Julia Vering (Unicorns in the Snow) is a performance artist, musician, animator, Licensed Clinical Social Worker and Registered Expressive Arts Therapist. She earned a BA from the Evergreen State College studying electronic music, experimental animation and social work, and a Masters degree in Social Work from the University of Kansas. She completed training at the Center for Creative Arts Therapy and became the first Registered Expressive Arts Therapist in the state of Kansas in 2023.
Vering runs her own private practice,
Expressive Arts Therapy Kansas City, which provides integrative psychotherapy individual clients ages 7-97+ in her office, expressive arts therapy for hospice patients and Movies Reimagined expressive arts therapy groups at nursing facilities for Kansas City Hospice. She serves as the Kansas State coordinator for IEATA and is an active member of Reimagining Dementia: A Creative Coalition for Justice.
She makes work about memory, fantasy, and the ethics of care. Through multi-sensory elements, Vering engages diverse audiences including nursing facility residents, her collaborators and their families, healthcare workers, and other artists. She believes laughter and creativity are weapons against the dehumanization of our healthcare system. Her work is a critique of our care systems and a way to survive it.
Vering continues to seek new methods for telling and evoking stories, using video as a therapeutic tool for creating and re-experiencing joy despite memory loss. Her most recent solo performance was The Werm, which examined her more critical parts in the context of failed promises of a vacation with her childhood barbie furniture. She is currently creating doom metal music and animations with Madison Monroe as Inner Death Choir, and writing a visual memoir and workbook about her 20+ years creating experimental performance works with older adults, people with dementia, and residents of long-term care facilities.
