How A Leelanau Woman Channeled Grief Into An Arts Discovery Program For Kids

For Tracy Smedes-Hepler, art was a way of navigating through a fog of crushing grief. Now, it’s a gift she’s giving back to local kids in the form of her new business, Tearwater T, which launched earlier this year. Based in Lake Leelanau – and run out of Smedes-Hepler’s home – Tearwater T helps kids unlock their creativity through a series of themed “children’s art and play workshops.” So far, Smedes-Hepler has been filling her small art classes through word of mouth. Now, she’s ready to introduce the business more broadly to Leelanau County – with hopes of eventually growing the company and finding a dedicated Tearwater T storefront.

For 13 years, Smedes-Hepler – who holds a degree in early childhood education – was part of the team at Leelanau Children’s Center in Leland. Then, six years ago, tragedy struck.

“My oldest son died suddenly, and I just didn't have the emotional capacity to be a full-time teacher anymore,” Smedes-Hepler tells the Leelanau Ticker. “So for the last six years, I've just been doing whatever I can to support my family. I've done cleaning jobs. I’ve done organizing. And then I've always done nannying, because that's where I find joy, is working with young children.”

Where Smedes-Hepler found the most joy during those wilderness years, though, was in doing art projects with her young son. It was a source of salvation that might never have come to be had it not been for the pandemic.

“Over COVID, my son and I would just stay home and we would do art all day,” she recalls. “And I remember how even just stocking up on all my art supplies felt so incredibly healing. When your child dies, it kind of blows your entire life up, and you have to rebuild from scratch. And you don't get any breaks. There is no easy street for navigating this life, no real tools or anything. The best thing that I found to heal in this journey is to do things that bring me joy and laughter. So, I used art as a way to heal through grief.”

Eventually, the world went back to normal. The worst of COVID subsided, and Smedes-Hepler stopped feeling her grief as a gaping wound and more as a constant ache. Still, she remembered those days at home with her son during lockdown, finding her way back to joy through art. Slowly, she says, a “pipe dream” formed in her mind of starting a new business that would try to bring that same type of joy to kids in the local community.

In June, that vision birthed Tearwater T. The new business focuses on doing what Smedes-Hepler calls “process art,” or art that emphasizes discovery by focusing more on the creation of the work than on the finished product. Themes for different classes so far have included “Fun with Felting,” printmaking, and this week’s cyanotype session. Cyanotype, a form of photography that uses UV light exposure to create unique images on paper or fabric, is a form of art that Smedes-Hepler says is particularly well-suited to the process art approach.

“You take objects with interesting shapes and lay them on the paper or the fabric, or you put a piece of glass on it and then you expose it to sunlight,” Smedes-Hepler says of the cyanotype process. “And then what happens is it prints the objects right onto the paper. So you do end up with a finished product, but it's also process art because it's pretty immediate. You can see the paper changing color right away.”

She adds: “I’ve found that process art is what kids find really enticing and joyful, because they are the creator of their own experience. It's not like we're going in with the goal of making a specific type of thing based on a specific artist. It's about the joy of creating.”

This summer, Smedes-Hepler has been offering weekly Thursday "art club" sessions, each lasting two and a half hours and geared toward kids between the ages of 5 and 10. She also offers a Friday nature club, where she takes kids on explorations of nature preserves and other outdoor spaces in Leelanau, helps them document observations and findings in nature journals, and even incorporates a "take-along art project." Details about upcoming classes and other programming can be found on Facebook.

Going forward, Smedes-Hepler hopes to grow and evolve Tearwater T. In August, she plans to partner with the Friendship Community Center for an event. Longer term, she wants to establish a local storefront, which would open up opportunities to offer more classes and a wider range of programming “to involve people across all ages.” Private sessions – such as art-driven birthday parties for kids or adults – are also on the table.

As Tearwater T grows, Smedes-Hepler knows she’s likely to get some questions about the unique business name. That aspect, she says, is inspired by Owl at Home, a children’s book from the ‘70s that was written by Arnold Lobel, the same author behind the classic Frog and Toad series. Choosing that name, she notes, was a tribute to her late son and to the grief that inspired her to start the business in the first place.

“In the book, Owl is kind of an Eeyore-type character,” she explains. “In one part, he’s sitting at home alone, and it’s a rainy night, and he says, ‘This is a good night for making tearwater tea.’ So he holds his little vintage teapot, and he thinks of all the things that make him sad. And the things that make Owl sad are ridiculous. It’s stuff like ‘a sock without a match.’ But it's still a story that honors sadness. He cries into this teapot, and then he heats it up on the stove and he enjoys his tea. And I see it as kind of a metaphor for how I manage my life as a grieving parent, where you have to honor your sadness and hold it with you always, but that doesn't mean that's the only feeling that you have.”

Photos by Meg Simpson (upper left), Tracy Smedes-Hepler (upper right, lower left), and Shannon Scott Photos (lower right)