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# The Visual Pleasures of Art Therapy
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/the-visual-pleasures-of-art-therapy-house-tree-person/
- Published: 2025-09-23T19:39:15.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T15:11:31.000Z
- Description: A psychological assessment meant to uncloak unconscious feelings about the self, home, and familial relationships becomes a vehicle for artistic exploration.
- Author: Monica Uszerowicz
- Tags: Feature, Art Therapy, New York, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-large, #Import 2025-11-24 09:41 (2025)

[*House-tree-person (a group iteration)*](https://www.instagram.com/p/DOEICTXDWQL/?hl=en&img%5Findex=1&ref=hyperallergic.com) is a precise but capacious group show on view at BlankMag Books in New York City, co-curated by therapist Daniel Soprano and artist Jesus Antonio. The title is drawn from the House-Tree-Person assessment, a projective test and psychology tool developed by clinical psychologist John N. Buck and initially published in the journal *Clinical Psychology Monographs* in 1948\. The assessment, designed to be interpreted similarly to its predecessor, Florence Goodenough’s Draw A Man test, is meant to uncloak unconscious feelings about the self, home, and familial relationships.

In his curatorial debut, Soprano, who is also the host of the *Say You Swear* podcast, invited 15 artists to respond to an adjusted version of the prompt, which is typically presented in a clinical setting. He was introduced to H-T-P himself in graduate school, “where I’d administer the test during an assessment course,” he told *Hyperallergic*. “I fell in love with the instant bridge between art and psychology.” A creative in his own right, he recognized that although “being an artist or designer, whatever that means in its proper sense, was not going to be in my future … I continued to have a desire to create that was not satisfied through my work as a therapist.”

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2025/09/leedawson.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2025/09/hunterney.jpg)

Work by Lee Dawson (left) and Hunter Ney (right)

As in a therapeutic environment, the artists’ interpretations of the H-T-P prompts are vast and varied. Hunter Ney’s collaged house, tree, and person are small, layered universes, the tree shadowy, green, and accompanied by Tinkerbell; the person not one individual but two, nearly obscured by a crimson spiral. Sarame Sahgal responded to the prompt with Polaroids of a tiny house placed on a warmly lit bed, a splayed tree trunk with limb-like branches, and a person rendered nearly invisible by vivid sunlight. For Lee Dawson, who utilized a combination of watercolor, markers, and graphite on paper, each response is abstract, like beautiful oil spills.

“H-T-P lends itself well to a group exhibition,” Soprano explained, given the test’s inherent flexibility. The exhibition has an easy tidiness; each work is displayed in uniform frames, the prompt responses arranged vertically. Maith Logan’s watercolor and graphite “house” *is*, in part, a person — a feminine figure encircled by trees, located “where you’re at peace,” a note says. (What good is a home without an inhabitant to protect?)

Shana Sadeghi-Ray made three digital prints, each comprised of 35 smaller images: chandeliers, seashells, and furniture for the house; honey bears, Christmas trees, and leaves for the tree; and enwombed infants, a Kewpie doll, and an X-ray for the person. A home, a body, our relationship to the land — these are multitudinous concepts. A chair can be associated with home, a doll with a living entity. Perhaps the uninterpreted, curated responses reveal as much as the standardized test itself.

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2025/09/saramesahgal.jpg)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2025/09/sidmaurer.jpg)

Work by Sarame Sahgal (left) and Sid Maurer (right)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2025/09/book.jpg)

A copy of the *House-Tree-Person Technique* by John N. Buck in the exhibition (photo Monica Uszerowicz/*Hyperallergic*)

[house-tree-person (a group iteration)](https://www.instagram.com/p/DOEICTXDWQL/?hl=en&img%5Findex=1&ref=hyperallergic.com) *continues at BlankMag Books (17 Eldridge Street, Chinatown, Manhattan) through October 5\. The exhibition was curated by Daniel Soprano and Jesus Antonio.* *Ten percent of the exhibition's proceeds will be donated to the American Art Therapy Association.*