris

There is something to be said about our neurotransmitters work. Actually, with trauma, the verbal side of the brain gets shut down. It's hard to talk about a situation. So, by utilizing symbols and imagery, that can help someone manifest a story that they might not otherwise been able to manifest. So, this past summer I had the privilege of being able to speak with and conduct a art workshop for healing purposes at the Suicide Survivor Conference in Glencoe, Minnesota. There was a woman this was her second time attending this workshop and the gift of coming multiple times to a kind of a healing art workshop.

Every time you go through this guided step of what was going on your life before said trauma, how did you respond, and then what have you learned? Or how have you honored someone, kind of on that level. But this woman, she was excited that I remembered her and I remember her mom, remember the tattoos and how she honored her dad and having a specific tattoo or a saying on her arm. And she shared with me while at the cemetery, visiting her father's headstone, she met a woman, and they shared their stories. Comes to be that their stories were very similar and the next thing she tells this woman I'm going to a conference. I'd love for you to join me. So this woman introduced this new friend that she met in the cemetery and they both came together to the workshop and I had the privilege of working with both of them and among others, and so you have a real mix and it's just the gratitude and the hope that collectively gets witnessed when people choose to share their mirror, their art, hold it up for someone else to witness, and there isn't anybody saying it's good or bad. It is what it is. It is their story, and they get to talk and explain it how they see it and then, if they wish to have feedback, we open it up, all within the time parameter when you have a lot of people, if that's the case in a workshop, so everybody has a voice. So that was a key moment. There was a woman in the same workshop who was fairly recent she had lost a nephew and understandably emotive, but by the end she was so grateful to connect with everybody and she said I'm so glad I came. I almost didn't come and to see that there is hope, everybody's at a different level and years go by and you still are dealing with pain, and it hasn't integrated in the body, so you're going to go to self-care opportunities? Hopefully you do. And this woman, by the end, was made some new friends. It was beautiful to witness.

So those are two stories, but there was one that I was thinking about when I volunteered as a support group facilitator and a crisis counselor at the Sexual Violence Center in Minnesota. We had sort of random... Someone came to the office with bags of onions, and they had a surplus from their farm. So, I did say it was random, and here I'm running the support group. And the prior week someone was saying you know; they're having a hard time getting their feelings out and crying and we're making these self-care toolbox. And so I brought the onions down into the workshop and I said look, we have a bounty of instant tears and here's how we can make that happen, you know. So what? And everyone went home with onions and the next week when we went, said oh, I put my onion in my self-care toolbox and I have it on my living room. So every time I just need a good cry, open it up and a waft of onion comes out. It was so beautiful. Yeah, that's that stayed with me. That's a great story. Yes, it is.

Pat

And the idea that whatever happens to coax, encourage, support, guide or just listen, it is about somebody letting go. Really, I mean, this is about letting go and to do that you have to feel safe. You know, I mean you do. And so if you don't have like a close friend to share with or somebody, I think that these workshops offer people a way to get in touch with what they're feeling, so that they don't feel so isolated.

Kris

And that they are not alone. That's key. And one if you arrive feeling that you're the only one experiencing this depth of pain, you come away knowing well, there are others feeling this horrific pain too, and it's hard work, it is very hard work, but you can get to the other side. And for those struggling, resources are always provided at workshops, of course, and you can go to the website SuicideSurvivorscom or NAMI, and that's the National Alliance for Mental Illness, which, by the way, the Suicide Survivor Club is affiliated with. So if you ever go on that website and choose to make a donation, it goes right toward the NAMI organization. Yeah, and resources are important, but if anyone out there any of your listeners are out there and they're finding themselves struggling, especially as we come up to the holidays, I'd like you to put on your phone 988. That's a lifeline number for anyone that you know having suicide ideation or if you are needing to process how to cope with others that are experiencing this, contact 988. It is free.

Pat

Great Well, Kris. As we wrap up, your stories and insights have highlighted the rich diversity of your experiences in both art and art therapy. Can you share a key insight from your path in art therapy that every aspiring artist or therapist should hear?

Kris

Boy. I remember when I was in teaching K through 12 art and the opportunity to facilitate support groups or students that were identified at risk, and that's just a term where, you know, a student might be challenged at home when their energies excess energy is coming out in a way that's interruptive to a class or they might have another kind of challenge that they're dealing with. And that was very appealing to me to offer my prep time. You know it's usually when it would happen. Once a week I had the opportunity to work with students. They come into my small office space, and we would get to. Basically, it goes down to empowering students how, you know, build a safe space, and then get to what materials you'd like to work with, and we'd set something up. But I decided to do this with other colleagues at the time to get certified as a support group facilitator and it was through the Minnesota Counselors Certification Program, and that just whet my appetite for, you know, being able to witness the transformative impact can have on students and the lives of people that choose to, you know, participate in that. Plus, even in the classrooms I'm sure you've noticed this too where you gleam so much from students, from their creative work. You know how they manifest their expression on paper, on canvas, in a sculpture. You really get to know that student, and this is true for creative writing. Definitely get to know the students. That was part of my process.

And then, when I decided to work with taller students, I found out their excuses are definitely the same my dog ate my paper. I digress. I found when I was working initially in college settings that and still now that students still need that safe space. I was modeling that all my classes, so people couldn't feel comfortable telling me whatever they needed to share it and I could direct them to the resources not taking on counselor, of course, but to have that trust factor that we are in this class together. We are a community of learners. We have these goals to meet, and you have to meet me 100 percent and I'm going to support you all the way. But these are the tools for your success. So game on, let's do it.

Pat

I think that you really hit it the nail on the head in terms of safe space. Teaching art for many years, as I did, there was something so remarkable, almost like daily miracles, walking into the art studio for a class. You get to know students in a way that you're not teaching math or chemistry. You get to see their expression on paper, canvas or what they're building, and it is truly, truly a glimpse of who they are. But all of it hinges on them feeling safe, them feeling respected and knowing that they can talk to you about anything and it's okay. And I think you really amplify that whole notion of what is important safe space, psychologically and physically.

Kris

Absolutely yeah.

Pat

And I thank Kris for presenting your multifaceted creative work and leaving us with a lot to think about. Thank you so much for being here.

Kris

Thank you, Pat, it's been a privilege.

Pat

And, with that said, I would like to leave listeners with this quote: "art is my cure to all this madness, sadness and loss of belonging in the world, and through it I'll walk myself home.

Kris

Beautiful.

Pat

So thank you, listeners, for joining us today. If you enjoyed the podcast, please tell your friends. Thank you, bye.