Chris Zydel is a self-described "professional believer-in-the-gifts-of-others." She is a creativity coach who teaches expressive arts painting classes out of a wonderful Victorian home in Oakland, CA.

As Chris says, "Regularly diving into your creative pool renews your soul, heals your spirit, keeps your inner spark alive and allows you greater intimacy with the full depths of your being. And it's fun!"  Chris has helped countless people over many years discover and deepen their connection to the creative process.

On May 12, 2009, The Arts and Healing Network's Director, Mary Daniel Hobson, interviewed Chris about her creative journey, the important teachers on her path, the benefits of taking time to retreat, transformational stories from participants in her workshops, and advice for diving more deeply into one's creative work.

You can learn more about Chris Zydel on her web site at www.creativejuicesarts.com.

Sharon Siskin has an extensive national exhibition record, showing her work in museums, galleries and public sites for more than 27 years.

She is the recipient of awards and grants that include a Visual Arts Fellowship from the California Arts Council in 2003, the 2001 Potrero Nuevo Prize, Noetic Arts Program Community Grant, San Francisco Arts Commission Market Street Art in Transit Commission and 12 California Arts Council Artist in Residence Grants for community-based public art projects in the San Francisco Bay Area AIDS support service community and in the City of Berkeley homeless women and children services community.

She was the Artist in Residence at San Francisco Recycling & Disposal, Inc. in the summer of 2004. Her artwork has been featured in numerous publications including Women Artists in the American West, edited by Susan Ressler, Lure of the Local: Sense of Place in a Multicentered Society, by Lucy Lippard, Connecting Conversations: Interviews with 28 Bay Area Women Artists, edited by Moira Roth and Site to Sight, Mapping Bay Area Visual Culture, edited by Lydia Mathiews.

She is currently Assistant Professor of Drawing at the University of San Francisco and co-directs with Professor Richard Kamler Arts Outreach: The Artist as Citizen, a year-long program which seeks to embed student art practitioners into communities to collaboratively engage in community-based art. She has also taught as a member of the Core Faculty as an Adjunct Professor in the Graduate Department of Arts and Consciousness at John F. Kennedy University and California College of Arts and Crafts, San Francisco Art Institute, California State University at Hayward and the University of New Mexico as well as at several California Community Colleges.

She is a recognized leader in the field of community-based public art and is the founder of Positive Art in 1988, an art project in the Bay Area AIDS community continuing to provide a model for many communities internationally. She has lectured extensively in art colleges, universities, professional conferences, galleries and museums throughout the United States.