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Expressi
As her career shifted, teacher Linda B
H
Art and psychology teacher Linda Blasdel uses a variety of media to create both 2-D and 3-D artwork. Above, three pieces of her art are combined: “Memory Crows,” “Souls of 9/11” and “Caledonia Crow,” and she won the National Art Educators Best of Show award for “Memory Crows.” “Usually when I’m very happy with a piece, it’s expressing something I feel strongly about,” Blasdel said. (artwork submitted by Linda Blasdel, photo by Sophie Nedelco)
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LE JOURNAL
February 2016
er white knuckles wrapped around a marker, and eyebrows furrowed, she dug the felt tip into the page. Streaks of red passion and black darkness drowned the white paper. Pain. Violence. Confusion. Combined: unmeasurable anger. The assignment was to abstractly give shape and form to eight different emotions, yet she could only give one. But to psychology and art teacher Linda Blasdel, that was okay. Blasdel was at Hilltop Residential Center, somewhere where the kids may not be safe or encouraged to express feeling. Part of a government grant to infuse Hilltop as well as McCune Residential Center, both juvenile prisons of Jackson County, Missouri, with the arts, she allowed this particular young girl and the other children to do just that: give form to feeling. “She couldn’t do anything but black and red, and everything was angry. Those were all of her emotions. Just anger,” Blasdel said. “And, as an art therapist you recognize that you don’t try to move her anywhere because she got the opportunity to say ‘I’m angry, I’m angry, I’m angry, I’m angry.’” Blasdel’s art career didn’t originate in art therapy but began back when she was in elementary school. With fresh scratches on her knees from roller skating and climbing trees, “Linda the Teacher” would sit up straight at the table in her home, prepping for an art class. Smiling at the imaginary camera, she would lay out all the materials her audience would need. “Now you’re going to have to have scissors and construction paper and glue, and here’s what you do…,” she said, mimicking her favorite “learn how to” art programs. She was destined to be a teacher. That is, according
