- Welcome back to "Eric En Plein Air."

I'm Eric, and today we're visiting Pony Power Therapies in Mahwah, New Jersey.

Pony Power connects people with disabilities or life challenges to the healing powers of horses, farming, and nature.

Today, I'm gonna be sketching with charcoal and later on we're gonna be visiting some guests who can teach us more about the great things happening here at Pony Power.

Let's go sketch.

(bright string music) Today, I'm here with Dana Spett, who is the founder and executive director at Pony Power Therapies.

Could you tell us more about maybe the history behind the place and anything that we can learn just to get started?

- Sure, Pony Power connects children and adults with disabilities or life challenges to the wonders of horses, farming, and nature.

Pony Power is in its 25th year.

She was born out of a need, a personal need for a family member where we were struggling with some sensory issues and deficits and therapeutic riding came across my radar.

- [Eric] Oh, okay.

- I'm a lifelong equestrian.

I've had that privilege and I'm also a social worker, so it was kind of a natural evolution.

Started the program with one horse, four clients in a small barn in Paramus, New Jersey, so we're hyperlocal and it has just mushroomed.

- Okay, we're gonna do some sketches and today I'm using charcoal, and charcoal is a really good material for doing quick kind of loose sketches.

It's a feeling that is kind of similar to painting and it gives you that kind of spontaneity that would work well for drawing something that moves a little bit, such as these beautiful horses.

So I'm gonna do some different sketches and then we'll find some other fun things to sketch too.

But in terms of tools, I have my charcoal, which is a type of charcoal called vine charcoal.

I have a kneaded eraser, which works really well for charcoal or graphite, and then I have a little bit of a material to move the charcoal around the paper a little bit if I need to.

I might not need it, but it's good to have it in case.

So we'll start off some drawing, I'll talk about what I'm thinking about and the process and then we'll get going.

Sometimes you gotta wait a little bit for the models to come into focus.

Oh, there we go.

So I'm just getting shapes.

You know, when you're drawing something that's moving like a horse or anything that's just not stationary, it's really important to get just the shapes of things and then you can kind of tailor it a little beyond that.

And I'm just getting, I guess, closeups somewhere.

(soft piano music) So these are gonna be kind of quick sketches that show just the big shapes.

And when you're sketching something that's moving, if you start one and then work on another, then you can kind of go back to your first one.

So it's really more about line work than anything.

And never be afraid to change things.

You know, if the pose changes or positioning, then just move it.

And sometimes you have to use your visual memory to capture more of the feeling of them.

So you can see I've changed the sketch just because the position has changed.

And these are just quick things, you know, things that you could be done within a couple minutes or even less time than that.

And you can use your visual memory too, just kind of thinking about the shapes of these horses and the way that their legs are shaped is very interesting too.

Just try to get the proportions of it.

And when you're drawing something that's moving, you'll really capture that sense of movement by just following the way that they move.

And it gives you that feeling of life and energy in your work by drawing something that's moving.

And charcoal is very fluid as a medium.

You can move it around and spread it, erase it, put more on, you can create darker marks.

There we go.

You wanna model for me?

No?

I know.

What is it?

And when you're doing sketches like this, quick kind of spontaneous type of work, don't get too caught up with the end result, you know, just think about it as sort of a progression and as a movement as if you were drawing a moving model, the end result is one thing and the process is another thing.

And then, so I can go back to one sketch because the position has changed, get a good view.

(soft piano music continues) I don't know if I've ever had a model so up close as this.

That's good.

This is a good quick one.

We're gonna do some more, create some more of these quick kind of spontaneous sketches, and then talk more about charcoal.

- We've entered into a regenerative landscape design master plan that we challenged our architects to come up with a fully accessible equine-assisted services and agricultural center.

So we have 22 horses, ponies, and donkeys.

We have three goats, a pig, three sheep, eight chickens, three beehives, a food production garden, a beautiful farmhouse where our staff get to work.

So we're really thinking about kind of universal or one health where we're considering the environment, the non-human animals and animal simultaneously.

And then we have our garden-assisted learning 'cause we had to solve a problem of the thousand pounds of manure that we create.

- Oh, right.

- And we compost on site.

But this is our Farm in The Forest.

- Farm in The Forest, okay.

- That's the name.

So we have the actual growing space is fully fenced in for critters so that they don't eat.

But also same concept, folks can be in there and have some agency and freedom because it's fully fenced in.

Part of our community need after interviews was that folks with disabilities or mobility issues didn't have as much access to nature as they would like.

So that was the motivation back here.

- Yeah.

- To find spaces that we could invite people to be out in nature.

- And I think what's interesting for me is seeing how your different components kind of work together and like horses mixed with nature, but then you kind of realize, like, it's all nature.

- It's all nature, yeah.

