Clare Vadeboncoeur © 2019
It is so exciting for me to take something I love and share it with others. I have had a passion for miniatures as long as I can remember. I have three sisters who also share the love of small things. We each have a shadow box or two where we display our tiny treasures.
The idea of using miniatures to make stories came to me in a unique experience. It was while I was in therapy with a Gestalt therapist. She had a table with a box of sand in her office. She suggested that we use the sand table as a therapeutic device. Because of my love of storytelling, I was willing to give it a try. She opened her office closet and to my delight it was filled from top to bottom with shelves filled with miniatures of all kinds. I enjoyed my time selecting objects and putting my narrative together. There was no planning it; I placed those precious objects in the sand until it felt finished. She then suggested that I share with her the story of what I had made. Together we enjoyed looking at how the miniatures told my story.
After that experience I made a sand tray of my own and later for my children. My sisters each made one too and shared them with their children and later all our grandchildren enjoyed playing and making sand tray stories and tiny worlds.
I decided to make it an activity for other children and thus began my long, happy hunt for miniatures. Then I incorporated the Sand Tray Story Making as an activity in an art camp that I co-directed with an art teacher with whom I worked at a Montessori school. The elementary age students were delighted with the creativity and freedom of sand tray story making.
Recently I experimented by offering the Sand Tray Story Making at The Art Festival the Park event in Walpole. It was deemed a very successful addition to the day’s events. Surprisingly, at one point I had four teenage boys playing in the sand tray together and they were having a grand time of it. That is when I realized that there was no age limit to the enjoyment and creativity of this activity!
I am happy to be sharing this story making playshop with you at this year’s Sharing the Fire. Each participate will have a chance to make their own sand tray story. Please plan to experience this joyful story making event as we play in the sand together.
