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Suzanne Ponsioen
The granddaughter of Dutch magic realist painter Johan
Ponsioen, Suzanne Ponsioen studied art therapy in Nijmegen,
Holland. She worked with drug addicts and jail inmates as a
therapist in Germany and Holland in the mid-90s, then moved
to Oregon and the former Livewood Commune on Fall Creek in
'98. "We lived in a little wooden cabin," she says. "That's
where Liva was born. I was a stay-at-home mom." Four years
later, after she moved into Eugene, Ponsioen contacted
Sister Margaret Graziano, art therapist and chaplain at the
Lane County jail, about doing a class. "It was scary -- the
jails in Holland are more like a hotel -- but I loved it
from the start," she says. "The inmates are just ordinary
people who made unfortunate choices." Now a full-time
student in marriage and family therapy at the UO with a
part-time job teaching teenagers at Looking Glass, Ponsioen
still holds one class a month for 12 or so male inmates at
the jail. Her own artwork is on view through July 8 in a
three-person show at the Corvallis Art Center. Liva finishes
first grade this week at the Family School.
happening people
photograph and story by Paul Neevel
Eugene Weekly / 15 June 2006
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