Lynn Schirmer

Currently Showing

Through February at Edd Cox Fine Art as part of the 619 Western artists and documentary showcase. I’ve also hung a piece by the late Su Job, the sale of which will benefit the Conductive Garboil Grant. World Tree films is raising funds to finish post-production on their intriguing documentary on the life and demise of the former arts building.

Often dubbed “the Hive”, 619 Western Ave was home to hundreds of creative individuals for more than 25 years. This film documents the legacy, the memories and preserves the history of this unique community and place.

You can support their efforts here: http://www.indiegogo.com/619

 

My Work Published in BC Psychologist

“Reflections of Trauma in Art”
by Anne Dietrich, Ph.D., R. Psych.
A psychologist in private practice, who specializes in treatment of trauma
and related problems. She also is on the BCPA Board of Directors.

http://www.psychologists.bc.ca/

p.18

Excerpt:

The expressive arts, whether in terms of narratives,
psychodrama, poetry, performing arts, photography,
sculpture, or painting (this is not intended to
be an exhaustive list), have been recognized as
helpful adjuncts to talk therapy. The emotional/
psychological experience of trauma is often not
expressible in words. How would a client sufficiently
express with words the excruciating experience of
being raped as a child or of witnessing parents being
severely tortured and killed during acts of war?

Bennett asserts that “the experience of trauma
paradigmatically encapsulates both direct,
unmediated affective experience and an absence of
affect, insofar as it is resistant to cognitive processing
and induces ‘psychic numbing’” (2005, p. 5). The
following works were created by a survivor of severe
childhood sexual abuse and torture, who has been
diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder.

The emotional valence — horror, helplessness,
incredulity and shock, the fragmentation that
prevents the development of a coherent and unified
sense of self, torture, and much more — is evident
in Ms. Schirmer’s works. Words alone do not
adequately convey such an experience to others, and
words alone do not help the survivor to understand
his or her experience in a holistic manner.