At the Threshold of Meaning: How Creativity Brings Wholeness and Healing

“Let’s go quiet.”

It’s a simple phrase displayed on the wall beside the door of Gallery Commonweal, but for a newly arriving guest, it’s a welcome invitation to pause, to shed expectations, and expand into a more spacious way of being. Another step into the gallery reveals a wide-open space: 1,500 square feet with 30-foot ceilings, and large north- and south-facing windows. Art adorns the historic walls, which have featured seasonal healing art exhibits over 30 years, including the work of talented artists and curators like Joan Grubin, Jessica Dunne, Rebecca Katz, Tracy Taylor Grubbs, Cynthia Fletcher, Mardi Wood, and Waz Thomas.

Fifty years worth of gatherings, music, conversation, ritual, and celebrations have imbued the gallery with a feeling of beauty, care, energy, and possibility. A perfect circle of chairs awaits a group of guests, and a vase of fresh flowers holds the center. 

This is the scene that welcomed guests to Commonweal for a two-and-a-half day Arts as Apothecary gathering in July. 

“We were in the redwoods. We were able to exchange ideas, build community. We were able to offer something only Commonweal can uniquely offer because we were not sitting around conference tables or in hotels or universities,” Joël Barraquiel Tan, director of the Youth, Education, and Arts program at Commonweal described. “You can’t help but quiet down some—so a new idea, a new feeling can emerge.”

Inspired by their surroundings at Commonweal—and with a responsive group of participants who had a collective love for the arts—Joël went “off script” on the second day of their gathering and invited a playful spirit into the room. Taking a step back from traditional conference structure, he encouraged group members to communicate through dance and visual arts. “We had a mini arts festival,” Joël said. “It wasn’t only delightful in the moment; the conversation shifted.” Folks felt more at ease, more energetic, and more authentically engaged, and those feelings lasted well beyond their time at Commonweal. 

On the last day, this energy extended into a public New School event featuring former National Endowment of the Arts Chair Dr. Maria Rosario Jackson, Stanford Arts Director Deborah Cullinan, and Visiting Scholar Dr. Catherine Olweny, who were keynote speakers in Gallery Commonweal.

A Common Thread

The word “art” contains an element of mystery, and it may be that we can only temporarily wrap the word in definitions. At Commonweal, the word goes hand-in-hand with healing: Art facilitates individual and community healing through creative engagement—either engaging in the process firsthand, or witnessing art expressed in its myriad forms. 

Our staff meetings always start with a shared poem. Our Executive Director Oren Slozberg folds origami cranes while he’s talking on the phone. Group Sandtray is a powerful therapeutic technique that facilitates the psyche’s natural capacity for healing; it was developed through the Cancer Help Program and has been used here for decades.

Since its founding in 1976, Commonweal has embraced a broad spectrum of emergent arts, which shine like a thread woven through our diverse programs. Here are just a few: 


• For 40 years, the Commonweal Cancer Help Program has used poetry, drawing, movement, music, group Sandtray, and other expressive arts to bring comfort, meaning, and healing to those suffering with cancer. Through these creative processes, participants access different parts of themselves that have often been hidden or unrealized.
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• Our Visual Thinking Strategies program uses artwork to teach people to ask three questions: What do you see? What makes you say that? What more can we find? This deceptively simple process teaches participants to slow down, see details, and analyze what they see based on evidence. This process can be applied to help bridge divides, promote civic repair, and heal fractured relationships because it teaches people to look closely, reflect, and talk across differences. 


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• During the annual Power of Hope summer camp hosted on Commonweal grounds, seasoned artists guide teens through a “creative laboratory” experience. Together teens explore how to use creativity to work out their problems, make decisions together, and share in the outcomes. From their website: “Through the use of the arts and other forms of creative expression, we examine our own identities and learn new ways of being in community. Only by building a community which is intentional, inclusive, intersectional, and evolving can we become more resilient and ready to be the change our world needs.”
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• Collaborations: Teachers & Artists is based in San Diego and is a well-respected program of Commonweal that partners teaching artists with elementary teachers to imbue STEM learning with the arts. The program empowers teachers and students alike to learn better, understand more deeply, and reason more effectively.  
  

Gallery Commonweal has served as the official structure holding our focus on the arts. For decades we have offered four shows a year, featuring expressive and fine arts that heal our bodies, minds, and souls. The gallery space is at the heart of the Commonweal Main Building, and the exhibits have been the container for some of our biggest events, hosting some of our most influential voices. 

The Magic Hours and Woven Together exhibit by Hillary Goidell and Marla Pedersen, on display this past spring in Gallery Commonweal, was a poignant example of the power local artists have to engage with the pain of a cancer diagnosis and uplift the individual stories of patients.  



“Mirroring how the group is organically held at retreat, my photography centers care,” Hillary said of the show. “Image-making becomes a collaborative act. Called to the bluff or to the trees, we can sit with impermanence, breathe emotional resonance into images. Both body and camera imprint sensations that surface, for participants to tap into long after retreat ends. The process is illuminating. Interior landscapes mix with exterior.” 

The Heart of It 

Why are the arts and creativity woven so deeply into Commonweal? “A painting opens a window into the world. Music brings us together. A play takes us on a journey,” Oren explains. “Art, whether through making or experiencing, allows our soul and humanity to come together, and come through. It’s a gateway to healing, culture, protest, and love.”

As an organization dedicated to healing ourselves and healing the Earth, art in its many guises has emerged from Commonweal’s programs as a natural process that taps into a deep well of healing—offering comfort, self expression, and authentic connection. To be in touch with the creative self is to be in touch with the innermost consciousness and the potential for transformation. 

Joël agreed that the Arts as Apothecary gathering in July would have been a perfectly acceptable conference if he had stuck to the original agenda. “It would have been a B versus an A+,” he said. But because the gathering acknowledged and embraced the creative spirit in the room, the inspiration has extended well beyond a few short days among the redwoods. A follow-up gathering is already in the works.

People from all walks of life want to enter into experiences shaped by art. The symbolic language of creativity conveys profound meaning, unique to each person. Art also makes the heavy work lighter. For those who are suffering, making space for creative expression can sometimes bring wholeness and healing that nothing else can. By accessing our own creative spark, we can connect to others and come closer to empathy and understanding. 

Art isn’t supplementary, it’s the beating heart that brings an organization, a program, and a person back into community and wholeness.

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Art credit: Jon Marro, in the Let's Go Quiet exhibit July - September 2026
Top photo by: Albert Strietmann, taken July 12 in Gallery Commonweal

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