Unleashing the Creative Spirit: Aging is Just the Beginning

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 00:07
Hello and welcome to The Art of aging, part of the abundant aging podcast series from United Church homes. And this show, we look at what it means to age in America and in other places around the world with positive and empowering conversations that challenge, encourage and inspire all to age with abundance. Today, I am so pleased to welcome Merry Petroski to the show. Merry has been serving older adults and their families for 15 years, a little more than that, and is flipping the script on ageist assumptions in her role as Project manner for Akron Art Museum’s popular workshop series, The Creative Aging Institute, through her work, the Creative Aging Institute aims to shine a light on ageism, foster connections through artistic collaboration, support creativity in its participants, and to celebrate aging as A time of opportunity and adventure rather than shame. Welcome Merry. Oh,

Merry Petroski 01:03
Thanks, Beth, thank you for having me. This is always fun to talk about the work we do at the Akron Art Museum.

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 01:13
And just a reminder that this podcast series is sponsored by unite church homes Ruth frost Parker center for abundant aging, to learn more about the center, including our annual symposium in October, visit www, dot united, church homes.org, backslash Parker dash center. So Merry, to start, I have to ask you, you could be doing a lot of things with your experience and talents. What inspired you to launch the Creative Aging Institute. Well, I

Merry Petroski 01:42
I mean, the Creative Aging Institute is, it’s a lot of folks. I am lucky enough to be one of those people. It stems from a grant opportunity from EA Michaelson philanthropy that Akron Art Museum got in 2023 the vitality art project for museums and Akron chose to treat this as an opportunity to bring someone on staff who has had some experience working with seniors, working with folks, 55 and better, and I got to be that person, and I’m so lucky to be that person. And there were stipulations to the vitality arts project for museums, and I got to be supported by those and also turn it into something of my own, utilizing, you know, things from my experience and my skill set, I got to kind of turn it into my own project. And it has just been wonderful.

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 02:59
So would you say that this is one of those interesting benefits, side benefits of the pandemic, that that attention became, we all became a little bit more aware of older adults and the need to connect them. Do you think that was part of their grant?

Merry Petroski 03:19
Gosh, I hope so. You know, Ellen Michaelson has been working to support creativity for folks, 55 and better, for many years. And you know, maybe, maybe people out there, it’s becoming real to them. I know that when we started the workshops we held our first year, we held six workshops, and I know a lot of the folks who took part in the workshops were I think there because they had experienced loneliness, they had experienced isolation during the pandemic, and they were Looking for ways to get out in to the community and just touch base with others and try to find things to do to, you know, just be around other people. And so, yeah, I think maybe you’re right. The pandemic, you know, did have an effect on that. It. It brought ish, you know, it brought some attention, I think,

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 04:22
yeah, yeah. So tell us about the Akron Art Museum. And why are they good partners? Why were they willing to say, Yeah, this is what we want to do. I

Merry Petroski 04:31
know. Isn’t it good? Yeah, absolutely. So in 2021 the Akron Art Museum looked at their mission statement. We’re like a lot of cultural institutions. We’re learning. We’re evolving the Akron Art Museum, best I know. I’ve told you this before, you got to come and see us. I know, I know I’m coming. We’ve been here for over 100 years, and so. Of course, we’re changing. We’re not the same museum we were 100 years ago. And so in re-crafting the mission statement, the Akron Art Museum invites all people to enrich their lives through modern and contemporary art. And so if we think about it in de ai terms, seniors and folks. 55 and over are part of those. You know, all people. And it’s this is an opportunity to kind of highlight, hey, we’re, we’re not only inviting you into the space, we are crafting workshop series that are aimed right at you.

