Awakening creative potential:
Karen Gallant & Art for the Heart
by Bruce Johansen
Photos by Julie Wiatt
 Karen McLaughlin Gallant firmly believes that everyone is a creative
being, but that too few of us are consciously aware of that fact and
that there are consequences. We find ourselves "living in a very 'left
brain' culture at our peril, at our terrible peril," remarks the long-time
Takoma Park resident. "To me it's very clear that we need people who
have become fully alive. We need people who are fully, authentically
themselves. We need people who are ready to live life courageously and
to give their all."
To help alter this situation, Gallant's goal as a workshop
facilitator, teacher, and creativity coach is to utilize
some principles of life coaching to design creative encounters
that "in a non-threatening, open-ended way" help individuals
transform their lives.
Learning fromchildren what she re-teaches
to adults
It was June 2003 when Karen Gallant left her job as art
instructor at Green Acres Elementary School, a position she
had held for 23 years. By that point, she had long been aware
of her desire to work with adults and decided it was the
time to make the leap. Motivating this change were some of
the lessons she'd learned while working at Green Acres. Time
and again she'd observed that younger children were not only
comfortable with, but delighted in participating in creative
art activities. Sadly, though, their comfort with art faded
as they grew older.
Gallant explains that one reason children become reluctant
to engage in creative expression is developmental. "At a
certain point, there's the voice of judgment, the need to
fit in, the desire to be perceived as very competent and
good at something, which begins to take over." With some,
this shift is evident as early as fourth grade and for most
by sixth or seventh. Children no longer want to risk being
vulnerable, which she notes is a fundamental part of the
creative process.
Also inhibiting children in the U.S. is the cultural pressure
to excel at all of one's endeavors. "If you're going to do
art, you have to be good at art.... And that narrows people
down, too. 'I love art, I think I'll study watercolor,'
which means that you have to want to specialize in something."
Other deeper cultural restraints intervene as well.
 "The essence of the creative process has to do with staying
open, flexible, and in the present, and it's connected with
unseen things like the spiritual world. There are cultures
that honor that as being part of the very nature of existence,
and then there are those, like ours, that don't. So not only
does spontaneous, creative expression and art expression
on a universal level get repressed, but even valuing or validating
that part of ourselves gets repressed. It's like, 'Oh, you're
artsy fartsy, or touchy feely,' which is so not
what this is really about."
What all of this means is that by the time most Americans
reach adulthood they need help getting in touch with a spark
that they once possessed. Being part of the process of helping
adults reengage with what Gallant sees as the most essential
part of their beings, is what led her to move into a new
phase of her work as artist, teacher, and creativity coach.
Explaining her drive, she says: "We need whole brain people
to respond to whole brain systems problems in order to live
on this earth, because otherwise we're up a creek." She adds, "I
see it as a timely thing, something that has application
to being alive during this challenging 21 st century."
Swimming against the cultural tide
Being part of a pragmatic culture that tends to undervalue
or disdain arts and creativity, Gallant recognizes that her
childhood in Garrett Park was atypical. "My family culture
was a culture that held being creative as the highest thing
you could be, that that was the best thing to be. And my
father was and is still creative." Trained as an architect,
most of Donal McLaughlin's career has focused on exhibits
and other forms of graphic design. About to turn ninety-nine,
he continues to do this kind of work.
"My mother also was a creative thinker and was a poet, so
I was very much encouraged as a young girl to draw and create
and dance and all that stuff, play music. That was a hospitable
culture for my creative seeds to be planted in."
With the support of family, Gallant pursued a degree in
art in college, but notes that she's had a lifelong interest
in human relationships, as well. "And so it's a natural thing
for me to want to put creative expression in the service
of relationships." Had art therapy been more advanced in
its development when she entered college, Gallant says she
would most likely have chosen that as her field. Instead,
after graduating from Antioch College with a double major
in art and art education, Gallant worked as a waitress, taught
part-time, and pursued her own art. She then went to graduate
school at the Pratt Institute, where she studied painting
and printmaking, after which she taught art to children in
Maine, had a family of her own, and eventually took the job
at Green Acres where she stayed for over two decades.
It was 1999 when she completed the Master's of Arts Program
at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology in Palo Alto,
California. Research on creativity for her thesis was a significant
part of the evolution from teacher of children to work with
adults. It became the basis for her Art for the Heart workshops,
studio groups, and individual sessions.
From Vision Buddies to "Art for the Heart," enter Alice
Sims
Over the course of the past three years, Karen Gallant has
found herself thriving on challenges presented by her work
with a wide range of social groups. Through the Society for
Arts in Health Care, she is involved with cancer patients,
survivors, and their relatives at the Lombardi Cancer Institute
at Georgetown Medical Center. She also works with residents
and visitors of several area homeless facilities and facilitates
programs for the elderly at day care centers, including at
Holy Cross. For most of these projects--along with one that
had her working with at-risk teens--Gallant has been under
contract with Art for the People, an arts organization run
by fellow Takoma Park artist Alice Sims. (See profile of
Sims and Art for the People in this issue.)
