So tell me, what’s your name, and what class did you just take?

My name’s Heather Baggett, and I just took the Healing Through Arts class on the online course.

Show me some of your work.

Look at this. Well, this is one of the
ones that I did for the class.

Yeah? So you really found this to be a healing experience, and you were doing this so you could teach others? Or what did you do it for?

Yes. I am a chaplain at a commune — continuing care retirement community, and I thought that it would be a great way to bring another aspect of spirituality to my residents. And one of the things — I just sort of asked the residents. You know, I’m taking a class. I need some volunteers. Can you just help me out, because, you know, you like me, and whatever? And so I got — you know, I have four people on a waiting list to do another one, because so many people were excited about the idea. And there were six people who came, and all of them said they would do it again, if I offered it again. So that was really exciting, and they really enjoyed looking at art in a new way. Not thinking about, well, I’m going to paint a dog, or I’m going to paint a landscape, but really thinking about the process, as opposed to the product that you’re making. And they really got into it.

If somebody’s thinking about taking our Healing Through Art course, what would you say to them?

I would say go for it. It was a lot of fun for me, because I got to sort of explore myself, and learn a few things about how I do art that might have been a bit of a sticking point for me. And I learned how much I value control, and how it was very freeing to sort of not be in full control of the final product, but really engage in the process of making, and creating, and learning without worrying about what was going to come out at the end.

So was it healing?

It was, I think.

How would — how did it heal?

It removed some barriers I had for my creative process. Because before, if I would try to make something, and it didn’t turn out exactly how I wanted it to turn out, I would think it was a failure. And so it really opened up and healed the idea that art can be a failure.

And so, now, do you feel that you know better how to train somebody on healing?

I think so, yeah.

Ooh, look at that.

This was the hardest project for me the whole class.

Why? What was so hard about that?

I had to let go of control. You just close your eyes and scribble for 30 seconds, and you don’t get to have any control over what it makes. And then you have to identify something from it, and make something beautiful out of the thing that you had no control over.

How cool is that?

This was another one that I made.

And are you, like, a professional artist?

Not at all.

You haven’t done this before at all?

I mean, I — hobby. Yeah. But not professionally, no.

Did you find new parts of you creatively that showed up?

Yeah. I think it was — in the past, I have done a lot of coloring and things that I was in the mood for. And this class really had assignments, where it forced you to step out of your comfort zone and that box you would normally create in, and what you’re in the mood for, and allowed you to just really explore new things.

So tell me about this one.

This one was an assignment about the parable of The Golden Buddha, and in the parable of The Golden Buddha, there are monks that created this beautiful Golden Buddha, and then somebody — an invading army was coming in, so they covered it in clay. And the invading army ignored the value of it, and years and years — like, hundreds of years later, they came in and accidentally broke it, and realized it was gold in the middle. And the assignment was to create something that displayed your golden inner self, but I really — from the parable, I got that even the — it wasn’t important that it was gold. It was important that it was Buddha. So the clay was the beautiful part. So I — instead of drawing my golden self, I drew my clay self. Because —

That is just gorgeous.

So I sort of took the assignment and twisted it a little bit.