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Creative Therapy by Heather Stark Photo by Ingrid Pape-Sheldon

Think what it must be like to be a child dealing with long hospitalizations, surrounded by doctors and nurses, and worried parents and siblings afraid of what’s going on. How do you deal with your fears? When do you just get to act like a kid?

These are the questions Steffanie Lorig thought of when she first met five-year-old cancer patient Hallie Holton in 1999. Lorig, a graphic designer and writer, was a community outreach volunteer with the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) at the time.

While there, she organized a program in which artists left their studios to help feed homeless teenagers and conduct self-portrait workshops with them. Then she heard about Hallie. “It struck me there was a whole community I’d never thought of helping before.”

Lorig spun off from the AIGA to further develop the Art with Heart program she had started while there. She knew she wanted to put children first and art second, and that it meant changing careers.

“I knew I could no longer balance my life as a graphic artist and do this,” she says. So she quit her job, taking freelance assignments to give her more time to build Art with Heart into a nonprofit organization.

One of the first things she did was talk to health care experts at Children’s Hospital in Seattle to figure out the best way to make her vision work. Since the idea of having artist volunteers traipsing through hospital rooms with seriously ill children was not a good option, Lorig had to expand her thinking. She could create books to help kids in crisis.

“Books are a therapeutic tool for in-depth healing,” she explains. “They help empower kids who have little control.”

More consulting with child specialists, grievance specialists and psychologists followed, and in 2002, Oodles of Doodles was born. The unusual concept for the book goes beyond its target audience. Lorig corralled 48 artists from around the world to provide illustrations for each section of the book. Most of the artists are readily recognizable to the kids and their parents, including the illustrator for the American editions of the Harry Potter books and the artist for the Cranium game sets.

Amidst the colorful drawings and pictures are some well thought out activities designed to help kids deal with isolation, lack of control, physical changes and emotions. Imagine having magical powers that would let you read your doctor’s mind. How about a comic strip with blank word balloons that the reader can fill in? The fun activities address the day-to-day issues confronted by children diagnosed with a long illness.

The need for Oodles of Doodles was so great that more books followed, and Art with Heart has continued to grow. “We are still a small organization,” Lorig says. She is the executive director and there are two full-time employees and an intern. As Oodles of Doodles became successful, Lorig realized that the siblings of sick children often feel ignored or neglected, emotions that are further complicated by feelings of guilt and resentment. It didn’t take Lorig long to conceive Magnificent Marvelous Me!, published this spring to help brothers and sisters aged 10 and under.

This book is also a collaborative effort by some 40 artists around the world who, like the artists in Oodles of Doodles, volunteered their work for the Art with Heart projects. Bright, colorful pages prompt kids to fill boxcars with worries, wonders and dislikes, or to find things to help improve a mood. Activities encourage siblings to interact by drawing portraits of each other, or to draw their moods on a feelings mask. And as a surprise for young readers, each page has a joke along one edge and a quote from someone famous along the other. “This helps siblings figure out who does care for them and who can help them,” says Lorig.

Another book, Chill and Spill, is designed to help teens and ’tweens with trauma recovery through art.

“Chill and Spill is a guided journal based on cognitive behavioral therapy and narrative therapy,” says Lorig. The trendy art in the book is designed for kids aged 10 and older to help them recognize patterns and set goals.

As the book selections have grown, so has the audience for the Art with Heart books. Hospitals, state-run institutions, residential treatment centers, and even a school district in hurricane-battered Louisiana have used the Chill and Spill books for helping young people cope with crises. To help therapists and counselors use the book, Lorig worked with experts to publish A Therapist’s Companion to Chill and Spill earlier this year.

Art with Heart has branched out in other areas as well. “Although we create the books to help kids in crisis and to reach a large number of kids, we have programs that center around the books,” Lorig says. One of those is the Art Buddy program that trains artists to work with kids and school counselors on how to use the books. “We train people on the front lines how to use the tools effectively.”

Lorig’s whole family gets in on the Art with Heart bandwagon. Her husband helps out, and even her 9-year-old son is on board with the effort. “He passes out my business cards at parties,” she says with a grin. “He’s proud of Art with Heart.”

So what is down the road for Lorig and her group?

“I want to be able to continue to meet the needs of kids who are underserved and to take Art with Heart and expand it in a way that will help kids after crisis,” she says.

One of the ways Lorig says she plans to accomplish this is by instituting some real measures for success. Throughout the years, Art with Heart has received hundreds of letters from kids and caregivers about the books, but the organization just received funding to construct a process of evaluation. And more books are on the way, of course. The next ones are Ink About It, already in the works, designed to help children over age 11 in crisis — an Oodles of Doodles for the older set. An Art Buddy manual for artists in that program is also planned.

Meanwhile, Lorig says the books are spreading all over the world (a Spanish edition of Oodles of Doodles is already out).

“There is a girl in South Africa who is using our books,” she says, as are people in Australia and England. “All these different places we never expected to be in. You know you’re doing something that’s changing lives.”

That’s art with heart.

Heather Stark is a regular contributor to Seattle Woman.

©2008 Caliope Publishing Company