I first began to really understand the power of crafting experience through arts when I was a volunteer instructor with Arts in Prison. I worked in the men’s maximum security unit at Lansing Correctional Facility, a Kansas state prison, where I taught eight week workshops for two years. There I saw how the opportunity I created for those men to feel human and stimulated—to do something they and their families could be proud of—was more powerful than any object I or they could ever make.  The act of expressing and creating itself was the magic. It was here I learned the value of experience as a creation, something I could manifest for others.