Whatamiholdin
Based in Southwest Atlanta, Orion explores the complexities of trauma, gender, and sexuality through their private psychotherapy practice. They’ve pioneered the therapeutic technique “Re-encountering the Core,” which is featured in a self-published 68-page workbook, podcast, and multiple YouTube videos. In their art-studio-office, client’s sit with watercolors at their fingertips, emphasizing expressive art as a tool for mental health. Orion’s artistic journey began in performance art, notably as the lead performer with the Back Pockets, gracing prestigious venues like the High Museum and Atlanta Contemporary Arts Center. Historically, they worked with living sculptures, combining unfired ceramics within enclosed horticultural habitats. They curated the groundbreaking interactive exhibition “Living Case” at Eyedrum, exploring art as a living entity, where the viewer became caretaker to the living art. In recent years, Orion has made a resurgence as a mixed media painter and sculptor, presenting their ongoing series, “The Core’s Lure,” across prominent galleries such as MINT, The Bakery, and Dalton Gallery, along with a solo exhibition at 7 Stages. This body of work chronicles Orion’s re-encountering of their own core, and its intricate relationship to the psyche’s complexities under the influence of reality. At the intersection of art and therapy, Orion founded the TAR Project, a therapeutic artists residency now in its third season. TAR Project offers free individual and group therapy sessions for a year, culminating in solo and group exhibitions. In 2023, the initiative evolved into the nonprofit, Therapeutic Artists Resource (TAR), which uplifts queer, transgender, and activist identities by developing therapeutic programs and events, and providing resources that amplify the transformative and regenerative power of art.
To learn more about the TAR Project click here:
In Southwest Atlanta, Orion Psychotherapy’s studio-office holds space for adolescents, adults, and families who are seeking to engage in a therapeutic-relationship-ritual with a Licensed Professional Counselor. Grounded in a Humanistic foundation from the University of West Georgia, they often encounter the lived struggles of trauma, gender, sexuality, and loss with severe acceptance, a focus on re-encountering/developing our core self, and an interest in experiential Expressive Art Modalities.
Orion Psychotherapy is my private practice in psychotherapy website.
Artist's Statement
A churning ball of glowing hot magma is what I encountered deep in my origin, when I first applied my therapeutic technique to myself and encountered my own core. After guiding myself through a meditation tracing pivotal life moments, childhood, the womb, and even potential preconception existence, I depicted what I witnessed through watercolor, akin to the process I had been facilitating for clients. “Core One,” marks the genesis of over 200 mixed media artworks in my series, The Core’s Lure, whichitch chronicles my ongoing re-encounters with my core and its intricate relationship between the complexities of the psyche and reality through my therapeutic technique, “Re-encountering the Core.”
In psychology, the core symbolizes an individual’s internal essence, comprising their values and beliefs. In today’s unfathomable times, as a psychotherapist, I observe clients feeling trapped in capitalism, losing hope in our corporatocratic government, questioning the core of our shared humanity, and grappling with the enormity of human atrocities. In response, I’ve crafted a therapeutic method where individuals can symbolically lock in an imaginal object into their somatic experience, centralizing a consistent core that supports psychological resilience and well-being. This new corporeal organ functions as a savoring storage unit and place to ground or charge up the nervous system. Over time I work with them to manifest it through making art, charms, altars to their core self, and to practice feeling the felt sense of it in their body.
The process of re-encountering and manifesting my own core has showcased my multidisciplinary approach, spanning fashion, jewelry, sound, performance, installations, and most frequently, painting and sculpture. My sculptural paintings, expressed through mixed media, explore themes of balance, elasticity, and metamorphosis, often conveyed through circular forms and layered compositions. Metallic pigments and glitter symbolize my savorings, while resin overlays convey the struggle to maintain cohesion. More recently, depictions of shedding and deconstructed or absent canvases punctuate the narrative, illustrating the forthcoming shifts in my work and evolution as an artist.