The Touchstone Center

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The Touchstone Center

A nonprofit organization, founded by Richard Lewis, that explores and sustains the importance of imaginative and poetic processes in all areas of learning.

The Touchstone Center for Children is a non-profit educational and arts organization based in New York City. Since its founding in 1969 by Richard Lewis, the Center has created, through its workshops, exhibitions, theatre productions, publications, and interdisciplinary arts projects in schools, a variety of ways to explore and sustain, in all areas of learning, the importance of the imaginative and poetic process in relationship to the natural world.

04/03/2026

To Each and All:

It is with pleasure to share the announcement of the opening of an unusual and unique exhibition, curated by Elizabeth Crawford, entitled I Am the Tree, The Tree Is Me: Imagining and Becoming, the Nature We Are, opening in the Cargill Gallery of the Minneapolis Central Library from April 1st to May 29th. Organized in and around the art and writings by children from the Touchstone Center’s, The Tree of Knowing Project, that took place at the East Village Community School (PS 19) in NYC, and the imaginative on-going botanical and plant photography of Minneapolis-based Elizabeth Crawford, the exhibition promises to bring, both children and ourselves, into the very language and artistry, that is our shared natural world.

Much, indeed, truly to look forward to . . .

And, in gratitude and delight . . .

Richard

Playing and Knowing, Imagining and Becoming, the Nature We Are

Based on a project undertaken by The Touchstone Center for Children, this unique exhibition celebrates the art and poetry by children in a New York City public school. as they discover and express their wondrous relationship to the natural world. Their artwork, as well as the writings of Richard Lewis, founder and director of The Touchstone Center, and the plant photography of Minneapolis-based Touchstone artist Elizabeth (Lily) Crawford, in turn invites each of us to consider our own connection to plants. Hands-on activities will be available to help capture thoughts and images stirred by this inspiring and varied exhibit.

And so, let’s begin with a child’s poem.

I am the tree
the tree is me

I love the tree
the tree loves me

I care for the tree
the tree cares for me

It is a magical world.

- Anna
1st /2nd grade

Please send us a message for further information on the workshop schedule! 🌷

12/22/2025

Greetings:

It is with delighted pleasure, once again, to share this announcement of a virtual workshop for and with teachers, as well as those wishing simply to explore the creativity and importance of childhood, in association with the Sarah Lawrence College Development Institute, scheduled to begin in January 2026.

If you are interested, we, in turn, look forward very much to your participation. Due to prior interest in this series of workshops, we urge you to register as soon as possible. Information about the workshop and details about registration can be found below.

🦋

Playing
on the tightrope of thought . . .

An
exploration and conversation
on the nature of questions,
as they delight and probe
the wisdom of childhood.

This 4-session Zoom workshop will be, both an inquiry and process, through which we might discover – the marvel of using and finding questions that are, in themselves, opening towards wide and envisioning parcels of imagining – for both children and ourselves.

No experience necessary, except in the deepest realms of play, the spirit to improvise and invent, ways of thinking and knowing, that capture something of a child’s universe about to begin – and, with its always eager imaginative delight, to probe the marvel of the unknown – emerging into the known.

Based on the educational programs of The Touchstone Center for Children, the workshop will be led by the Center’s Founder and Director, Richard Lewis – in collaboration with Jeanie Yeo, Teaching Associate at The Touchstone Center, and Assistant Director of Education Administration at the Wildlife Conservation Society.

Sessions will take place on Saturdays from 9 to 10:30 AM on: January 24th; February 21st; March 21st; and April 18th

Registration Fee: $20.00 for the four sessions

Sarah Lawrence is an Approved CTLE Sponsor and offers 6 CTLE hours for this program.

This series is being underwritten by The Touchstone Center for Children.

To register, please go to:

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/playing-on-the-tightrope-of-thought-tickets-1977524856078?aff=oddtdtcreator

10/03/2025

Greetings,

This
glimmer
of a distance
a child reaches for . . .

This
sound of colors...

This
humming of birds . . .

This
voice of sunlight . . .

This
stillness of morning . . .

This
glimmer
of a thought
a child finds again . . .

Best wishes,

Richard

🍁🎃🍂

Text by Richard Lewis. Artwork (c) 2025 from the Archives of the Touchstone Center for Children, Inc.

12/12/2024

Greetings,

When our hands and mind come together to craft an object, a means of creating both something of ourselves, and for others - it is indeed time to venture forth to the 12th Annual Yorkville Holiday Exhibit and Sale, curated and organized by my wife Carol Grocki Lewis to take place at the Church of the Holy Trinity Church - from December 13th to December 15th.

Website: yohoex.weebly.com for details

I am also pleased and delighted, once again, to be a participant in this weekend gathering, where I will have for sale some of the publications, I have both written and edited, which explore and celebrate the imaginative life of childhood, in all its varied expressiveness.

