Orsi N.

Release! Release!
Credit: Orsi N.Artist Bio

Orsi is a third year student in Lewis & Clark’s art therapy program, presently interning at Mt. Hood Hospice in Sandy. Their clinical work focuses on bereavement and grief, and the multilayered changes people go through before, during and after losses. Prior work with individuals experiencing memory loss and neurocognitive disorders also provided meaningful avenues for learning about profound changes to life, self, and relationships. Orsi’s approach is mindful of identity, personal meaning, individual and group narratives, and the power of the collective creative space. Orsi graduated from Tufts University in 2020 with a bachelor’s degree in Film and Media Studies, where she primarily focused on children’s media and education, film theory, and documentary filmmaking. Her senior thesis film, Gyere, Együnk , was awarded highest honors. On the journey to starting the Art Therapy program at Lewis & Clark, Orsi became a mixed media artist, especially gravitating towards hand-built ceramic work, portraiture, 2D work with pastels and crayons, and mixed media collage pieces. She looks forward to deepening her relationship with art throughout life.

Artist Statement

Media: Mixed media including stained wood, watercolor, alcohol markers, beads of ceramic, stone, wood and plastic, and acrylic paint pens

In this piece, I’ve attempted to capture the visceral sense of the lessons I have been meeting and moving through on my path, and the impressions they’ve left. I am feeling as intensely as I’ve felt in a long time. Holding in ways I haven’t ever held before. And always thinking, taking in, extending, attempting, learning, thinking, and taking in again… I am not normally a 3D artist - there was newness in this endeavor, in the repetition and patience of beading, in the intensity and precision of puncturing wood with metal, the silliness in feeding the beads through the mouth. Before us is a culmination of many lessons from many trials.

Trying to capture the flux, the inner warmth, the spikes of anxiety, moments of familiarity, layers of awareness, it feels bigger than what I am able to render. At times, the impact of this work feels bigger than what I thought I could contain or understand. I often feel like it comes through me as well as from me. Trying to express this directionality and flow has captivated and confounded me. How do you/I portray the most intense things we know beyond the words we may already have? Although I often feel strong emotions and want to scream or cry or yell, I maintain myself and rarely show it on my face. And so, to express what I have known and felt, I created this site of release. This process feels deeply connected to my growing ability to be direct and emotionally honest as a student clinician and as a person.