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About IEATA South USA
IEATA South is a large group of expressive arts therapists, consultants, and educators who work and play in a wide array of settings. We are all artists helping others access the power of art-making to reach group and individual goals. Across the region you’ll find us using expressive arts principles and approaches for healing, self-care, personal growth, community building, conflict resolution, and more!
We encourage you to contact our regional coordinators or any of us to learn more about our field, our welcoming culture, and supportive communities and be inspired by so many ways to engage in expressive arts therapeutic processes!
Regional coordinators
The co-coordinators of the South region are Julie King Murphy and Karina Hatcher.
Karina Hatcher
ieatasoutheast@ieata.org
Julie King Murphy
LCMHCA, NCC, JD
ieatasoutheast@ieata.org
Julie King Murphy (LCMHCA, NCC, JD) has supported the wellbeing of individuals and groups for two decades. Though much of Julie’s counseling and facilitating experience is with college students, she also loves to help adults of any age navigate life toward joy and wholeness.
She co-founded a retreat business for that purpose in 2011, and currently provides coaching and counseling through her private practice in Burnsville and Asheville, North Carolina, while teaching expressive arts therapy at nearby Warren Wilson College. Julie obtained the masters in counseling and certificate in expressive arts therapy from Appalachian State University. An avid artist, teacher, therapist, parent, friend and life-long learner, Julie enjoys traveling, especially to learn from and with founders and other innovators in expressive arts therapy.
Karina Hatcher
ieatasoutheast@ieata.org
Karina is an Argentine-American, multi-disciplinary artist and Expressive Arts facilitator with a background in Fine Arts, Film, Creative Writing, Expressive Arts Therapies and Mindful Movement. She studied in Buenos Aires, Barcelona and Atlanta, and has shown her work in all three cities.
Working in the film industry helped hone her storytelling skills, which inspire and are the core of everything she does: her visual art pieces, the short stories she writes, her community work through the healing arts and literacy advocacy.
She has offered her community focused workshops in South and Central America, and the United States at The Carlos Museum, Emory University, Emory Veterans Program and the Latin American Association, among others. When she is not developing and delivering new programs for her clients and partner organizations, you can find Karina creating at her studio at Urban Art Collective in Chamblee, Georgia.
Karina holds a Masters in Trans-disciplinary Art Therapy and a Masters in Spanish and Hispanic Literature, and she is a certified Qigong and NIA dance instructor.
Karina says, “The arts empower us because they heal, they help us connect with strength,
compassion, and dignity. Through my artwork and programs, my dream is to inspire people to
protect and embrace our common humanity, recreating narratives: one memory, one story at a
time”.
