June 25, 2024
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.
We invite Featured Members to share their insights about their work, clients, and art therapy journey. This Pride Month, we are focusing on the work and experiences of our LGBTQ+ members.
What does Pride mean to you?
What does Pride mean to me?
“Pride is about resilience—the inclination to continue even when you are unsure where you are continuing to. I think this is what many people in the queer or LGBTQIA+ community face everyday—I know I do.”
—Nick Denson
Why is art therapy uniquely suited for working with LGBTQIA+ communities?
I learned the origin of the word express not too long ago. I understand it comes from the early days of coffee production when the brown liquid was first squeezed from a coffee bean. The people involved in this production didn’t call this process squeezing, they called it expressing. Coffee is produced when a coffee bean’s essence is expressed into a cup.
Art therapy is not too different from coffee when you think about it: It emphasizes the expression of a person’s internal experience to the external world. If we take this one step further, we can compare coffee to LGBTQIA+ communities. People who are queer may not immediately be identified as such. Many a sitcom and gossip around the office watercooler use this as a plot device. Queer people usually need to express their internal truth to be known by the external world. This comparison between coffee and LGBTQIA+ communities is why I think art therapy is uniquely suited to these folx. How natural is it to have a therapy focused on expression to people expressing their truth? Seems to me like this kind of connection would make a mean cup of coffee.
What inspires you most about your job right now?
I am a Military and Family Life Counselor or MFLC, for short. My job has me providing brief, solution-focused, and non-medical counseling for service members and their families. Being an MFLC allows me to connect with people from all walks of life who have chosen to serve our country. This means they have work-life stress, as people are bound to have, and be ready to change their surroundings, comfort, and safety at a moment’s notice. Families of these service members must similarly be ready to do the same. What inspires me most about my job is the pride of the people I work with—that inclination to continue despite the doubt they experience. Some would call it resilience and they wouldn’t be wrong.
To have pride means to be resilient and that is what inspires me so.
![The Journey of the Creative: An Arts-Based Exploration in Shifting Power - Nick Denson](https://arttherapy.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/IMG_9748-scaled.jpg)
The Journey of the Creative:
An Arts-Based Exploration in Shifting Power
Nicholas “Nick” Denson
Artist Statement
About Nick Denson, MA, LCPC, CLCADC-I, ATR-BC, NCC
![Nick Denson](https://arttherapy.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/0B6A5958-scaled.jpg)
Nicholas “Nick” Denson (he/him/his) is a queer board certified, registered art therapist (ATR-BC), licensed clinical professional counselor (LCPC), and certified licensed clinical alcohol drug counselor intern (CLCADC-I). His full time job is Military and Family Life Counselor (MFLC) for the Air Force. Work as an MFLC includes brief, solution-focused, and non-medical counseling with service members, their spouses, family, and community.
Nick is also a contractor. His contracts include a drop-in center for teens in substance use recovery, an outpatient center, an online counseling platform, and a drug and alcohol recovery center.
He is based in North Las Vegas, Nevada. You can connect with Nick on LinkedIn here.