A Heart Story

ARTIST STATEMENT

A “creativity midwife” feels like a good way to describe my life work of supporting others in using art as a tool for healing and personal transformation. Art making has served me in recovering from life’s challenges and as celebration and affirmation. It has been an honor to support others in tapping their own creativity. I have seen its power with at-risk teens, cancer survivors, incarcerated women and teens, and those recovering from trauma. I believe that our creativity is Spirit manifest through us. ~ Arla Patch

BIO
“A Heart Story” is a series that spanned three years in the making. It was sparked by loss and betrayal. Through this 16-piece series, heartbreak was transformed, stage-by-stage, into a new whole heart. The seed piece for the series, Hidden in Plain Sight, arose from a poem Arla had written. A coloring book of the series is available.

With a teaching career of over 45 years, Arla Patch has worked in both the public and private sectors. This includes the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, colleges and universities, public schools, therapeutic academies for troubled teens, one on one with individual clients, with incarcerated youth and women and at numerous conferences and workshops.

Arla grew up in Bucks County becoming a member of Doylestown Friends Meeting at age 12. She left in her senior year to graduate from the International School of Bangkok, Thailand, earned a BFA, Ed. at Tyler School of Art and an MFA in Sculpture at Indiana University in Bloomington, IN. In 2015 Arla returned to Bucks County after 30 years in Maine and lives in Quakertown. She is the author of two award winning books on art and healing: A Body Story and Finding Ground: Girls and Women in Recovery.

Her interest in healing led to her involvement with the first truth and reconciliation commission in the United States for what happened to Indigenous children in the child welfare system, the Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth and Reconciliation Commission. She is continuing to work on Indigenous rights education here in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, giving a First Monday talk in March at Pendle Hill titled “Building Greater Understanding about Native American History.” www.arlapatch.com

Travel directions to Pendle Hill. Click to view the flyer.

“Passionate Heart” (c) Arla Patch

“Hidden in Plain Sight” (c) Arla Patch