- It's all nature, and that's like the healing power of it.

We're here with Shayleigh Dennison, who's the assistant farm manager, and we're gonna learn more about art programs.

And you as an artist, I'd love to hear more.

- We do lots of programs in the garden all day long.

So the first half of the day we have a lot of different types of people come in.

Over the summer, we have summer camps, a lot of like littles.

And then we even have like senior citizens in wheelchairs come through in the morning.

Every season we have a different program.

And every season are completely different programs all day long.

And then once three o'clock hits, we have clients.

So that's when we get to kind of express ourselves a little bit more creatively.

That's when the curriculum is kind of in my hands and my coworker Tracy, my farm manager.

So we like to incorporate arts and crafts as often as possible.

But it's also important to us to incorporate gardening techniques and teaching them how to garden, how to harvest, water.

- Really unless I guess you experience it or maybe have some sort of an education in it, I mean, there's a lot of things.

I mean, I had never, before coming here heard like the braying of the donkey.

I had never heard that before.

I mean, you hear it in like cartoons and things, but you never actually hear it.

And then as an artist and maybe developing possibly like an art program, I'd love to hear more about that too.

- Yeah, so much happening here all the time.

There's a lot of moving parts.

So the arts here is definitely something that's up and coming and we're developing it.

We want to create more fully developed programs to push out.

Yeah, my mom was an artist or is an artist.

- Oh, okay.

- And she just kind of raised me with that.

So my medium is music, so I run a program here called Forest Babies with the little ones.

And I wrote a song for them that we sing together every morning when they come in on Wednesdays.

And I give 'em little instruments, and bash 'em and play.

- Do you play instruments as well?

- I play guitar lightly.

- Okay.

- But I mainly, I love to sing and I love to write lyrics, so.

- Wow.

- That's where that really came in for me, which was so awesome 'cause I love to mix all my passions, and especially at work, it's just like an ideal situation here, right?

I'm passionate about working with kids.

- They work together kind of.

- They do, everything melts here.

- All right, we're gonna do some more sketching also using charcoal, same materials.

And this time our subject is Jerusalem donkeys.

And they're kind of smaller donkeys.

They have a very interesting shape to them, kind of like what I think of as like a classic donkey shape.

And we're gonna still do some kind of loose casual sketching.

I'll do a series of sketches.

One thing when we were drawing the horses is that I didn't sharpen my charcoal.

It's good to keep your charcoal sharper so that you can get a good point to it.

And then that way, it'll make your line a little bit cleaner.

So I'm looking at the shape of these donkeys, and right now he's facing away from me.

So I'm kind of looking at him in a perspective point.

So I'm looking at the outside shape, I'm just thinking about line and outlines to shapes.

And they of course have those ears that are very, I guess, iconic for a donkey.

(soft piano music) And then it looks like the ears can shift from going straight up to kind of down.

But he's kind of facing away from me and his tail is swaying back and forth.

And the shape is similar to a horse, but they have- (donkey braying) They're communicating.

Yeah, that's a sound I hadn't heard before coming here.

So right now, because he's facing away from me, I'm gonna wait a little bit and see if he turns, so that way I can get more of a side view that kind of creates this type of shape.

And part of this is also anatomy.

So understanding animal anatomy.

When I was in school, we actually took a animal anatomy class and they brought a horse into the studio.

And then that we all got to draw the horse that was brought into these art studios.

So understanding anatomy will really help you understand the physical structure of either a horse or if it's a donkey, it's very similar, it's just the shape is a little bit different.

So he's turned a little bit more.

And I can really start to see the outside shape.

It's almost like the profile that I'm seeing.

And once again, when you're drawing with charcoal, have sort of a looser touch, be a little bit more spontaneous.

Don't be afraid to draw over it, if something's not right, just draw over it, and then you can feel free to change a drawing anytime you feel that the lines aren't quite right.

And those ears are very pronounced so I wanna make sure I capture that.

And I haven't really used my blending fabric, but you could use that and then create more of a feeling of softness to your drawing.

That's part of the good part about charcoal, is that you can create more of a atmospheric feeling to it.

That tail is swaying, so that's a good opportunity where you can create that feeling of motion by either blending or smudging the charcoal.

And I can see the hind legs are kind of close together, but the front legs are a little bit farther apart.

And there's two, so there's one donkey that's closer to us, and then there's another that's farther away.

And I think I'll draw both of them.

But seeing which has the shape that I want to try to capture and just the shapes, the shapes, trying to understand how the shapes connect.

I love sketching animals, any sort of animal, it's so interesting.

If it's a bird, it has such an interesting shape or something like a donkey or horse.

And something that comes into play when you're drawing something that's moving is visual memory.

So visual memory means that you're holding something in your mind of, it could be a shape or a color or a form.

