When Kerri Johnson’s daughter volunteered her to paint the windows of Habersham Drug for the holiday season, she wasn’t sure what she was getting herself into. She just know she would be spending time doing what she loved, making art, but what started as a creative job became something much more meaningful.
“It’s going to bring me to tears and think about it again,” Johnson said. “They [Habersham Drug customers] were so excited.”
Johnson painted a total of 16 windows outside of Habersham Drug and Habersham Medical Surgical Services with a penguin snow day scene, and community members were filled with joy as her art brought a playful and festive feel to the area. She said some customers would sit in their cars and watch her paint or would come by multiple times a day to see the scene come together.
“One lady said she was dreading Christmas and that the windows gave her something to cue her Christmas spirit again,” Johnson said. “I thought ‘oh, that’s wonderful,’ so if that’s all I got out of it, that was enough.”
Johnson says that she thought the experience of painting the windows would be a therapeutic experience, where she got to spend time immersed in one of her favorite hobbies, but she says it turned out to be much more than that.
“It was a blessing to me,” Johnson said. “I thought I was doing it as a blessing to others, but it was such a blessing to me to see how everybody responded, and how everybody anticipated what was coming next.”
