Listen to the interview here!
Toni Reece: Hi there. This is Toni Reece. Welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living Magazine. Today I have Grace Galanti with me. Hi, Grace.
Grace Galanti: Hello.
Toni: How are you today?
Grace: Good.
Toni: Grace, take a moment and tell us a little bit about yourself.
Grace: I’m native to Berks County. I traveled a bit in my twenties to a couple of different countries, and when I had my son I decided to come back to Berks County, because I really wanted him to experience what I had when I grew up here.
I grew up on a small farm, and my work today is really a reflection of that. I have a holistic skincare business in West Reading, and it’s based on skin care products that are grown on a farm in Germany naturally, and doing treatments that are rhythmical, biodynamically based, and it really follows nature.
Toni: Sounds fascinating. Let’s go into the first question of the Project. What does inspiration mean to you?
Grace: Inspiration to me means being open to creativity and possibility. There’s a bit of a risk in that, being open and opening yourself up. It’s kind of like falling in love. I guess I relate it to that a bit. Being inspired is being able to take in and mix together the things that you take in into something that is new.
Toni: So it’s action based, but there is risk associated with it as you spoke to. Can you give me an example of the last time you were inspired? Not how you put it into practice, but when was the last time you were inspired?
Grace: I’m inspired every day.
Toni: Are you?
Grace: Yes.
Toni: So what inspires you? Give me an example.
Grace: An example would be maybe seeing something. Oftentimes it’s a plant, something in nature for me. Sometimes it’s a person. Something that’s a unique twist. Something that’s a little bit different, and it triggers something in my mind to make connections to something else, and being open to the formlessness of that. Like creativity, the creative process, and that triggers something.
Toni: Does it always move you to do something?
Grace: Generally, yes.
Toni: Wow. How do you put that into practice here in Berks County?
Grace: Gardening, farming, my work. Working with plants. It starts that way, and then I have ideas, and then I go out and I start to do them. It could come from a person – maybe a client that says something and I put some things together about them, and it makes me think of a plant, and then I’m motivated to go and either grow that plant or bring it to them or make something for them. It often is this process that feeds several things off of each other. It’s the person; it’s the plant, my own personal experience that I throw into it, and I mix it all together.
Toni: And what does it create?
Grace: Sometimes for me it’s joy. I’m just happy doing it. For the person, I hope that I’ve given them something that’s useful or helpful to them.
Toni: You said it always starts with a plant, right?
Grace: Usually, yes.
Toni: So the creativity starts there? It almost sounds like ingredients for a recipe, but it starts with a plant. So it could be a recipe for someone’s health, it could be a recipe for a gift or wellness … is that what I’m hearing?
Grace: Yes, or it comes from the person. Maybe they’ll say something and it triggers something in my head. Maybe a person has a need. Sometimes they’ll say, “I just don’t feel well about this,” or, “This is lacking for me,” or, “I feel this way when I’m doing that,” and it’s usually because of the type of work I’m in, people are discussing things that they need help with, like a client-based practice. From that I’m motivated to help answer the need somehow.
In my toolkit it’s a plant, usually, and it’s because in my own personal life that’s what has in many ways healed me or comforted me or helped me to grow. I can look at plants, and they’re almost like mirrors of people but they don’t move. They stay in one place. We have to move them.
Toni: Well, they do grow, so they are moving in a way, right?
Grace: Yes.
Toni: That’s really fascinating though, to come at inspiration and wrap it around that type of a beginning. I like that. Who in Berks County inspires you?
Grace: I would say it started when I was in elementary school. My elementary school teacher, Ann Marie Heilman, she was just amazing at connecting with us as students. It was at Montessori School, so it was a very small, tight knit environment. She was our teacher for many years. I was there for eight years. She just did the same thing that I’m talking about. She would take one idea and bring in multiple elements, and then make it personal to each of us as students. I’m doing nothing different than that in my own work today. I would say she continues to inspire me.
More recently, when I was in high school … well, I guess it’s not so recent, it’s been a while …
Toni: Well, you’re not on video so no one could have known that!
Grace: Gracie from Gracie’s Restaurant. In her work at that restaurant, she does the same application. The food that she’s creating, it’s a creative process, and it was always – it still is, but when I was there – customized to the person. Someone would come in and say, “I like it this way and that way,” and she would provide that. She would do that.
It was again that possibility is open. There’s a structure there, but there’s creativity and open possibility for other people coming into it. It was plant-based, of course, and we’d go out and cut the herbs right outside the door and make sure there were no bugs on them. The mint we would take in to make tea. I just loved that. I loved that it was unique.
Toni: It really does sound in a way that you almost can't picture what it will turn into, but you have an idea of what’s going into it, but maybe not what it will look like as the final product.
Grace: Right. Then there’s the connection with the person throughout the entire process, so you’re taking and delivering something to someone that is based off of what their need is or what they bring to the table, and then you bring something and you bring it back to them. It’s like this reciprocal process.
Toni: Anybody else in Berks County inspire you that you want to mention?
Grace: I would say more currently Tim Stark. His farming, the way that he started his farm just with his own two hands. I’m really amazed at what we can do with our hands. In my own work, I’m using my hands with facials and skincare, but from the farming end of it, seeing someone that really, literally started with seeds and two hands and a few small materials and has grown a farm to just such an amazing place that it is today is really wonderful.
Toni: What’s the name of the farm?
Grace: Eckerton Hill Farm.
Toni: What do you want your legacy to be?
Grace: I would like to connect people with plants, if I could make this amazing, huge garden that people could walk through and experience nature, to be able to walk in it and live it.
Toni: What a lovely visual that you leave us with. I so appreciate the work that you’re doing and being part of the Get Inspired! Project. Thank you for being here today.