And then you're drawing that, even if you can't see it, or if it's moving and it won't return to the same spot.

So your visual memory is an important part of art making because you can use it as a tool if you're drawing something that's moving, something that's moving more quickly, try to capture it in your mind and then you can draw it that way.

And there's this great wooden fence that surrounds this little enclosure.

And I wanna try to capture that too a little bit.

So just to give myself a feeling of something, an environment for my sketch to be within.

And these are really just straight lines, so it's nothing fancy, it's just very simple.

We're beneath a tree that I'm not sure what type of nut that it's falling.

And these charcoal sketches are really fun because they're quick, they're easy, just has that loose kind of feeling to them.

And with lines like this, you can really practice your perspective.

Perspective means creating an illusion of space on your drawing surface, and it's something that can be a fun illusion, and it gives you that feeling of depth within a drawing.

And you could study more about perspective.

There are whole books about perspective, and it gets sort of into the science and math department, but it will really help your drawing if you have a good sense of perspective.

And really, perspective, for me, a lot of is just angles.

So try and get those angles right, and it gives you a feeling of space and dimension.

And things get a little bit smaller in space as they're getting farther away, so you can capture that by just measuring and trying to get the distances.

And one of these donkeys is coming a little bit closer so I can see more.

I can see his front section.

And when you're drawing something that's moving, once again, you can wait for, in this case, the animal to get back into that position and then try to capture more.

And then if they're moving into another position, start another drawing that shows that angle and then sort of wait for the figure to get into that pose.

And then you can draw the shape more accurately.

Okay, so that was quick sketch, something fun, different shape than the horses, but gives me more practice into sort of the features and anatomy.

It's really great to come to a place like this to be able to draw animals up close in a variety of situations.

And these animals have a really great environment here at Pony Power.

So I'm really happy to be able to draw them in that environment.

- As a social worker first with my master's and now with a doctorate and now teaching core social work classes at a master's level, social work theory and ethical concepts intersect perfectly and nature guided by animals, and the human interaction is the best model in my opinion, of how you can recall what systems are all about, how you can align with theory because social work is based on service and social justice and dignity and worth of the individual and individual can be a critter, your soil, a human, an animal.

- There's no separation.

- No, there's no separation.

And I think, again, just starting to remove those barriers of othering humans with everything else, this is really what this experiment's all about.

And it's nonverbal, which really works with the population of clients who are nonverbal.

It invites them in as well and considers that service and social justice piece.

But we've also become so far removed from nature, we're attached to our devices, which are great, but we really don't know how to look at someone and communicate whether it's with words or not, but we don't know how to be in company of others.

We don't know how to feel.

In nature there's all kinds of theory about attention restoration theory and systems theory and strengths-based perspective that is experienced here.

So there's a lot of somatic learning and it's almost like we're coming out from under a rock or a cult and we have to reconnect with nature.

So that's our opportunity.

And having horses used to be pretty mainstay.

And now we're in Bergen County, which is so densely populated.

So we kind of have a niche here.

So that's really what we're trying to do, is we're trying to obviously work with the population that we serve, but then train others in this work or others working with the disability community to lean into nature.

The application is universal.

So we're not diagnosis-specific, we're not age-specific, we're not contentious.

When you walk or you cross the gate onto our farm, your label goes away.

You are an individual with an energy field and you either come in peace or you come in danger.

And that's about it.

- Yeah.

- We wanna work on doing children's books.

We wanna do like full art classes.

We are working on, we have a Eagle Scout who's working on building us a mud kitchen.

- Wow, what is that?

- It's like a outdoor, you know those plastic play kitchens that kids have in their houses?

- Yeah, yeah.

- So it's like one that's for the outdoors that's all made of wood and treated for water.

- Oh, interesting.

- They get to make mud pies and potions.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You can just have fun being a kid.

- Yeah, yeah.

So we're working on doing that and then once we fully develop that space, then we'll be able to do actual art projects and things like that with them.

- So it's in progress, though.

- Yeah, it totally is.

- [Eric] It'll hopefully come together.

- Absolutely.

- Well, thank you so much, you know, for your time and allowing us to be here and share the creativity and everything.

- Yeah, yeah.

- And I'm excited to see what happens in the future.

- Thank you, it was a pleasure to meet you.

- I really enjoyed today's visit to Pony Power Therapies here in Mahwah, New Jersey.

It's great knowing that there are places like this that connect people to the healing powers of nature and animals.

Art has always been a therapy for me, and I think you may find it therapeutic as well if you go out and try drawing in nature.

I'm Eric and I'll see you next time "En Plein Air".

(bright string music) - [Announcer] Visit us online at EricEnPleinAir.com to learn more about our program, workshops with Eric, or to purchase original works of art and prints featured in this series.

Thank you.