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 05:42
Excellent. So what are some of those programs that you’re doing? What so obviously to me, all art is about creativity, but the fact that you’re saying creative art institute, why those two words together? And specifically, what are you trying to accomplish? Well, it’s

Merry Petroski 06:00
so is Creative Aging Institute, and one of my So, one of my goals with it is to maybe surprise people, maybe give folks in the community and folks who look at, you know, joining the workshops, maybe something they didn’t expect we’d be doing. Maybe, you know, one of the missions of the Creative Aging Institute is not only to support art making, but to shine a light on ageism. So maybe, folks, maybe staff members at the museum would say, oh my gosh, they’re working with sheet metal today. I never thought they would do that. They were out in the parking lot last month casting aluminum. This week, they are doing a street art mural. And so I guess what I’m gently trying to suggest is just because your age turns a certain number doesn’t mean you don’t have something to say. Doesn’t mean you don’t want to spray paint the side of a building and learn how to do that with a contemporary artist and and learn about their also learn, in turn, be it with that street artist, learn about their practice and yeah, just kind of breaking up those assumptions that people have about what older people might want to do. So

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 07:37
how has this program met your ideas, your hopes for the program before it started, and how has it exceeded what you had originally thought would happen.

Merry Petroski 07:50
I thought it would be fun. I knew it would be fun. I knew it would be challenging, and I have really gotten so much amazing feedback from the participants themselves. I’ve heard stories that, you know, make me think, wow, we’re really succeeding here. Folks have come from so many diverse areas. Folks have come because their spouse, you know, encouraged them to come because they just moved into town and they want to meet people. Folks have come because they were life long artists. But, you know, lately, because of maybe physical issues, they have kind of put those things down, and they want to revive that process in their life. And so, you know, in meeting all these different people, they just have brought me all these, you know, rich stories and just amazing. That’s one of the wonderful things about artists who are 55 and better, is they just come from so much experience. They have such wealth to bring to the artwork that they do. You know they you kind of hear them talking amongst themselves, and they’re sharing stories about, you know, a cancer journey that they’re helping their daughter through, or, you know, just any number of issues that the artwork is kind of helping them, maybe communicating things they couldn’t communicate in other ways.

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 09:39
You know, I think many people assume that artists work individually, on their own, you know, it’s an internal we see the images, and then we use the medium, and it comes out. And one of the things that I’ve come to realize and observe is how. How much artists rely on community, to support the creative process, to to support each other, like you said, through the sharing of personal stories while they’re engaged in the art. What? What kind of benefits does that have for both the artists and the instructors? You’re so right. It definitely, you know, fosters a sense of, you know,

Merry Petroski 10:27
accomplishment and, you know, self esteem. It’s wonderful. I think of the gentleman who brought his wife in because she, you know, what, was very interested in it. And he was going to, you know, not not wait in the car, but maybe wait in one of our galleries. And he decided, Oh, I’m going to stay with her. I’m going to take part in the workshop too. He was his career. Had been an electrical engineer, and so he had never delved into art for whatever reasons. I didn’t think he was a creative person. I think a lot of people have internalized what other people have told them in their lives, whether it was in fifth grade or high school. You know, they’ve internalized, you know, not being good enough for whatever reason. And anyway, he stayed, and he did go through the workshop. He got a lot of satisfaction from it, and the works that he produced were really wonderful, very he got a lot of you know, at the end of the workshops, we have a culminating event. It’s an art show where we share what we’ve done, the work that we’ve made, to the public, to our family, to our friends. And so you know that gentleman may have been going to all the soccer games and the music recitals for his grandkids, and this was a time for them to come and support him, and he did get a lot of positive feedback on the work that he did. And that’s just, that’s great to see, that’s great to see people’s, you know, minds working, and you see them saying, you know, hey, I don’t really enjoy drawing, but wow, I really did have a lot of fun working with this sheet metal sculpting. And hey, I’m gonna, you know, continue this on. I’m gonna, I want to keep doing this. I want to keep doing this at home. I want to share this with my friends. I know in some of the items in our communities, United Church homes, there’ll be a series and books will create things, and there’s an art show at the end. And one of the challenges is that we don’t always think about how many children or grandchildren the individual has, and they get to the end to the end of that series. So they only have like, two pieces, and they have three, three, they have three adult children, and they each want one. Do you get people coming back because they realize, oh, I need more. It is a part of my legacy to pass on to family members, because they all want it. I totally, I believe that we absolutely have folks who come back and want to try, you know, they had such a neat experience when we, you know, did paper mache that they want to come back and, you know, that’s, that’s absolutely wonderful. One, one thing I just really have found special is, I’ve heard it so many times people say, Where else could I do this? Where else could I do this but the Akron Art Museum? And that’s just, I mean, that’s, that’s a point of pride for me. I love to hear that. I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s success to me.

