when you were young you might have had your first collection of things a few sea shells or rocks or maybe even bird feathers these were natural finds that held an attraction that made you want to hold save and cultivating something in terms of memories others in terms of experience some emphasizing references to self and others to our family things to help differentiate ourselves from others and our environment but at the same time things allow us to integrate ourselves with the world into connect with others hi i'm billy givens and this is make art feel better where we explore and promote the creative process on this show we're investigating our relationship to objects collecting hoarding and even attachment we're surrounded by objects actually psychodynamic theories refer to people as objects but for this show we're talking only about three dimensional inanimate things maybe we'll talk about collecting cats on another show what's fascinating about our relationships with things and that is that we attach and treasure objects that frequently have little extern zick value because most often things are symbols that hole much deeper emotions for us as humans hi mary beth thank you so much for coming on the show thanks for having me very excited and you said you would come because you are so articulate and thoughtful and a dear friend and colleague and the show has many levels it's  i think fun and also maybe a very deep thing about being a human and i know you you are thoughtful about such things what if you collected in your life your head collections well when you mentioned i think as a child i had the rocks and and feathers kinds of collections the things that would find out in the world but i also collected when i was a child with glass animals with a big thing and certain kinds of doll and in a be interesting to hear sort of what you have to say about these things because i definitely had sort of you know loved them around with me through history through my history and sort of they they don't really have they have a meaning but they don't have a meaning the i mean you still have some things even from childhood and they do ok you have lift i've moved a little bit more and you have to purge and you move but if you stay in the same home for five ten years it grows and  can save things like you know there are mixed emotions about our collections and are the objects that we treasure i think you know it's funny because our most new things when you agree they don't have really extensive value not to me anymore it's it's more the memory and the association my my family they sold my childhood home with about ten years ago and my mother she did a great job purging and she had this massive yard sale and i went to help and i didn't want to sell have the stuff so i ended up going home i was happy stuff and now i just move it around my house so i do understand of yellow and because it's just it's so painful to think it or you know you're going to lose it and when you lose this object we lose part of yourself i don't you know this is what happens in net that attachment process and so we're kind of toga between the collecting and then of course at a psychological level many people are aware now up because of the show hoarders but hoarding is a it's a human trait of holding on it's been around for a long time probably we were we have early wirings in our being because to say things that are important isn't when we were on the serengeti was very because you might start a death if you don't hold on to some things but then it can go awry and go to some some different places i was very lucky about a month or so ago to go to a wonderful training on hoarding and learned a little bit more in fact quite a bit more it was a fabulous training where they even had some people who experienced hoarding who spoke in a panel and they were very brave to share their thoughts but one of the things we did i thought we might start off doing this just because you're always game to do things we're going to shut her eyes and imagine just what the first thing that comes to mind of something that's very precious to you something that that you treasure is a head that you have and that you would never want to lose you you keep it with you maybe it's in your bedroom i don't know where it is something that you have and think about it and you thinking about it imagine that someone comes into your home and they take this item from you and you have to watch them take it away and they take it outside the house and then they go and they throw it in the the dumpster and then the trash man come and they take it away and they take it off to the city d and then we were asked to open our lives and to reflect on how you felt did you feel anything physically from the little bit of it sort of a momentary panic like a little experience actually clinical hoarding it is not by the way o c d and if you go on with wikipedia the earliest it will list it that way more modern are the more recent studies do not show is positive a correlation with that o c d is obsessive compulsive disorder and it kind of sounds like it's i think everybody said oh well that's what this is continual who hoard they do it repeatedly it's related to a lot more maybe even in feeling that loss that the pain comes from the loss and a little more with depression even things that would be addictive behaviors and and sometimes addicts are involved it across the board but they're just showing there's not as profit correlation because for some people that experience of loss and pain of losing this thing that you're connected with is so overriding that they cannot tolerate that kind of pain and that's the reason that they will keep things and sometimes the way they tolerate the pain is to go buy more things most of us know that when we go out shopping and buy something new this feels pretty good supplant that feeling of pain and we go get more because it kind of keeps me from having to go there are interesting enough because of it being connected with this with more of a loss in the pain the therapy and treatment for hoarding is not to go in and clean up someone's home and to not do this if you have friends or relatives who have a lot of maybe a garage filled with things and you think you're going to help them by doing it all you're going to do is throw them into huge amounts of panic and that they really will not be able to tolerate probably in six months they'll have everything back anyway what the what way they work with with hoarders is to go in very slowly and to just concentrate on very few objects and let them practice have releasing and seeing how they can tolerate letting go of things even if it's a paper bag so enough of my  me to see and also that we all have the ability to attach gas to items and things that we hold thought when you spoke before about the the moving things around and i think i'd said to you before they had a term they call it churning and that we do you churn marybeth churning is when you take your things at home and you say i'm going to really clean this up and you make a neat stacks but you just shove them around the house and at the end you still have everything here and what he used would be there are the things that you have that you would like to get rid of for that you well you know i thought it was a great idea when i get to wherever i go some place you know still as an adult i'll take it a rock from the beach or a piece of driftwood or something to remind me of the vacation or the place that i visited but now i have all of these areas in my house of little rocks and little and after a while i'm like you know i sort of move them around and recreate them but there are these little shrine like things that are around my house on the one hand i like it that kind of life what are my keys the well i did on the i think you know i  have a mixed feelings on this because i have to special items and when i do see them and pick them up and look at them i am taken back to that moment in me or to that person or chair so i'd be able to touch into that feeling now perhaps i could do it i just imagining what the i could have helped me the treasured object i don't know whether we all want to to be like a buddhist this is representing the buddhist begging bowl and the five the other topic for this show is attachment not not attachment like psychological but attachment is the buddhist think that our lot of our said is they think