Featured Member: Mike Fogel

March 18, 2025

The American Art Therapy Association represents a diversity of professionals, students, and organizations across the nation. We recognize and celebrate the work of our members at all levels through our Featured Member series.

If you’re interested in more of Mike’s work, check out his 2023 CE session “Giving Unicorns Wings: Creating Ideal Treatment Conditions and Interventions for Neurodiverse Children, Adolescents, and Adults (with autism, ADHD, and learning differences)” on the AATA Online Learning Academy.

What inspires you most about your job right now?

28 years into my career, I continue to be inspired by my therapeutic relationship with clients who remind me daily of the human condition to feel deeply and to grapple with and overcome challenges on their path to self-actualization.

What are your hopes for the future of the art therapy profession?

I hope that the profession continues to grow in public awareness, acceptance, and appreciation. I also hope that the current national and local social justice initiatives bear fruit and result in a more diverse, equitable, and inclusive profession, in which everyone feels accepted, seen/heard and valued, and a sense of belonging in our small yet mighty profession.

How have race, diversity, and/or social justice impacted your work as an art therapist?

 

Having lived through and intensely learned from the social reckoning of the past five or six years, I took an honest look at myself as a white male art therapist and business owner. Pulling back the veil of White Privilege, I recognized the ways I unintentionally contnributed to systemic racism. I run a private pay group art therapy practice with 4 locations and 12 art therapists, but many families could not afford our services. Also, like the greater art therapy profession, my staff was all white and largely female. I want my practice to reflect my loving heart and to promote justice for all. As a result of this stark reflection, I decided to make changes to be more socially just, diverse, and inclusive. I committed to be intentional in recruiting and hiring diverse staff. I added an accessible therapy division to my practice powered by art therapy interns. The interns can slide fees as low as $15 to make valuable art therapy services affordable for individuals from marginalized groups and financially insecure families. This year, we added a third intern and are planning to serve between 40-45 families through our BetterWorld Accessible Therapy division. As a result of all this learning and reflection, I now make decisions through a diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging lens. I, and society, are a work in progress, and I hope we all continue to learn and practice creating a BetterWorld, one step at a time. Onward and upward!

“Consider this: If everyone in the world mindfully practiced the core social skills of accepting our human interdependence, empathy, a state of giving, balancing your needs with others’ needs, assertiveness, and compromise, the world would be a kinder, more peaceful place, and humanity could better tackle the immense issues facing us today.”

— Mike Fogel, MA, ATR-BC, LPC

“Tyranny of Time Over Lost Souls”
2020
Acrylic paint on canvas

 

Artist’s Statement:

I draw and paint integrating influences from expressionistic, surrealist, and comic book art styles. Duing the pandemic lockdown, this was my reesponse art to the quarantine, its impact on universal humanity, and my own internal world. The dominating figure holds a pocketwatch on a chain reflecting my sense that we were all enduring a waiting game with an unknown duration. The watch also reflects an existential sense of in-our-face mortality with overflowing hospitals and the steep COVID death rate at the time of the painting. I depicted my/our loss of agency and control by contrasting thriving people in the green fertile land above being swept down the stream, falling through a trap door in the earth. My/our spirits floating around in the dark barren netherworld below…waiting. The image reflected my darkening mood at the time with the hope that my spirit – and the universal human spirit could could still light the darkness. Perhaps we could flit around with other glowing souls waiting for the pandemic to relent and allow us to reemerge in the fertile world.

What advice would you give someone interested in pursuing a career in art therapy?

I tell prospective art therapists that if you follow your heart, passion, and curiosity, you will land in the right profession for you and work with your ideal population. If you love the creative process, art/visual communication, and helping people/psychology, you will find in art therapy more than just a profession, but a calling, as I have.

Has working with a particular client group shaped your professional focus or specialty? What have you learned from working with these clients?

 

In addition to my general-psych practice, I developed a subspecialty in the treatment of neurodivergent clients with autism, ADHD, and learning differences. I learned that everyone is neurodiverse (uniquely wired), and, by virtue of the Golden Rule, we should strive to accept, understand, and meet the needs of people who process the world differently than you or I. Additionally, in providing social skills instruction I learned numerous secret unwritten rules of social engagement, the armature supporting all interactions and relationships. The secret? SOCIAL SKILLS ARE FOR EVERYONE. Consider this: If everyone in the world mindfully practiced the core social skills of accepting our human interdependence, empathy, a state of giving, balancing your needs with others’ needs, assertiveness, and compromise, the world would be a kinder, more peaceful place, and humanity could better tackle the immense issues facing us today.

What’s your engagement with AATA?

I’ve been an AATA member since 1993, I volunteered on the Pennsylvania Art Therapy Association board (née Delaware Valley Art Therapy Association) as a P.R. Chair (1997-98), Govermental Affairs Co-chair (2016-18 & 2021-22), and President (2018-20).

What keeps you excited about the AATA community?

I am passionate about the power of art making, playfulness, creativity, and visual communication. This resided in me “in the raw” but was refined during my graduate education at Hahnemann University. I mentioned earlier my various elected roles in my state chapter. I did so out of a desire to give back to the profession that has given me…everything. Art therapy stimulated my adult mental/emotional life, emotional maturity, awareness of myself and others, and eventually, entrepreneurial and financial autonomy. It was my joy to give back to the profession. I am on a break from formal AATA and state chapter leadership now to pursue a number of personal/professional goals, but I shall return to service to the profession the next time I am able.

About Mike Fogel, MA, ATR-BC, LPC

Mike Fogel, MA, ATR-BC, LPC, PAATA HLM, is an author, art therapy entrepreneur, and neurodiversity advocate. Since graduating from Hahnemann University in 1995, he was inspired to found award-winning child therapy programs and businesses: Art of Friendship Social-Coping Program® (2000), Child and Family Art Therapy Center (2007), Camp Pegasus (2013), BetterWorld Affordable Art Therapy Program (2019), and Philadelphia Art Therapy Associates (2020). Mike treats a range of childhood emotional-behavioral challenges and cultivated a specialty in treating neurodiverse children with autism, ADHD, and learning differences. He published his first book for parents and professionals supporting that population in 2020, “The Social-Emotional Guidebook: Motivate Your Child to Master Social & Emotional Coping Skills”.

Constantly involved in lay and clinical education, Mike was an adjunct professor and clinical supervisor at Drexel University’s art therapy program for years. The Pennsylvania Art Therapy Association honored Mike with awards for Innovative Application of Art Therapy in 2006 and Honorary Life Member in 2021. He presents seminars around the country, and presently offers an ATR supervision group and art therapy CE courses in-person and virtually. Mike’s work is supercharged with faith that everyone has the innate capacity to heal and progress towards their vast personal potential.

Learn more about Mike and his work on his website or his Facebook.

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