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 13:50
Yeah, exactly. So you’ve talked a little bit about the different mediums that have been provided, from gray Phoebe to aluminum paper mache. These are also not the typical art forms that people think of when they think of older adults, and so my guess is part of why the art Akron Art Museum is because you are providing opportunities in medium that defy our stereotypes of what Older adults may be doing, and giving older adults themselves new experiences that they haven’t had. So what are some of the other medians? Well,

Merry Petroski 14:26
I mean, I’m just going to jump in there and say ageism is internalized. You know, we affect each other. We’re, we’re, we’re the offenders. You know, we’re telling ourselves, maybe we’re telling ourselves, oh, you know, I couldn’t work with glass. That was our last workshop we just finished was art glass. And I mean, I’m proud to say that we it’s, it’s so special because, rather than having, you know, so the director of learning and engagement at. Gina Thomas McGee will say this isn’t like, you know, a one a one time class. This is almost like auditing a college art class. And, you know, I really think that’s a great way to express it to people, because it’s a series of blocks of time where it’s sequential. We build, we skill build. We may start out in the galleries with a curator who’s going to talk to us about art glass and the evolution of, you know, mosaic. That’s one of our next workshops, and we’re actually going to be working with a puppet maker. So how fun is that, and how wonderful is that? But again, we are providing this very kind of rich experience where we’re meeting with this contemporary working artist, perhaps from our area, perhaps not in our art glass workshop. We had an artist, Kathy Cunningham little, who happens to be part of the demographic of 55 and older. She came to us from Texas and talked to us about dichroic glass. And you know, then we walk down to our classroom space and and we were allowed to experiment and and play with that Dias and and in turn, she made connections with participants and talked to us about her process and her journey as an artist, and it’s just, it’s, it’s amazing, it’s amazing to see,

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 16:47
Yeah, one of the things that I appreciate about creativity is that you work within the confines of the medium that you’re working with, right? So, you know, I do quilting, and then am I, in the past, I’ve also done a lot of jewelry making, and just what you can do with fabric, you can’t do with beads and metal, and what you can do with beads and metal, you can’t do with fabric, but, but there are some, some internal processes that cross over. And so I love this idea of being exposed to different modalities of experiencing the aging process. And I know that Grandma Moses had done stitching. I think it was a cross stitch, like her entire life. And the reason why she started painting, what she was in her 80s or 90s when she started painting, and that’s what we know her for, is because of arthritis, she could no longer hold the needle and do that very fine work, and so she picked up painting. And obviously her creative sensibilities from needle work, you know, brought her to art, to painting, but the paint allowed her a whole different expression. So I love introducing people to these new, really, ways of expressing those thoughts.

Merry Petroski 18:05
Well, that immediately makes me think it’s amazing that you brought that up, because that immediately makes me think of a participant we had in our last workshop, the art glass workshop, she started working diligently and quietly away on her piece. And when we ask, you know, hey, what’s your inspiration for this? She had been very close with her grandmother, who had been a quilter, a lifelong quilter, and this woman’s grandmother created and designed a quilt square for each one of her grandchildren. And so this participant, you know, who herself is now a grandmother, recreated that quilt square in glass. And I mean, how meaningful is that she’ll, she’ll have that, she’ll tell people about it. You know, she, as you say, she may pass it on. And and so, you know, what a wonderful jumping off point for sharing our life stories. Yeah,

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 19:06
so there’s several points when you’ve talked you’ve kind of alluded to the fact that even though this program, and I love the way you said this for people 55 and better, and yet there, there’s several points when you’ve talked about how this is is a really good jumping off point, or there have been some intergenerational connections that happen because of the program, whether it’s, you know, with the family members, grandchildren or their adult children appreciating it. Has the art museum thought about doing intergenerational art experiences for everybody, 55 older and younger.

