Jackson Pollock said, “Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is.” Perhaps there is no more important discovery one can make in life than to figure out who they are and what their place is in the world. This means anyone facilitating a healthy, constructive, and enjoyable environment for others to do so is providing a priceless service. Emily and Rob Peters of Children’s Art Classes in Hanover are doing just that.
Children’s Art Classes began in 1997 when a public art teacher, Barbara Gay, began teaching her two daughters art lessons from her garage. Now, 25 years later, Children’s Art Classes is a thriving franchise that has expanded to nearly 40 nationwide locations. Children’s Art Classes mission? To provide a comprehensive art education program that enriches lives, raises self-esteem, and improves the academic performance of their students. Children’s Art Classes also aim to provide a comprehensive art education program that enriches lives, raises self-esteem, and improves the academic performance of their students. Though based in Jacksonville, FL, the power of art has a way of reaching far and wide, so it is no surprise that the artistic vision of Children’s Art Classes made its way to Hanover, MA through Emily and Rob Peters.
Together, the Peters’ have four children and are no strangers to taking on the big things in life. Rob Peters spent over 20 years as a full-time Massachusetts Army National Guard Servicemember with four, year-long deployments -three of them overseas. While in Afghanistan and Iraq for his last two deployments, the Peters’ children were having a difficult time adjusting to their father being gone. Their daughter’s art teacher at school noticed her artwork had become a bit dark and she contacted the Peters to discuss why that might be. They came to understand that their daughter was filtering her complex emotions during this time through art and it was allowing her to express herself in a healthy, constructive way. It was then that the Peters understood the importance of art and the therapeutic channels it provides.
After retiring from the Army National Guard, Rob Peters was searching for the next path in life. “I love serving others and making a difference. I love to help in the community and I needed to do something to fill my cup while also helping others. After the experience with our daughter, I started to think about how this could be our next chapter,” says Peters. When he heard about the Children’s Art Classes franchise, he noticed it was based in the area he grew up in and that, in combination with feeling strongly about its mission, pushed Peters to join the Children’s Art Classes franchise and open the sixth location in Hanover. Peters explains, “Not only was it established close to where I grew up, the people who started it really care about art and how it affects people. They are good people and I wanted to make sure that the outlet our daughter had was available to other kids.”
Establishing a Children’s Art Classes location in Hanover has taken a great deal of teamwork and dedication. With a combination of experience and commitment, the Peters’ each offer what it takes to launch and run a successful business. Opening their doors with just six students in 2023, CAC now has over 100 students in only two years. Such growth can only happen when every person involved is motivated and empowered by their work.
Emily Peters comes from a large family of 12 children, taught preschool, and is very involved in her four children’s various organizations and activities. “Emily has a passion for teaching,” Rob says, “Her strength is in relating to the kids. She gets right down to their level and connects with them.” For the Peters’, art is very much a family affair as their three daughters also enjoy helping with the Children’s Art Classes birthday parties and events. In addition to the Peters family, The Children’s Art Classes center is kept in motion by art experts and teachers Paula Stapleton and Carolyn Russo.
Paula Stapleton, known to students and staff as “Ms. Stapes”, is an expert in Visual Arts and has been teaching for over 26 years. A graduate of Massachusetts College of Art, she earned a B.F.A. and a M. Ed from Boston College. Stapleton also taught grades K-12 in multiple schools and Art Center settings throughout the area for over 20 years. Peters has nothing but high praise for Stapleton, “Ms. Stapes is amazing. She is so experienced and knowledgeable but she also knows how to keep things in line. She is all structure and organization and talent.”
In addition to Stapleton, Carolyn Russo comes with the perfect additional qualities to balance things out in the business. Russo began her career in corporate print and digital graphic design. Through volunteer projects, educational activities, and hands-on art experiences with her own children she discovered her love of teaching art and this inspired her to pursue a career as an art teacher. She is now an elementary school art teacher in Hanover in addition to teaching for Children’s Art Classes. “Ms. Russo is smart, has a lot of artistic talent, and she is so sweet with the kids,” says Peters.
The team of Children’s Art Classes is an ideal combination of creative passion meeting expertise and structure. Starting as young as age four, CAC offers unique and progressive art education up to age 18. The classes offered at CAC explore over 40 types of art medium and provide one of the largest selections of children’s art classes from Boston to the South Shore. Class sizes are capped appropriately per age group to keep the instruction as individualized and meaningful as possible. CAC classes not only keep their students busy, but they give them a solid foundation in the arts that can be built upon as they advance through the progressive programs and curriculum -each building upon the foundation of the previous level.
