NORCATA - Samantha Mach

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ART THERAPISTS MAKING THINGS HAPPEN!

Samantha Mach

On multiple occasions people spoke to her about an art therapist's career. After years of being immersed in art from the top of a scaffolding covering walls-to-ceiling of five thousand square foot houses, to looking through a microscope engraving silver, she felt curious about learning about the immense and infinite power of art in more depth. Within less than three years she received her Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy and Art Therapy from Notre Dame de Namur University. She wrote her thesis on the liminal, the in-between space, created while immersed in the creative process during an art therapy session. Her art therapy journey has led her from community programs, to private practice.

In her program, she worked with elementary children during the pandemic.
Her journey included her interning at Stanford Lucille Packard Children Hospital Comprehensive Care Program, a fifteen-bed inpatient unit for adolescents with eating disorders. There, she witnessed the potential of art therapy with people suffering from an eating disorder. She went on to be a primary therapist at a residential treatment center for adolescents with eating disorders.
She continued gaining ever more experience at an Intensive Outpatient Program (IOP) working with adults with binge eating disorders.
She began to establish herself in her own Private Practice.
Samantha is now the Integration Clinician, Art Therapist at Sonoma County Indian Health Clinic. This setting offers medical and mental health care for a population that is 90% Native American. The clinic started with one dentist chair and now serves about four thousand people, maintaining sensitivity to the culture and traditions of local tribes.

Today Samantha is in her second year in the PhD Art Therapy program at Dominican University in San Rafael, CA. She is starting to write her dissertation on intuition, felt sense and the non-verbal during an art therapy session.

She believes that being an artist is a way of life, influencing how you see life and how you move through it.

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Samantha Mach (she/her)

Art Therapy Doctoral Student.
MA Marriage and Family Therapy and Art Therapy.
Artist.

Samantha Mach is originally from France. She grew up in Paris, spending many of her days looking at Mont Saint Victoire in Provence, the mesmerizing mountain painted many times by Paul Cezanne, through a bedroom window.
Decades later, she received her Masters degree in Illustration and Traditional Animation from San Jose State University. Later, she became a Licensed Contractor and ran a very successful business as a Faux painter. Throughout her life, horses always held a fond place in her heart. She became fascinated with the history and meaning of the beautiful antique Vaquero gears, which in turn led her to learn silversmithing from a third generation Master. Grateful for that new skill and how close it made her feel to the horseman and horsewomen following the Vaquero tradition, she embarked on a new adventure as a silversmith, making one-of-a-kind hand engraved pieces, for human and for horse.
You can learn more about Samantha Mach's professional history and contact her on her website here: Lingering in the Art Space.
Visit Samantha Mach's art portfolio here.

NorCATA's feature: "Art Therapists Making Things Happen", was envisioned by Robin Valicenti, and is currently curated by Abby Zimberg.

Please contact Abby if you know of a Northern Californian Art Therapist whose art and projects deserve mention in this space.

NorCATA
PO Box 460687
San Francisco, CA 94146-0661 USA

Contact:

+1 (650) 489-2258

call or text
or email us at

info@norcata.org

NorCATA is approved by the Internal Revenue Services as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization that promotes the therapeutic use of art throughout Northern California, public awareness of art therapy, professional development through educational events, workshops, conferences, and more. All donations are tax deductible to the full extent provided by law.

NorCATA does not and shall not discriminate, or allow discrimination against any person because of race, color, ancestry, national origin, religion or creed, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, marital status, military status, physical disability, medical condition, or special needs, in any of its activities or operations. Following the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), NorCATA is committed to providing an inclusive and welcoming environment for everyone.