As artists and writers, we often wish we lived in a world where money wasn't the standard currency of exchange. Where a painting or a poem could fetch a week's worth of groceries. Where a collage or a diorama could cover a trip to the eye doctor or a visit to the accountant. Alas, when we make art, we tend to create it outside of - and even in spite of - the conventional lines of commerce. It's why it can be so hard to price our work or determine a value on our time and expertise. Unlike the cost of meal at a restaurant, we waver and wobble on assigning dollar amounts to our creations, in large part because our culture doesn't easily, comfortably, or even willingly measure the worth of an artist or her art. And yet, creativity is the lifeblood of our communities, a necessary aspect of any culture's health and well-being.

Perhaps we have to look at things a little more broadly, see creative expression not through the short lens of "worth" or "value" but through wider one of "change" and the deeper one of "freedom" and the more expansive one of "truth." Art changes how we see things. It frees the truth from what has been hidden. It is bigger than what's in the bank, a currency beyond description or confinement as a number on a spreadsheet. Art is about finding meaning, about navigating experience, about connecting people to their stories, and about bridging the distance (and the difference) between perception and reality.

We've recently opened a brand-new studio space in Montclair, NJ, but since the launch of our business almost 4 years ago, we have witnessed the transformative, liberating energy that creativity possesses. We see it in the children authoring their first miniature books. We see it in their parents who are setting paint to paper for the first time in decades. We are seeing it in grandmothers giddily returning to their childhood wonder, and men in the unexpected throes of glee and gratitude at a blank canvas.