The Tiny Hands Program starts students as young as three or four years old with sensory art mediums such as clay and torn paper sculptures and other small projects that build fine motor skills. There is also exploration with painting with purpose and learning basic artistic foundations and concepts. Equal to learning about art, CAC also emphasizes that it’s okay to take risks, make mistakes, and try again. Peters recalls watching Stapleton being able to teach the youngest students about the rather complex subject of artistic emphasis with a simple chalkboard drawing. “She just drew a tiny house and a big man and after asking kids questions about what they saw she was able to get them all to understand artistic emphasis in a few minutes,” Peters recalls.
Once a basic foundation in art is established via the Tiny Hands program, students have the opportunity to advance to Intro to Art (ages 5-6), Beginning Art (ages 7-8), Art 1 (ages 9+), and Art 2 (anyone who has completed Art 1). Students who continue in class advancement have the unique and beneficial opportunity to build a personalized art portfolio. “Our students can add to their portfolio over the years and if they want to go to art school later on, they can show their artistic progression over the years and schools really like that,” Peters points out. “Not every student has to go into art as a career, but we can give them that foundation at CAC.”
In addition to helping students establish a foundation of art education and building a portfolio, CAC recently provided the incredible opportunity for their students to showcase their work in a professional art show. In partnership with Frame Center in Hanover, CAC put on an art show with curations of their student’s pieces framed by Frame Center and displayed in the art gallery. One piece per student was allowed and the event drew over 300 people in attendance. The art was judged by professional judges and a “Best in Show” was awarded. The money raised went to the local organization, Hope Floats. Peters says, “It was really neat to see the kids feeling so good about their work and to see their family and friends come support their passion. It was a bonus that we were also able to work with other local businesses to do this.”
The Peters’ commitment to making a difference in the community through art education is not just confined to the classrooms of CAC or an art gallery. Children’s Art Classes is now providing scholarship opportunities for local schools. Participating district or three-school co-ops can receive one full year of free art education at the CAC Hanover studio. Every school within that district or co-op can also receive a one-month scholarship for their students. In return, schools and PTOs/PTAs are asked to simply share the scholarship opportunity with families within their districts and include information about CAC Hanover. To qualify, students must be enrolled in a current K-12 program with one of the CAC’s Partnered School districts (or three-school co-op). They also must have the ability to stay seated and follow direction for 1hr 15min in a structured classroom environment and have a passion for art. “We wanted to provide even more opportunities for kids to get an art education and the scholarship program does just that,” says Peters. “Art is for everyone -even if you are more into sports, or haven’t done much art, you can find something in art that will benefit you.”
When asked about his personal mission statement with Children’s Art Classes, Peters has no trouble answering. “Perhaps I am selfish for this, but doing this -helping in this way in my community and giving kids the chance to learn about and express themselves through art -it makes me feel good. I love helping people and making a difference. We have started to see the growth in our first students now a few years later and it is really fulfilling. Positive feedback fuels me and we are seeing so many positive effects in the community because of CAC. It feels like the world is really lacking in positivity and we need nice moments in life more than ever. I feel like that is something we are doing well with this. We are positively impacting our local kids and that is why I am in this.”
It will be no surprise, but no less wonderful to see, the many students positively impacted by CAC years from now. The Peters’ will, no doubt, continue to provide the safe and conducive place -the blank canvas, if you will, for kids to learn about and pour out a little of themselves. In doing so they will find that in all their created and varied colors, mediums, and textures, they are the real masterpieces.

Once the heated haze of summer fades away and October rolls in like a gilded fog, New England takes on an otherworldly nature. Known for the most vibrant and abundant autumn foliage in the world, crimson-lake cranberry harvests, quaint villages with fall festooned houses and shops, plentiful pumpkin patches and family-packed autumn festivals, and both fresh and hard apple cider enough to fill everyone’s mug all season long, New England is perhaps the most poignant, stunning, and enjoyable place in the world to celebrate autumn. In addition to being the highest set standard for all things autumn, New England also offers a deeply rooted connection to the very bones of Halloween and its history.
To brush off Halloween as mostly modern, consumerism-based, or evil is not only short sighted, it’s dead wrong. Our modern-day Halloween celebrations and traditions are a patchwork strewn together across cultures, theologies, centuries, and legends. If you want to understand the basis of how we got to the point of trick-or-treating and carving pumpkins, you must spirit yourself away to ancient Ireland.
The origins of Halloween are rooted in the ancient Irish festival known as Samhain – pronounced ‘sah-win’ in Irish language. Samhain marked the end of the harvest season and the beginning of winter in Ireland. The day after, Nov. 1, marked the Celtic new year.
Like other ancient Irish festivals, Samhain was seen to be a liminal time -a time when the boundaries separating the spiritual and real world blurred and weakened. Thus, Halloween has become associated with appearance of spirits, fairies and ghosts from the mythical ‘Otherworld’. When the realms of the living and the dead mixed, Celts used the opportunity to honor and worship their ancestors. People set an extra place at the table for supper that their family and friends beyond would feel welcome and join them in spirit. They left lit candles in the windows as a gesture to light the way home for their loved ones.
Many, however, were also concerned about the darker and evil spirits using this night of blurred realms to trouble and influence those in the real world or to keep deceased loved ones from visiting their homes. Various precautions were taken by the living to ensure that as little mischief as possible took place to allow pleasant visits for and from their deceased loved ones and ancestors. The Irish Celts often went so far as to make striking masks and costumes and would dress their children as demons to confuse or scare the evil spirits in to thinking they had met their match and best be off. They also marked their doors with cattle blood from the harvest to deter unwanted visitors and protect all the living and dead who crossed the threshold.
Another important Samhain tradition was the lighting of bonfires. Irish Samhain bonfires, or tine cnámh (pronounced “cheen-ah kin-awe-vh” and literally meaning ‘bone fire’), were lit for both spiritual and practical reasons. In ancient Ireland cattle were used as currency. The highest-ranking Irish Rí (king) was also the person in the area with the most cattle. Samhain was the traditional time to slaughter excess or weak cattle. It was also the time set aside for preparing stores of meat and grain to support the people through the harsh winter.
Bonfires were a central part of the festivities at Samhain for every village and everyone attended. A communal blaze was used by villagers to cast the bones of slaughtered cattle upon the flames of a roaring fire. This was thought to cleanse the land and set forth the good fortune of health and harvest for the coming new year. Once the central Samhain bonfire was lit and fully ablaze, villagers extinguished their own fires in their homes. Then, after song, dance, and incantations, each family took a light from the common bone fire to rekindle the fire in their own hearth. This tradition was a reminder of the importance of community and charity during the time of year when it was hardest to exist, and symbolic for the new light of their new year beginning in the morning. Though not many of us continue to light bonfires on Oct.31, there are plenty of chimneys here in the countryside that start smoking around the end of October and anyone with a knowledge of tine cnámh is likely to see the faint similarity.
More common Halloween traditions we keep today are also harvested from the past and have been given new roles and function in modern day society. Bobbing for apples, for example, is derived from the Roman festival of Feralia that was traditionally celebrated in late October. It was a day to commemorate the souls and spirits of the dead, and was one of the first festivals to be combined with the Celtic festival of Samhain.
Another ancient festival was the Day of Pomona -the Roman goddess of fruit and trees. The symbol that represented this goddess was an apple. As the Roman Empire spread and its influence traveled north to Ireland, the lore and celebration of the apple found preplaced common acceptance and revering as Irish society already believed apples to be a sacred fruit from the Tuath Dé Danann (the Gods believed to have founded Ireland). Samhain festivals began to include bobbing for apples, and apple peeling divination where young, unmarried girls would peel an apple and the shape of the peel that fell to the ground could indicate the name or position/trade of their future husband.
Here in New England, we continue to integrate the humble apple into our autumn festivities through harvesting at local orchards, pressing our infamous apple ciders and fermenting apple jack, and baking, cooking, and preserving with apples. Some of the best Halloween parties around are highlighted with competitive apple-bobbing rounds between cider-buzzed adults or groups of sugar-spiked children with wet faces and giggles while trying to catch such a large fruit in tiny teeth. The apple, however, is certainly not the mainstay edible symbol of Halloween. That honor goes to the beloved pumpkin.
To understand how the inimitable, often orange member of the Cucurbitaceae family rose to the ranks of the ultimate symbol of autumn and Halloween, you first need to look back at turnips. Yes, turnips! Pumpkins are indigenous to North America -specifically Mexico, therefore the ancient Irish had never seen them.
During the harvest, there were often a few root vegetables to spare. As the harvest season coincided with Samhain, root vegetables, often turnips, were used as vessels to set small candles in to keep the flames from being extinguished easily by the wild Irish wind. These turnip lights were set on windowsills or carried by children from hut to hut while wearing demon-scaring costumes and “souling” or singing songs of good fortune and praise at the door to spread good luck and in turn be gifted with a “Soul Cake”. Children in costumes traveling about the community after dark and receiving treats… It sounds a bit familiar, yes? Another use for turnips and other root vegetables was to carve faces in -again to scare away evil or mischievous intruders from the Otherworld via menacing illuminated expressions meant to shock a wayward soul back to the hills where the Otherworld portals were said to be -thus the expression “running for the hills”.
