The Ugly and the Beautiful: Drawings by Adolescent Girls

• In Event: Poster Session 12
  In Poster Session: The Ugly and the Beautiful: Drawings by Adolescent Girls

Abstract

This paper presents the Ugly and Beautiful Image Task (UBIT), a creative educational and therapeutic drawing method for use with children and adolescents. The current study is about adolescent girls, with adverse childhood experiences, including stress and trauma. For adolescents, whose creative imagery is richly complimented by verbal reflection, creating art work and reflecting about beauty and ugliness is especially beneficial. Representation of beauty and ugliness seems to be an appropriate tool for engaging youth in authentic visual expression, which may also reveal social, emotional or behavioral concerns. Visual symbols and reflective statements may also be used for the identification of the best educational strategies for managing these problems, as they offer emotionally engaging starting point for meaningful pedagogical encounters.

Authors

• Lisa Kay, Temple University

• Andrea Karpati, Eötvös Loránd University