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June 16, 2025

Meet Kala Mansfield

Meet Kala Mansfield, LPC, ATR-P, who joined the Hopewell staff in 2023 as an intern.She was hired as a clinician in May 2024 when she graduated from Ursuline College with her Master’s in Counseling and Art Therapy.

Kala runs the ceramics room, meets with residents for individual therapy sessions and runs the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) Art Therapy group. She is also a program facilitator two days per week, runs a weekly Dungeons & Dragons game for residents, and holds a lot of open studio hours.

Art Therapy at Hopewell

For her Master’s thesis, Kala applied Acceptance and Commitment therapy principles (cognitive diffusion, acceptance, values, committed actions, the self as context) and created art activities. It was so successful that she is still running the group today. Some of the activities are physically engaging and some are more a reminder of what you are learning. She explained, “For example, this week we are working on separating from our struggles and gaining new perspectives. Residents were asked to draw something that bothers them, then ripped it up and glued it back together in a collage.”

“Art therapy can be structured many different ways depending on the needs of the residents,” she said. “It really is personalized. Sometimes we have a therapy session and make art together at the same time. The art is grounding and distracting – something to focus on instead of just an emotionally difficult discussion. Sometimes art sessions are educational and I teach life skills such as sewing. You feel more independent when you can sew something functional, and it gives a sense of accomplishment. Other times art is for emotional expression: you don’t have to think, just pour your emotions into the art, then we discuss the art that was created.”

Open studio time is very popular – residents come to the studio for free expressive time. “Working on a project in a group helps with social interaction. People work together and ask for advice and suggestions. It’s a good day when I feel like the art therapy groups were impactful and successful.”

Time for Travel. . . Time for Art

Other than making art and jewelry, Kala’s main hobby is travel. While an undergraduate at Miami University, she lived with a host family and studied in Luxemburg, which afforded her the opportunity to travel throughout France, Italy, and Germany. Graduate school included trips to South Africa and Nepal where she volunteered with United Planet. In South Africa, Kala worked in township schools in disadvantaged community making art with kids who didn’t speak English. In Nepal, she worked with foster kids whose parents were incarcerated.

Kala remembered, “Nepal has a significant part of my heart! I was told by multiple people that they expect to see me again. People are wonderful. They have a karmic culture which inspires them to do good things in this lifetime while looking towards the next. They believe that actions have consequences beyond the immediate future. I took what they call a ‘nice hike’ up Champa Devi, the third tallest hill in the Katmandu Valley in the foothills of the Himalayas. It was an exhausting and exhilarating afternoon.”

Art has always been part of Kala’s life and she expresses herself in many different media. In high school, she painted with watercolors and did graphite drawings. College led her into jewelry making and metalwork. More recently she has gotten into textile art and embroidery.

As far as the future is concerned, Kala said, “I am only a year outside of graduate school and I’m still adjusting to life without homework and with evenings free. Traveling is on my list, specifically to Ireland and to go hiking in Utah. I make a lot of art and wire jewelry. A big goal would be to build a garage workshop. I also just bought my first house and I’m slowly transitioning.”

Thank you, Kala, for everything you do for Hopewell!