Art Therapy Association of Colorado

ATACO Board Members 2009-2011:

Erin Brumleve, Sarah Schalek, Stephanie Wolff, Erica Roush, Lisa Talucci, Noel Walker,

Kate Morris, Beth Erlander, Agniezka Gorska

President:  Erica Roush, MA, LPC

Erica is a Licensed Professional Counselor and Art Psychotherapist.  She has received degrees in Transpersonal Counseling Psychology and Art Therapy (MA, Naropa University) and Fine Art (BFA, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago).  Over the past decade Erica has facilitated healing through the arts in various settings including residential treatment, community mental health and outreach organizations, and a university counseling center.  She has lectured and taught experiential workshops on the power of art and archetypes in healing, and on the role of creativity in Internal Family Systems therapy (IFS), as part of coursework in a Naropa University Master’s program.  Currently Erica greatly enjoys her work with individual adolescents and adults, through private practice, at her beautiful Boulder studio.  She specializes in the treatment of individuals struggling with eating disorders and body image issues, addictions, trauma, life transitions, abuse survivor issues, anxiety and depression. 

Erica has maintained connection with the healing power of art through her own artistic identity.  She is both rooted in, and inspired by, her knowing that art in the highest and deepest sense continually reminds us that there are realities that tell us something incredibly important about ourselves, about nature, and about what is beyond our understanding.  Erica believes that one of the most precious functions and services of art is to help glimpse these realities – to see more, feel more, know more, express more, than we thought possible.  It is with these beliefs and experiences in mind that she assists others to discover their own passions and potentials – their own highest and truest selves. 

Vice President: Lisa Talucci MA, LPC, ATR

Lisa received her MA at Lesley University in Cambridge, MA in 1991. She has been working as a Licensed Professional Counselor and Registered Art Therapist with children, adolescents, adults, families and groups. Her clinical work is based on family systems, attachment and developmental approaches and she has worked extensively with children and families providing consultations, assessments and clinical interventions. Clinical specialties include adoption issues, loss, grief, bereavement, medical issues, trauma issues, depression, anxiety, and eating disorders. She has developed several Expressive Art Therapy programs and her clinical experience spans working in partial hospital programs, inpatient hospital, adoption services program, hospice, community mental health clinic, day treatment, special needs school, adolescent programs and private practice. Lisa has designed and facilitated groups with children, adolescents and adults using expressive therapy modalities including art, movement, psychodrama and play. She has served as a community advocate for women and children and co-founded A3D (African Development through Drum and Dance) a non-profit organization that aids African women and children, after traveling to Senegal.   Lisa currently works at the Eating Recovery Center in Denver as an Art Therapist and Primary Therapist in the Inpatient and Partial Hospital Program as well as in a private practice.

Membership Chair: Beth Erlander, MA, LPC

Beth received her Master's in Art Therapy in the year 2000 from the Naropa University. She currently works as an art therapist/counselor for an alternative school called Florence Crittenton in Denver where she works with pregnant and/or parenting teens. Prior to this Beth lived in Queretaro, Mexico where she created an art therapy program for single indigenous moms, children and adolescents. Beth has also worked as the bilingual children's counselor for Boulder County Safehouse and she has done art therapy with hospice. She mainly focuses on working with children and adolescents. In her personal life Beth is in love with the dance form called Contact Improvisation and is currently teaching this in Denver as well. She strives to be outside as much as possible by snowboarding, hiking or gardening. She also lives in a cute little condo, which is her main art project. Her obsession with art lately has been mixed media and creating texture from layering anything she can get her hands on such as Easter candy wrappers, or anything she can rip and tear up. She joined the ATACO board to help create a sense of community amongst the Colorado art therapists.

Co-Public Relations Chairs:

Kate Morris, MPS

In 2005, Kate Odice Morris graduated from Pratt Institute in New York City where she obtained her master’s degree in art therapy and creativity development.  She has 9 years of experience working with children in various capacities including: teaching preschoolers, managing a (very small!) private practice in art therapy in Boulder, leading art therapy groups to elementary-aged children, teaching art classes, providing teacher support in a kindergarten classroom, substitute teaching for K-8 classrooms, managing a child abuse prevention program and being a mom to Penelope!  Kate has recently started her own business called Single Tree Studios, which offers a preschool program, art therapy and original artwork. (www.singletreestudios.com)

Erin has worked in the intersecting fields of fine art, art education, and art therapy for the past ten years. Erin holds a BFA in Painting from the University of Kansas and received her MA in Art Therapy Counseling from Southern Illinois University in Edwardsville in 2005. Erin is a Licensed Professional Counselor (#5056) and a Registered Art Therapist (#08-241) in the state of Colorado. Her clinical background includes experience working in a variety of settings: elementary schools, community, residential and inpatient behavioral health centers, as well as memory care centers for older adults. At present her focus is her private practice, Denver Art Therapy Counseling Co, LLC, where she works primarily with children, families, and couples to provide support related to divorce/separation, communication, blended family, child and adolescent mood and behavior concerns.

Erin is a painter, and exhibits her work locally as well as regionally. She has participated in juried competitions in St. Louis, Chicago and Kansas City.  Recently several of her pieces were commissioned as giclee prints for the new Children’s Hospital of Denver.  Erin enjoys sharing the creative process with other people and feels that self-expression is a keystone to good health. She is inspired by children, nature, animals and the idea of finding hidden bits of meaning in everyday experiences as well as the absurdity of the random. Erin lives in Denver with her husband and their three furry children.

ATACO Communications Chair: Sarah Schalek, MA 

Sarah has enjoyed working with children and creating art for over 15 years.  She started working with children with special needs and behavioral issues in 2003, in a Head Start preschool classroom.  This work inspired her to finish her bachelor’s degree in art therapy, in 2006, from Edgewood College in Madison, WI.  She continued on to complete her master’s degree in art therapy and counseling from Southwestern College, in Santa Fe, NM.  In 2008 she moved to Denver to complete her internship at The Children's Hospital in Aurora, as an art therapist.  She counseled patients with a variety of issues in both the medical and psychiatric units.  She developed a ceramic studio for the new hospital and an open studio clay group for patients in the eating disorder unit.  She also provided individual art therapy on the pottery wheel, which proved to be a profound and exciting experience for both her and her patients.  She worked as an art therapist at Adam’s Camp, with children with autism, and currently enjoys her employment at Creative Perspectives, Inc., in Englewood, CO, working with children with autism spectrum disorder, behavioral and developmental issues.  Sarah continues to develop her artwork as a sculptor, painter and photographer.  You can view her work on her website: www.veinsoflife.com.

AATA Delegate: Amy Jones

Community Relations: Noel Walker

Legislative Liaison: open

Alternative AATA Delegate: open

Ethics Chair: open

Cultural Affairs: open

Regional Delegates: