Karen Pence: 'All of us could benefit from art therapy'

WASHINGTON -- Karen Pence, the vice president's wife, said Wednesday art therapy, a little-known mental-health profession she has championed for years, is the issue she will highlight during the Trump administration.

She said in a speech in Florida her goals are to raise awareness about art therapy, help people understand it's available for everyone and encourage more people, particularly students, to choose it as a career.

Such therapists are trained to help people use all forms of art to cope with life's challenges.

"All of us could benefit from art therapy," said Pence, who spoke at Florida State University because it has a respected art-therapy program.

She has a master's in art education, taught for 25 years, including as an elementary-school art teacher, and is a watercolor artist. But Pence said she didn't become aware of art therapy until about a decade ago when she visited a program for pediatric cancer patients in Washington. She since has met with numerous art therapists and observed programs in the United States and abroad.

Florida First Lady Ann Scott, left, and Karen Pence, the vice president's wife, are greeted by Lynda Brogdon founder of Canopy Cove and art therapist Rachael Nelma, right, as they take a tour of the facility where art therapy is used to treat clients, Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2017, in Tallahassee, Fla. (AP Photo/Steve Cannon)

"Art therapy is changing lives," she said.

She told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview before her formal announcement she didn't "think a lot of people understand the difference between therapeutic art and art therapy." Blabbing to a girlfriend can be therapeutic, she explained, but it is not the same as formal therapy.

As passionate as she is about lifting art therapy's profile, Pence is interested in several other issues.

One is helping military families, especially spouses. Her only son, Michael, is in the Marines.

She's also interested in honeybees. Pence installed a beehive on the grounds of the U.S. Naval Observatory, home to the vice president's official residence, to help call attention to a decline in managed bee colonies officials say could negatively affect U.S. agricultural production. When Vice President Mike Pence was Indiana's governor, she had a beehive at that residence for the same reason.

Since returning to Washington in January (the family lived in the area when Mike Pence served in the House of Representatives), Karen Pence has accompanied the vice president on tours of Europe, Asia and Latin America, as well as trips to survey recent hurricane damage in Texas, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

She visits art-therapy programs wherever she goes. Journalists who travel with Mike Pence often keep an eye out for his wife. She often brings them cookies when he ventures back to the press cabin for small talk.

She's even done some campaigning, urging Virginians to vote next month for Republican Ed Gillespie in what's viewed as a tight gubernatorial race.

From her sunny, second-floor office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in the White House complex, where she and her staff have coveted views of the Washington Monument, Karen Pence proudly displayed several of her watercolors, including of a Capitol dome, the vice president's official residence, a Ball canning jar used as a flower vase, a cardinal bird and a pink peony. The latter two are Indiana state symbols.

She said she turns many of her watercolors into prints and boxed notecards she gifts to art therapists and others.

Pence also started a blog Wednesday to chronicle her visits to art-therapy programs.

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