TWO SIERRA MADRE ARTISTS ON THE HEALING 
POWER OF MAKING By Elizabeth Converse 

“They tell me, ‘You calmed me down. You gave me ninety minutes that stopped the rattling

in my brain.’” Chrissie Prentice was speaking about her art students. For the past eight years, 

she has run weekly workshops at City of Hope for people in cancer treatment. Some come 

pulling their IV towers behind them. Some are children. “That’s what art can do,” she said. 

“It heals.” 

Across the table, April Drew Foster was nodding. “I had a friend who put it on a 

bumper sticker years ago. ‘Art Heals.’ After the loss of my husband, making art helped me 

move forward.” 

The two women, both Sierra Madre residents and longtime artists, sat down with me 

to talk about how they became artists and what art has given them across the long arc of their 

work. 

April knew when she was four, drawing pictures her parents posted on the refrigerator. 

Their home was filled with art. 

Chrissie laughed. She had been the same age when she found her way to movement. 

“I was a hyperactive little kid, always jumping on the sofa.” Her parents were political 

science majors—verbal, animated, intense at the dinner table. Chrissie wanted something 

more harmonious. Every Saturday her mother drove her from Alexandria, Virginia, into 

Washington, D.C., to a modern dance studio in the Martha Graham tradition. “She thought 

toe shoes weren’t healthy for the body. She was progressive for the 1950s.” Dance became 

Chrissie’s first language. When she later took up drawing, she drew figures. “I must have 

known the body pretty well,” she said, “through kinesthetics.” 

April’s house had been quieter on that front, but no less directional. “I wasn’t the best 

reader in elementary school, but I could draw. I usually won the poster contest. If I had a 

book report, I would draw a picture instead of writing it. My father had been an art major in 

his undergraduate years and went on to become a prominent architect. My mother’s mother 

had won an art contest at the Chicago Art Institute when she was a girl. So maybe there’s an 

artistic gene on both sides of the family.” 

Q: Did your parents see being an artist as a real possibility for you?
April: “My father did. I think I got a lot of encouragement early.” 
Chrissie: “They saw it as a good outlet for me. My mother in particular paid attention 
to what I needed.” 

Chrissie studied dance at Stephens College in Missouri, inside what she calls “the 

envelope of humanities.” After college she moved to New York City and danced for two years 

with the Nancy Meehan Dance Company at Westbeth in the West Village. The company 

traced its lineage through Erick Hawkins back to Martha Graham. Outside her own 

rehearsals, she saw everything—including work that made her question where dance ended 

and ritual began.

April had spent those same years at U.C. Berkeley, studying art in the heyday of abstract 

expressionism. The instructors were all men and insinuated that girls just made pretty art. In 

an art history class she wrote her first major paper on Mary Cassatt, at a time when almost 

no one taught Cassatt. From there she discovered Berthe Morisot and Helen Frankenthaler. 

“Frankenthaler set her own path. She didn’t have to have an assistant husband.” 

Then the country was at war and the choices narrowed. After college, April traveled 

through Europe on a Eurail pass—twelve countries in four months—then came home and 

met her husband at a Navy mixer.

Chrissie married a doctor and moved to Nebraska, where she enrolled in graduate 

school for learning disabilities. “I just wanted to be more practical. I didn’t think I was cut 

out for the nightlife of being a dancer.” 

For both women, the years that followed were full—marriages, children, household. 
The art did not stop. Then it came back through teaching. It was around this point in our 
conversation that a raven landed on a nearby branch, tilted its head, and stayed. We all 
laughed. “That’s auspicious,” I said. Both women smiled. Neither seemed surprised.

Q: What did teaching give you? 
April: “It was the best thing I ever did. I taught adult education classes for almost twenty-four 
years. One of my students was an older man. He told me that when he was younger, he was 
left-handed, and was not permitted to draw or write with his left hand. I told him he could 
use either hand. He thanked me for years for giving him permission.” 