Merry Petroski 19:47
So historically, I think when any institution, any art museum, any school, Will. Will design these inter-generational experiences. I think a lot of times it ends up focusing on the person who is 55 and better kind of being the facilitator and helping the younger person, which is amazing and wonderful. This, this program really is to, you know, focus on, hey, we’re designing this for you. You, you have been the cheerleader your whole life. You have been the teacher. Now we want you to come and you’re going to sit back and benefit from the program. So yes, I have had, absolutely had intergenerational experiences with some of our teaching artists who are early careers. They’re not all early career, but some of them are. And I mean, that’s been rich, and it’s been wonderful. Speaking of the future of the program, we are, you know, we have just really had overwhelming success with this. We want to continue it. We are also wanting to broaden the impact. We’ve had a lot of really deep connections with folks. People are coming back to the museum for more reasons than this workshop. They have spent a lot of time in space. They’re getting to know us. And it’s, you know, it’s, this is their museum home. And so we would love to take this impact further out into the community. And so that’s going to be our outreach piece, which is Studio 55 plus and so that will be our next initiative.

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 21:55
So tell me more about studio 55 plus one, maybe explain the name.

Merry Petroski 22:02
Thank you for asking. I think those of us who are over 55 will kind of get that allusion to studio 54 maybe, you know younger folks won’t, won’t get that connection. But studio 55 plus is an outreach piece where we are again working with contemporary artists, which is such a big piece of this and such a valuable piece of this, we’re we’re making, instead of having the workshop physically on site at the museum, we are creating a video with this artist, kind of, I want to say, artist tutorial, demo video. And we’re going to be partnering with assisted living facilities, senior centers, libraries, anywhere where people gather and are interested in doing art together, and we’re going to provide the materials, the tools, and that demo piece and our first i if you’re interested, I’ll let you know our first studio, 55 plus will be paper marbling, so something many of us, all of us have probably seen and thought, Oh, how cool is that. But we’ve never got a chance to do it, so we’re going to be bringing those materials and tools out to sites and helping people have fun with paper marbling.

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 23:39
And I love the fact that you’re continuing in this idea of doing art in community, that you’re just finding different places where individuals gather or could gather to continue with the art piece, so that they’re doing that in community. The other thing I just want to point out that I that I appreciate, and it’s kind of the justice issue is that you don’t take the the expertise of and of the artists for granted, and and to point out that that they are compensated for, for their teaching and and I, and I just say that because there are a lot of people who just assume, Oh, we can just bring an artist in. They know how to do this, and we don’t want to compensate them. So thank you. Is

Merry Petroski 24:27
this? Thank you for that, that is a vital part. I mean, artists are an important part of our society, and we want to highlight that. And this is true I guess maybe when I started doing this, I thought it was going to be about art making, and I’ve discovered that it’s really community building. An artist comes in from a ceramic studio and works with folks and says, you know, hey, if you want to do this again. Come down to the brick. We are doing this, you know, seven days a week. So, you know, that participant tells their granddaughter, and then, you know, then they, they start going to brick and doing ceramic together. It’s, it’s community building, yeah,

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 25:17
absolutely, and, and it has, again, you mentioned a little while ago, the arts are so important, and I think they’re more important today than ever before in our culture, and to find ways to to promote creative expression, both from those who are beginning and those who are masters, helps to connect head and heart, and help to reveal truths and beauty and and and communicate people’s realities in ways that we just don’t always get So absolutely,

Merry Petroski 25:51
Beth, absolutely, yeah, can you tell I’m an art fan? Well, you know what art? Art? Art is important. It’s an important way that people have to communicate. Maybe they can’t communicate things that are going on inside them in any other way. And yeah, we have to support the arts for all people. Yeah,

