Category: Team

Mickie McGraw co-founded the Art Therapy Studio (ATS) at MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, Ohio in association with Dr. George Streeter in 1967. The Art Therapy Studio provides comprehensive art therapy services to a wide range of persons with special needs, including traumatic brain and spinal cord injured, pediatric, geriatric, oncology, burn, dialysis, chemically dependent, and psychiatric, at MetroHealth Medical Center, the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, Fairhill Center and numerous other institutions throughout northeast Ohio. The ATS is the oldest art therapy program of its kind in the country. Mickie is an Honorary Member of the ATS Board of Trustees and is a past Adjunct Faculty member of Ursuline College’s counseling and art therapy program. She is currently a consultant for the Cleveland Clinic on the development of their “Arts and Medicine Program.” Mickie has served on many state and national art therapy boards and committees, and contributed a chapter to “Medical Art Therapy with Adults.” She has written and presented extensively about art therapy with neurologically impaired individuals, studio-based art therapy and art therapy education. Mickie has an MA in Counseling from John Carroll University and a BFA from the Cleveland Institute of Art, where she majored in graphic design.

Yael Fischer, B.Sc., M.Sc., MPS, is a graduate of Pratt Institute in NY, where she received a MPS in Arts Therapy and Creativity Development. Throughout her studies, she has completed her internships in art therapy at the GNETS program, serving children ages 6 – 21, and has co-facilitated art therapy workshops in the metro Atlanta area. Yael is Israeli and American. She worked for the Center for Children’s Health and Safety of Israel (Beterem), creating and delivering educational programs for injury prevention, focused on children ages 1-4. In the US since 2000, Yael has studied visual arts, psychology, and education at the Open University of Israel and at Georgia State University. Today, she is pursuing her dream to become an art therapist and combine her fascination with mind and behavior with an innate tendency to express herself through visual images. She is interested in the use of art and creativity to explore the conscious and unconscious mind, aiming towards integration of the self through unique visual expression. Yael is bicultural and fluent in four languages – English, Hebrew, French and Spanish.

Gussie Klorer, PhD, ATR-BC, HLM, is a Professor Emeritus at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. She is an Honorary Lifetime Member of the American Art Therapy Association (AATA) and the 2001 recipient of the AATA Clinician’s Award for her work with children and families. Dr. Klorer is author of Expressive Therapy with Troubled Children (2000, Jason Aronson Inc.), Expressive Therapy with Traumatized Children, 2nd Edition (2017, Rowman and Littlefield Publishers), as well as numerous articles and book chapters focused on art therapy with children in foster care with severe trauma and attachment issues. View Gussie’s Books

Zachary D. Van Den Berg, MA, LPC-A, ATR-P (he/they) is a recent graduate of Adler University, in Chicago, IL with a Master of Arts in Counseling: Art Therapy, and received his BFA at the School of the Art Institute (SAIC). He is Past-President of the Adler Art Therapy Student Association, founder of the international online forums Art Therapy Students Associated and Queer Creative Arts Therapies, the in-coming Chairperson of the American Art Therapy Association’s Multicultural Committee, and a member on the Membership Committee, and Creative Director of Expressive Media’s Film Library. He is currently working at Community Arts, LLC and is supervised under Wanda Montemayor, LPC-S ATCS ATR-BC RPT-S (she/her) in Austin, TX. Clinically, he utilizes queer, social justice, anti-oppressive approaches to art therapy, working primarily with adults in kink, queer and trans communities in Central Texas.

Kim Cox, MA, is a Professional Organizer who specializes in Residential Organizing, including an added specialty of working with those who struggle with hoarding and Hoarding Disorder. She has a bachelor’s in psychology from High Point College and a master’s in community counseling from The George Washington University. Kim also has many hours of training in psychodrama from the Hudson Valley Psychodrama Institute in Highland, NY, as well as the Association of Group Psychotherapy & Psychodrama (ASGPP). Kim is currently continuing her education in chronic disorganization and organizing as a subscriber with the Institute for Challenging Disorganization (ICD) and the National Association of Productivity & Organizing Professionals (NAPO).