April 26, 2018
Rick Conway is an art therapy student at The George Washington University and plans to graduate in August, 2018. He currently interns in the oncology/hematology unit at Children’s National Medical Center with Tracy’s Kids and previously interned with adolescents and adults at Whitman Walker Health. His future goals include improving accessibility to art therapy for adolescents struggling with their identity formation as members of the LGBTQIA community.
Conway followed a path of various creative professions that led him to art therapy. After earning his MFA in scenic and costume design in 1990, his journey through the world of theater, opera, and dance took him around the country and finally to New York City and the Broadway theater community. He later moved to Virginia to work at a private K-8 school, where he became immersed in the community of individuals with differing abilities. At this school, he worked to become a specialist in adaptive recreation with a focus in the arts. “I found the power of the arts to offer introspection, respite, and enjoyment to individuals with differing abilities to be immeasurable, so I took the leap to go back to school once more and receive the training necessary to use the art in an informed and ethically responsible way,” he recalls.
Mr. Conway attended his first AATA conference in 2017 in Albuquerque, NM, and “saw firsthand the challenges facing the art therapy community within the current political climate and the work AATA is doing and will continue to do to ensure that everyone is able to access the support offered by art therapy and that everyone who wishes to pursue a career in art therapy has an open invitation to do so.”
“Looking Beyond the Obvious Hurt: Response art to Bruce Perry writings” by Rick Conway. Acrylic.