One infamous tale of turnips and turmoil was the legend of Jack-of-the-Lantern. Stingy Jack, a troublesome Irish drunk, was said to have encountered the devil as he lay dying on Samhain in an intoxicated stupor. He was, however, as clever as he was inumbrated by his addiction, and he was able to trick the devil three separate times from taking his soul to Hell. Once Jack did finally pass away because of his reckless lifestyle, his soul was rejected at the gates of Heaven, but he had also outwitted the devil enough to burn that bridge as well. The devil gave Stingy Jack a small ember from the pits of Hell and sent him away to eternally wander the realm of the living -neither entirely dead or alive, using a carved turnip to hold his ember of Hell to light the way while aimlessly roaming the Irish countryside -thus becoming Jack-of-the-Lantern.
It is thought by modern historians and scientists that this legend was perhaps perpetuated by the increased phenomenon of “Will O the Wisps” or Peat Bog Flames that occur when methane gas is released from organic matter decaying in bogs. The late autumn weather and temperature led to an increase in these mysterious floating flames suddenly igniting and hovering over Ireland’s many peat bogs -thus providing a scapegoat scenario for the ancient Irish to explain a natural occurrence they did not understand.
During the Great Irish Famine when hundreds of thousands of Irish immigrants desperately sought basic survival and dignity as they arrived on the East Coast, their traditions arrived with them and spilled out beautifully into our society. Instead of turnips and parsnips and other hard crops, they were confronted with the North American pumpkin and immediately and collectively saw it as the new ideal vessel for their carving and illumination traditions on Samhain. Today, New England carries on the revering of all things pumpkin and squash in both the most humble and ostentatious ways. From the countless local pumpkin patches dotting the New England countryside to the overwhelming splendor of the Jack-O-Lantern Spectacular at Roger Williams Zoo in Rhode Island, ancient meets modern in the most endearing and magical way all autumn long.
As ancient traditions met resistance and rejection from spreading Christianity in Europe, people found ways to keep the basis of their beloved practices by merging them with their newly either accepted or imposed beliefs. At the behest of Pope Gregory VI, ‘All Hallows’ Day’ was assigned to the date of Nov. 1 – the first day of the Celtic new year. The Pope, nevertheless, renamed the event ‘All Saints’ Day’, making it a formal and rule-regulated religious service in honor of only Christian Saints instead of the previous humble celebration by local communities to honor loved ones and celebrate the harvest.
‘All Saints’ Day’ and ‘All Hallows’ Day’ were used interchangeably by the Catholic Church throughout history. The evening before these dates was then called ‘Hallowe’en’ – a contraction of ‘Hallows’ Evening’. In the last century however, the holiday has been largely taken back to its ancient roots and traditions and is now simply referred to as Halloween. Through centuries of dogmatic hushing of superstitions and traditions, and spanning the distance of the Atlantic, modern-day Halloween is both what we make it and what it was made to be in the beginning.
Halloween in New England, specifically, has filled the role of a “Halloween Hub” for the world partially because of the high concentration of Irish heritage here, but also because the landscape is perfectly suited and destined to feature all things mysterious, beautiful, and community based. The oft moody skies contrasting lush, jewel-colored foliage, historic stone walls lined with bright pumpkins, village gazebos in the center of town flanked by bunched up corn stalks, and historic cities and towns with enough ghost stories to start ghost tour businesses, New England wears autumn more perfectly and effortlessly than any other season.
Though we no longer gather at the center of town for a tine cnámh, we do gather in parking lots to trunk-or-treat and at the farmstand down the road to pick or purchase the same Roman revered orbs prized centuries ago. We may not send our children to sing songs of faith from door to door in masks, but we do rely on our neighbors to put aside their worldly cares for an evening to indulge in needed frivolity. Society-weary adults depend on each other to greet our costume-clad kiddies with genuine smiles and handfuls of candy once the expected childhood incantation, “Trick-or-Treat!” is sung out in a tradition so adorable that it is sacred in its own right. Adults need Halloween as much as children -be it to dance or feast the night away with friends in disguise or attend a haunted house where the biggest threat is not world news and bills, but screeching out from a good ole jump scare.
Halloween is a much-needed respite for all ages to cast aside burdens for one night, become something fantastical, and believe in magic -even for just a moment or two. Perhaps the real spell cast by Halloween is the alchemical child of modern-day people still relating to the needs and dreams, fears and longings, of people long ago. The spirit of ancient Ireland’s Samhain is haunting all of us here in New England in the best and most enjoyable way. Happy Halloween and a Blessed Samhain to all~