Gallant and Sims have been friends for years, but became "vision
buddies" as both brainstormed about starting something new.
As their ideas took shape, the two met weekly at Savory Cafe
in Old Town Takoma Park to cheer each other on. In time,
Karen would begin "Art for the Heart" and Alice, "Art for
the People" (AFTP).
Sims now serves as president of AFTP, a non-profit that
brings art education, projects, and events to communities
with little access to the arts, matching members of those
communities with artists like Gallant, who are experienced
teachers. Among its many programs, AFTP sponsors the weekly
art classes that Karen offers to homeless visitors of Community
Vision, a program of Progress Place in downtown Silver Spring.
It has also established a scholarship fund, the Judith Graebner
Educational Fund, which provides opportunities for low income
people to study art. The first scholarship recipient, Alvin
Louis Thomas, has been a regular participant in Community
Vision's Art classes. He is someone who both Gallant and
Sims recognized had talent that needed to be nurtured and
developed. [Thomas was featured in the article "A Chink of
Light" ( Voice , June 2006).]
"Now here we are living our dreams," remarks Gallant, "so
the vision buddy thing really worked."
Putting creative intelligence
in the driver's seat
Central to Art for the Heart are services Gallant offers
as a coach. "Typically speaking, clients don't know what
they want; they just like the sound of thisÉbecause
who's heard of creativity coaching? It's a vague feeling
that there must be something more and that creativity is
part of it and 'I'm making a change.'"
Professionals, mainly women, are drawn to her services.
She lists mathematicians, government workers, lawyers, teachers,
and nurses as some of her clients. Many are going through
a major transition, perhaps retirement or a significant loss,
such as the death of a child.
Then there are artists who feel like they have hit a plateau,
are dried up, stuck, or stale. Some approach her saying they
want to be better at their profession or get more shows. "What
it really is they want is to get more excited about their
work."
As part of her coaching, Gallant has also worked with a
number of therapists, at least one of whom has expanded her
practice to help her patients engage in creative activities.
In addition to private coaching, she offers various types
of workshops and classes, including regular collaborations
with Juanita Weaver and Marion Griffin on day-long retreats
they call "Fully Alive."
Given the amount of resistance and fear that many adults
have around creativity, one of Gallant's primary aims is
to provide a safe environment for those she works with. "You
can't do creative work if you don't feel safe." Consequently,
she advises clients that they already know everything they
need to know. "I'm more or less going to provide a context
for you to discover and know what it is you're yearning for
or what it is you desire." In other words, she says, "I provide
the container so that they (her clients or students) can
get to work."
Gallant encounters various forms of aversion to risk-taking
among those who sign up for her workshops, classes, or coaching.
For example, there's the "I don't know how to draw a straight
line" kind of person who initially chooses undemanding projects--"very
symmetrical, carefully positioned, minutely controlled things." Then
there are the seniors she works with. "Their inner judge
and inner expectations are so well developed that they have
to build new neural pathways. They need to be able to retrain
their mind, they need to open their ability to see and be
present." And there have been men at homeless facilities,
many of whom suffer from health problems, who are angry when
she meets them.
About people's resistance, Gallant observes: "Typically
we want to be in the driver's seat and make the creative
thing do what we want, but the creative process teaches us
that it's really the creative intelligence that's in the
driver's seat and if we become the handmaiden to that, that's
when our lives take off."
She cautions that being fully alive means being fully alive
to the pain as well as the joy. Yet the rewards can be significant.
Those who choose to accept the risks involved, often begin
to do work that reflects their deeper values and contributes
to the world in a more substantial way.
Watching the results unfold
One of Gallant's great satisfactions is witnessing reluctant
clients come around. For example, she tells of men at Community
Vision who hold up their paintings, saying: "This was the
highlight of my week." She also relates the story of a woman
who had suffered a stroke, lost much of her mobility, and
was depressed. After participating in a collaborative, "appreciation
book" project at a day care center, the woman was "radiant." Her
family told the facility's administrator that they hadn't
seen her so happy since before her stroke.
One client in the "I can't draw a straight line" category,
who worked with Gallant for a couple of years, took the vines
that Gallant supplied for one project and produced a giant
basket that she then placed in the front foyer of her house. "That
was just thrilling to me."
Testimonies on her web site also reveal how greatly people
value the experiences Karen Gallant offers. One client wrote: "The
Art for the Heart studio group re-ignited a spark of creativity
I thought I had lost. To my delight, each session felt like
a mini-retreat from the ordinary stresses of life. Upon completion
of the studio series, I was surprised by the depth and quality
of insights I had gained about how to nurture creativity
in my day-to-day living. Even more surprising, the wisdom
of these insights is continuing to unfold in practical ways
nearly a year later."
 For
more information about Art for the Heart, visit:
www.karengallant.net.
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