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 26:19
I do a lot of work with folks who are transitioning out of full time employment and figuring out their next chapters. And one of the challenges for people, particularly for men, but even for more of us, women who have had careers, is when we’re no longer in the professions that we use to identify who we are. You know, what do we put on our business cards once we’re no longer teaching, or that engineer or whatnot, and how important it is for us to find new things that identify who we are, and again, in some of the art programs that we’ve done in some of our communities, I can remember early on hearing the story about one Individual is like, I can’t do that. I’m not an artist. And yet, through encouragement of the staff and his family, he went and he participated, and at the end, like, you’re at the end of this program, which is called opening minds through art. And so it’s specifically for folks who are living with dementias. But at the end, there’s an art show, and they have, they have name tags that, and they introduce, this is the artist Merry. This is the artist bat and and in some communities, they have corsages and they have at least one of their art pieces framed, and they have, it’s like a gallery opening kind of thing, and their friends and family find it. And to see the pride in those individuals. I’m an artist, you know? It just helps to give another dimension and another way of affirming them. Yes, this has been an enjoyable experience. Yes, I feel like I’m communicating with the world, and particularly in that program. For folks who are living with dementia, it’s an extremely important way for them to connect. And so adding this layer of the way people can talk and think about themselves of the world, I think, is so important.

Merry Petroski 28:10
Well, jumping back to, you know, what we said at the very beginning about, you know, we’re evolving. The Art Museum is evolving. We’re understanding that, you know, maybe at a certain time, you know, a certain group of folks told us what was, you know, good art, bad art, appropriate, not appropriate. Those things are changing. And so, you know, maybe again, back to that person who somehow internalized that they weren’t creative. Maybe, if they learn a different message for creation, maybe they will find that they really are creative and they don’t have to follow anybody else’s rules but their own Exactly.

28:55
My mother in law raises six kids, and she always just says, I’m not creative, and I’m thinking, no raising six kids takes a lot of creativity. But she was referring to artistic endeavors. And finally, after she turned 70, she found out that somebody in her near where she lived in Lincoln, Nebraska, taught China painting, and she went and took a class, and then she took another class, and it kind of became her goal. Then, over the course of that decade, and before she died, she had painted a piece of China for all of her six kids and each one of her 14 grandchildren, and fun and some other pieces for friends along the way, and she loved that community that gathered every week to paint. She loved the learning process and for her to take delight in. Oh, maybe I am, maybe I am creative. She just hadn’t found the right medium, the right modality for her to be.

Merry Petroski 29:57
How powerful for her too. Who, you know, she’s intentionally, she’s giving a part of herself to each and every one of those family members. That’s powerful. It

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 30:08
was part of her legacy, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we proudly display the pieces that we have in our dining room, and so we are able to,

Merry Petroski 30:17
I love it, yeah? I’m actually, I’m actually looking right now at a piece of ceramic that my grandmother painted. It’s funny. I mean, I’m looking over and I’m thinking, My gosh, I have something, and I have it right here on my desk, because it helps to connect me with her. Yeah,

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 30:38
yeah, yeah. Well, Merry, we could talk forever, and we will talk again, because I am going to come up to the Akron Art Museum at some point in time here, and I just thank you for your time in in sharing about this program, and look forward to seeing how the program continues to evolve and grow.

Merry Petroski 30:58
Well, you will know that when you come up. I am going to give you a tour of some of the wonderful pieces of art that we have at the Akron art museum that were created by artists who are or are 55 and better. One of those is our amazing Alma Thomas painting we have here. So get ready for that.

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 31:20
Okay? I will take notes as well, because I love to use those illustrations in the talks and things that they give about overcoming ageism. So as you’ve been warned before, there are three questions we’d like to ask our guests about your own perspective on aging. So are you ready?

Merry Petroski 31:38
I’m as ready is

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 31:41
right? Yeah. And viewers, we warn our guests about this, so not so they can prepare to answer, but just so that it’s not completely a surprise. So question number one, when you think about how you have aged, what do you think has changed about you or grown with you that you really like about your own 55 better self.

Merry Petroski 32:02
I would say, you know, in thinking about that over the past few days, I would say, my priorities have really changed life. Has brought around a lot of experiences that have just radically changed my priorities. I’m a citizen now. I aim to be a citizen and not a consumer, and I think I just really value very different things now than I once did, and it probably makes me a more fun person to be around. Excellent.

