On a recent Thursday afternoon, Karen Gustafson was surrounded by neighborhood children seated in a circle on the floor and hanging on every French word she spoke to them.
The children repeated after Gustafson as she led them through French colors and counting. After the French lesson, she walked them through a pastel drawing of a rabbit and followed up with a piano lesson.
“You’re such artists,” Gustafson says to the children as she surveys the white rabbits they have drawn. “You have the cutest bunny rabbits. I think they look like real artists did them.”
For 24 years Gustafson has run Children’s Creative Arts out of Forest Meadows Baptist Church. Twice a week, she and her assistants teach neighborhood kindergartners and first-graders piano, French and art. They learn to draw with charcoal and pastels as well as paint with watercolors and oils.
“I wanted to do something where they didn’t just do a project, but that it was a lifelong experience,” Gustafson explains.
Perhaps that’s because her current role as a teacher stems from her childhood. Gustafson was in first-grade when a music teacher came to her classroom and played “I’m A Little Teapot” on the piano while the students sang along. Gustafson was hooked and begged her mother for a year to take piano. Once she started playing, she never stopped.
Gustafson went on to earn two music degrees in piano performance and comprehensive music, and also has studied watercolor and oil painting. So when she and her husband moved to Lake Highlands, Gustafson decided to teach neighborhood children what she loved.
“It’s three-fold art: fine art – no craft – piano and French,” she explains. “The French is, I’m sorry to say, the least concentrated. It’s simply conversational French.”
She breaks the art down step-by-step so that the children understand it. They watch what she does, and then mimic it on their own paper or canvas.
“The secret is looking into each child and what they need to feel good about themselves,” Gustafson says. “If they feel good about themselves, they can accomplish a lot.”
And they do, says Carolyn Brunkenhoefer. Her two daughters, Lindsay and Lauren, went through Gustafson’s classes. She says Gustafson instilled an appreciation of the arts in her children.
“They bring home this artwork, you are amazed that a kindergarten child did this work,” Brunkenhoefer says. “Karen really instills in them the love of piano. I think that’s why both my girls stuck with the piano.”
Gustafson teaches her classes on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons from September through May. She also teaches piano at Scofield Elementary School, and many evenings she teaches piano out of her home until 9 p.m.
And some nights, she’ll stay up until 11 p.m. playing the piano.
“I really feel that is a gift God’s given to me,” Gustafson says. “I can really get down on the child’s level. I can see what that child needs. I not only love my piano and love my art, I love working with children.”
CHILDREN’S CREATIVE ARTS
WHEN/ Tuesdays, 12:30-2:30 p.m. and Thursdays, 12:30-2:30 p.m. or 3:30-5:30 p.m., weekly starting Sept. 6 through May; registration begins in August.
WHERE/ Forest Meadow Baptist Church, 9150 Church Road
TO REGISTER/ 214.349.2041