our sadness is but they've humans do attach to ideas to feelings and things and of course the the buddhist monks take valves with that or they take a valve but they end up with what they call an omni bowl or a begging bowl and this is their only possession other than their saffron robe and every morning go out and they may get food in here or some coins and then they eat the food and then the next day they have an empty bowl and you go out again i'm not so sure i can go there i'm not ready for the there's probably a difference between you know in my house were having the memories and having a few things around that you're attached to and then you know attaching to everything and that's when it starts to probably progress into something that's more pathological than just maybe having symbolic items when you ask when the show is starting we have our sets and often i get to draw all the various things and she said where do you keep well i take them home and stack em up because after you've made a piece of artwork  and you know not not much of a suggestion here other than there are different things here and maybe make a piece of art about something that you do treasure and that is important to you and that you do like institute in brooklyn in february they had a very bad fire in the main they go building and the senior art students lost almost all their work and many of these seniors were ready for their final shows and and going to graduate and as artists things that they painted for two or three years were now destroyed by fire and the community of brooklyn really reached out to them and hard stories gave them the materials and and they had counselors who worked with him because this was a true thug about detachment he must now lose you know this thing that you created but what they saw they worked very hard for the next month or so creating new paintings and a very prominent man in new york set up a big art show for them in the spring i think they called it rising from the ashes and which was a great outcome because young painters do not often get exposed to the new york art fright are so many energy said this was a great thing for them but i wondered what that was like it's easier said than done that you in the creating of the are you changed yourself and you don't need to paintings but it doesn't feel like that when you've lost all the things she's created that you can paint again interesting so i think that just hearing the story i thought oh yes i could let my stuff go and i thought i don't just i have i told you i collected these glass animals for a long time and because i work with children at some point i said you know what let me bring these just to work because in the get them out of my have said don't really need them anymore they have this history because they are they they will they carry some energy they have psychic energy and mean something and i bet it's true if you ever lost guitars and it was qatar that i was at one of the first guitars and it was the first we tried that i ever bought with my own money and it was stolen i never played it anymore it was more just there as the first guitar it was stolen and i had a very hard time with that again because it's not like i couldn't make me i had other guitars i had make music i never really used it but it was what is your how hard it was charged if you hadn't learned to play guitar with yes i still have it i brought back a huge bag of the pink sand because it's just so beautiful there and i still have it and i'm churning it around at home and it was just a wonderful vacation and just in all kinds of ways  i mean it was beautiful it was satisfied over and she had a little thing right up about it because it was given to her by some soldiers the airman were stationed in miami during world war two they would be down there learning how to fly and the people would bring them home and feed them and one of the young men gave her a kill pen so she had had it all this time from her and i would wear it thing and i felt like it was quite a you know miss like  something that kept me safe and i would wear and i loved it it was just a silver and wasn't it had very little value but coming back on a bus one time and i was helping some other people it was interesting that i was helping this but you know and all the sudden i realized i had when i think about some of those feelings which are not true at all it's so interesting the way that happens has this trip that i went on it was part of what was wonderful about this trip for me is it was after a significant loss in my life and so being being on the beach in bermuda with people who loved me in this beautiful place it was had a lot of meaning so i think that's like i can't get rid of that same  sort of coming getting through that other period in my life so it is very true when you think about it the stuff represents these events yes and so yes that you could make it through we were not going to have any of these items to take with us right but we could make art about it we can make art about it we can go there and try you know and just see see what it is right it really helps you understand more what the issue is really about rather than the actual item yes and now yes the items that we have and what you know the the lightning up  i i think we mentioned you know to thinking about the minimalist i don't know whether i'd be comfortable with that yeah you know if you've been you know you go in a home and there's nothing and there's nothing there there's nothing on their coffee table or on their you know you do sort of it's very reflective of who a person is and what their identity is when you see these things in their home and i guess somebody could walk in my home and certainly get a feel for who i am probably a little to budge but you know on the other hand you go into somebodies houses where the countertops are everything's in line and it's austere there's no luck going on it sort of wonder who insist is this person and what are they i  go back and forth what are they hiding and and when when people have fires and floods and all that the things we've had in the last few years weather and the one thing that people are trying to gab or their photo albums we're a little bit beyond the whole did but but that they are electronic images of photographs well and in the moment people are you know with instagram and all of that it's like ok i'm going to take a picture of this moment and i'm going to share it and i'm in it you how people will access it who knows what will happen in our brain i don't know when i think about this now with a granddaughter because most of the photographs that are then i percent to me they're all electronic and not too many things that are  actually oh ok and so an atomic photograph is an actual photograph that you can put in your wallet and carry it around that way and if even if your phone goes dead you can still have it but the other is more electronic and so there's a it's here knowing you has been really very very wonderful from the over the last seven years it's been a long time it's longer than i have yes it has been that it has been a long time and knowing you just as the person you are as well as a wonderful therapist healer while watching this show of all it's been very interesting it's well it well i'm going to building i'm going to i'm going to still keep acquiring things i think or think it's fun to play art with which is another issue really make art because you end up with a lot of things sitting around yes so she goes through this all the time because she collects found objects for various pieces of artwork she does and then she feels like her home is filled with clutter and she has to purge ok so that she goes through her own version of it and she gets rid of it and you know i just you know when they are young artists i was told the reason that they hold on to their artwork and they don't even give it away or sell it because it is that feeling that you have created it and you won't be able to create it again and i heard of one hard teacher now this is a wild thing had them paint paintings and then after that class had been destroyed them what he wanted them to get it's i don't know what he told them ahead of time was to know that they can do this over and over again we tend to think that once we've done it we can do it as cato who is on that postage stamp that's not a real postage stamp but you know i hope you got that