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 32:42
Thanks. Okay, question number two, what has surprised you most as you’ve aged well,

Merry Petroski 32:50
I mean, I definitely, I guess maybe we all kind of have an assumption that, you know, I’m going to go to high school, I’m gonna go to college. I’m going to, you know, have a career, and you know, then I’m going to, I’m going to know it all, and, you know, I’m going to be so accomplished. And what I’ve discovered is, I mean, just, there’s always a new I mean, wherever you get to there’s always a new challenge around the corner and the learning, I constantly feel like I have so much to learn and so much to do and so much to experience.

33:32
Well, you know that curiosity to continue learning is one of the keys. They’re suggesting a healthy and longer life. So yeah, that’s a good thing. And lastly, the third question, is there someone that you’ve met or have been who has been in your life that set a good example for you in aging, something that inspires you to age abundantly, as we say so over

Merry Petroski 33:56
In my career, I have worked with so many folks who are over 55 and I mean, this is a cliche, but they, you know, they don’t call them the greatest generation for nothing. You know, I feel like I have benefited from so many relationships that I’ve been inspired by, I think immediately, of a lady named Margaret that I met when we were working together in a memory care community. She came in and over the course of a year or so, she worked at a university. She was a director of a department at a university, and over the course of the last few years, she had lost her lifetime partner and lost one of her children to cancer, had a stroke and. Had moved from her long time home to a memory care community. So I don’t know if I can imagine many things that would be more difficult than to live through all of those things, but she was also experiencing significant aphasia, and when I first met her, I hadn’t heard her speak because she couldn’t speak for quite a while. And one of the first times she would get up every morning and fix her hair and dress and put on makeup, and she one of the first times I spoke with her, she said to me, totally unprovoked, out of the blue, she said, I didn’t know anybody when I came here, but I walked around and I said hello, and I smiled to everyone. And she said, not everybody smiled back at me, but I just kept on going, and I kept on meeting more people and saying hello to them, and thus I have never forgotten that. And I thought to myself, Wow, if that doesn’t just encapsulate, I mean, the woman was undergoing things that you know are hard to even imagine, but she set herself on that course, and she was going to say hello to everybody she encountered. And I, I have never forgotten that,

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 36:33
yeah, yeah. She has influenced you and your own aging abundantly, yeah, those are abundant aging influencers. They are gifts.

Merry Petroski 36:45
We’ve got control over more than we know. You know, we really do.

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 36:52
Yeah, exactly. Well, before we close here, do you want to give a shout out to the Akron Art Museum? How can people find out about you, about the museum, about the program, about studio 55 plus.

Merry Petroski 37:04
Well, definitely, you know, akronartmuseum.com Come and see what we’re doing. We have a program. We have programming going on all the time for all kinds of folks. We’re also, if you want to get, like, an in the moment glance and a fun little peek at what we’re doing. We’re on Instagram and Facebook, so those are also great ways to see what we’re doing and get updates on studio 55 plus, it will be rolling in February, so I’m excited to talk about that. Personally I am on LinkedIn. I’d love to connect with folks on LinkedIn. And also, I’m also on Instagram, Merry p underscore, just noting that my name is spelled Merry, as in cheerical M, E, R, R, Y, and those are all great ways to kind of keep track of what I’m doing and what we’re doing at the museum. Well,

Rev. Beth Long-Higgins 38:03
Thank you. Thank you again for your time, Merry. It’s been great to have to connect with you again and now. Thank you to our listeners for listening to this episode of The Art of aging, part of the abundant aging podcast series for the United Church office. We want to hear from you what’s changed about you as you’ve aged, what has surprised you most? And who are you? How do you define abundant aging, and who is your abundant aging influencer? Join us at www.abundantagingpodcast.com, to share your ideas. You can also give us feedback when you visit the Ruth Ross Parker center for abundant life at abundantaging.org/parker-center. Thank you, Merry for your time. Thank you listeners for joining us, and we look forward to ongoing conversations with all of you. So thank you for being with us.