Chrissie: “I had a special-needs class, and I found out the best way to reach those 
kids was through their creativity. We did a project where my students made a quilt to wrap a 
rocket in Huntsville, Alabama. The idea was to give kids hope. The quilt went to the children’s 
museum in Brooklyn first. I happened to be visiting my son in Brooklyn and went to see it. 
When I told my students, they said, ‘We’re famous.’” 

Both women are still making work. Chrissie continues teaching at City of Hope. A 
few years ago April began studying with the artist Richard Scott at Creative Arts Group inSierra Madre and has traveled with his painting groups to Provence, Granada, and Paris, 
where last year she painted on the banks of the Seine. “I’ve been doing small things. Larger 
abstraction is calling me. I don’t know yet what it is.” 

Q: What does art give you now?
Chrissie: “I have become more interested in the therapeutic side of art. At first, I just 
loved to visit museums and to draw. Now I recognize the healing qualities art has to offer. As 
I open my sketchbook daily, not knowing what I will draw, I have a conversation with myself 
and it nurtures me. Through the patients I learned it can be medicine.” 

April: “I feel lucky. It is great for people to be creative at any age—dance, writing, art, 
singing—it keeps them going. Art is something you can do inexpensively, whenever you 
want. You can draw your dog, your grandchildren, your house. It’s having permission to be 
creative.” 

The raven lifted off the branch as quietly as it had come.

Listening to them, I thought about how much courage it takes to live as an artist—to 
put your hands and heart into the world and take a chance.

The afternoon light began to soften on the mountains. Both women had to go. Both 
said they would come back.
April Drew Foster and Chrissie Prentice will both be exhibiting at the Sierra Madre Art Walk 
on Friday, June 19, 4–8 pm. 

SIERRA MADRE 2026 
SUMMER CONCERTS IN THE PARK 

The City of Sierra Madre invites residents and visitors to enjoy live music under the stars 
during the 2026 Summer Concerts in the Park series at the Memorial Park Bandshell, 222 

W. Sierra Madre Blvd. 
Held on select Sundays from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m., the free concert series brings the 
community together for evenings of music, recreation, and family-friendly entertainment 
throughout the summer. Guests are encouraged to bring blankets, lawn chairs, and picnic 
dinners while enjoying performances in the heart of Sierra Madre. 

2026 CONCERT SCHEDULE 

• June 6 – Pasadena Orchestra 
• June 7 – Sierra Madre Music 
• June 14 – Main St Groovers 
• June 28 – Acme Time Machine 
• July 12 – The New Romantics Taylor Swift Tribute
• July 19 – Smokin 60’s
• July 26 – Elvis Tribute Performance
• August 2 – 4 Lads from Liverpool Beatles Tribute Band
• August 9 – Skinny Ties 
Concerts take place at the Memorial Park Bandshell, located at 222 W. 
Sierra Madre Blvd., Sierra Madre, CA 91024. 

For more information, please contact the Community Services 
Department at (626) 355-5278. 

FRIENDS OF THE LIBRARY NEW BOOKSTORE 


The Friends’ Bookstore 
will open permanently 
on Saturday, June 6th 
at the Sierra Madre 
Library together with 
the library Grand Reopening. 
The new 
space, in place of the old 
basement in the librarybuilding, has shelves 
full of Nearly New and 
best-sellers, beautiful 
“Coffee-Table” books,
Children’s titles, CDs 
and DVDs. Volunteers 
have been working hard 
to make sure the store 
is ready for the public 
to visit. Open hours 
after June 6th will be 
Mondays 10:00 a.m. –
3:00 p.m., Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday 11:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. and Saturday 10:00 a.m. –

3:00 p.m. The store will be closed on Fridays and Sundays. 
The Best Used Book Sale will be held in August in the new Mary Tumility Community Room. 
The donation bench is not yet in place but small donations of books and media may be left with 
the volunteers in the bookstore during open hours. All of the Friends’ fund-raising activities 
benefit our wonderful Sierra Madre Library and their acquisitions, services and programs. 
Please visit and help support our library! 

Mountain Views News 80 W Sierra Madre Blvd. No. 327 Sierra Madre, Ca. 91024 Office: 626.355.2737 Fax: 626.609.3285 Email: editor@mtnviewsnews.com Website: www.mtnviewsnews.com