We look forward very much to sharing these gifts in a variety of mediums, each, as pleasures of the creative spirit, to bring into the New Year, reminders always of what can be made, from something, often, that close by.

In delight,

Richard

🍵

Ceramic bowls by Carol Grocki Lewis.

11/04/2024

Between
movement and stillness,
something of the world begins . . .

And, perhaps, somewhere in childhood,
this marvel of beginnings, continues
to be part of the enchantment

that brings us, gently and quietly,
towards our unique learning and knowing,

this becoming, and our speaking,
of our being here . . .

🍁

"Tree"

I like the curves
the way the leaves are
the way it is shaped.

The trees will dream
when the leaves come
back up.

- Daniel, 4th grade

🍁

Children’s artwork and writing from "The Tree of Knowing Project," which took place at the East Village Community School from 2003-2006; and text and photographs by Richard Lewis (c) The Touchstone Center Archives.

09/15/2024

Greetings,

The biological imperative that is our imagination: a process of knowing that can reflect and determine, not only our life moving forward, but what we know and can create from our past. Used destructively, it is our most alarming weapon of destruction; used wisely, it is our deepest resource for our betterment.

🪻

I feel that colors surround the air.
You need to imagine that those colors
do more than show, they have feelings.
And when joy comes
look, look beyond those colors.
You’ll find colors surround the air.

- Angie, 5/6th Grade

🪻

In hope,
Richard

🪻

Artwork by children from the Forest Project, PS 9; poem by Angie, East Village Community School; and text by Richard Lewis (c) 2024, Touchstone Center Archives.

05/21/2024

Greetings,

There is a unique magic, hidden beyond our reasoning, beyond our calculations, that continues to resonate in-between our attempts to understand, to frame meaning, to stand firm in a universe, that continues to evolve, with or without us.

A magic, perhaps, as complex and as simple, as the restoration of colors after winter, the sheer smell of new birth, new sounds, new urgencies towards living . . .
. . a magic
that retains its own mysterious and hypnotic secret -

and not yet ready to fully
reveal itself.

Towards beginnings,

Richard Lewis

🌻

Drawings by Elizabeth, Michael, Ema, Zabed, and Mohammed, from "The Gardens of Our Thoughts Project," PS 20, Manhattan. Text by Richard Lewis, (c) 2024, Touchstone Center Archives.

02/19/2024

Greetings,

When the human - and all that is the natural world meet - there is sometimes a singular moment, that brings us to a new understanding of a child’s imaginative world, to see and feel the inseparability, of all that is alive.

Vivian’s writing, and the experience she speaks of, needs no explanation, or rationale for what it means - except, perhaps, a smile, an affirmative understanding of the deepest of our human needs, to find and express, what can and should be, at the root of our learning and expressiveness.

🌹

I feel like a rose.
I drew this flower with joy.
I thought it was a dream.
I was happy that I had joy.

- Vivian, 2nd/3rd Grade

❄️

With appreciation,
Richard

🍃

"I Drew This Flower with Joy," from artwork and writing by children in Class 2/3 at PS 20, Manhattan (c) Touchstone Center Archives, 2024.

12/11/2023

Greetings,

I am pleased, once again, to participate in this year’s, always lively and productive, 11th Annual Yorkville Holiday Exhibit and Sale, taking place from December 15th to December 17th at the Church of Holy Trinity. Further information can be found at the following website: yohoex.weebly.com

I am also very delighted to announce the publication of A Breathing of Leaves: A Portfolio of Images and Poems, a limited-edition, hand-crafted collaboration between myself and visual artist Elizabeth Crawford ( ), which will be on view, and on sale, during the Exhibit. We look forward very much to our sharing, what, for us, was an exciting and innovative way to bring together the many worlds of leaves, both, in stillness, as a portfolio of six leaf-images and poems, and, in turn, a digital rendering to their subsequent movement, and gestural qualities of aliveness.

Towards
all such sharing and knowing,

Richard Lewis

12/04/2023

Greetings,

We are pleased and delighted to share this announcement of a virtual-workshop conversation for and with teachers, in association with the Sarah Lawrence College Development Institute, scheduled to begin in January 2023.

If you are interested, we, in turn, look forward to your participation. Registration details can be found below.

What a Tree Knows, What a Tree Asks: Reaching for an Ecology of Childhood

Four-part virtual series: January 27, February 17, March 16, and April 20
9:00 to 10:30am

This four-session participatory workshop is for teachers of all grades, when we, and those we teach, are given the opportunity to explore, the many qualities and marvels of knowing, that is the natural world, through our own ability to imagine, to play, and express the very wonderment of our shared lives - within, all that is alive.

Registration Fee: $20.00 for the four sessions.

This series is being underwritten by The Touchstone Center for Children.

Sarah Lawrence is an Approved CTLE Sponsor and offers 6 CTLE hours for this program.

Link to registration can be found in our link in bio!

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New York, NY

Website

http://touchstonecenter.net/

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