Getting the nerve

follow the muse

I’ve been going through my work from the past year.

So much change: effort, risk, experimentation. Painting larger (for me, 18x24” feel large) still feels like riding a wild horse.

But the small work, abstracted or literal, has so much more life. Occasionally, an abstract under-painting, reveals itself to be enough.

Do folks who pursue other talents feel as surprised by where practice takes them? I don’t know.

I just know this path winds forward, broad and inviting. “Live the questions now,” wrote Rilke.

“... have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

— Rilke

If you love someone with dementia...

love

thru presence

Today a letter arrived from a friend of a friend. She asked for advice on activities to bring to a friend diagnosed with dementia. Here is what I told her.

---

I am so sorry for your friend and all who love her. She is lucky to have you in there pitching.

For a decade I’ve led art groups for a decade in long-term elder communities, including locked dementia wards. Most of what I know I learned by doing.

I recommend the The 36-Hour Day by Nancy Mace. Also, the Alzheimer's Association. Loving someone in mental decline - even if you are not the direct care-giver - is like being the frog in that pot of heating water. You go along with incremental changes, but the grief and anger and helplessness can overwhelm. (They undid my  mother.) Companionship can help. A support group lets you talk with or listen to others on the same path. It saves you from isolation, makes you feel less crazed. Also it could lead to good ideas and referrals.

 As for activity ideas, try your local library. No need to read things back to front. Just scan the table of contents. Grab what sounds right for you and your friend now. The Montessori model may be especially helpful in designing activities.

The key, for me, has been to think of time with elderly art students, including dementia patients, as improvisational theater. Come with a plan; be ready for surprise. (Here's a a short story those techniques.) Say "what if?" Follow their lead. Build on whatever happens. Say yes.

If you can be alone with your friend, you'll do her husband a world of good. One of the best and hardest things a care-giver can do is get away  for a hour.  I can't think of a greater gift you could give.

Regardless of why you visit, remember that the person with dementia changes every day. The person you met last week may not be there today. Skills diminish instead of grow. Moods change. Join in, rather than teach. Words disappear before comprehension. Polite behavior can mask confusion. Slow down. Listen. Avoid "No." Back off when anger flares. If  nothing works, embrace their story as best you can, like the folks in this incredible story from Radio Lab. Even the difficult moments pass.

Music helps. Ask her family what tunes she loves/d. Play that music when you are together.

 Celebrate achievement, whatever it looks like. Always let her know you are glad she's there.

 When you work with a mentally diminishing person, you clear a path, however briefly,  for the person to think and be creative. You help  them have fun and feel productive. Art, baking, gardening, folding laundry -  each structures time, makes the self visible, gives them a sense of accomplishment and usefulness (so needed, so hard to come by). Folks with dementia may not remember but they still feel. That's the part of their soul you nurture when you spend time together.

Best,

Linda Dunn

Another student’s work, continuing care art class

Grace

Kindness

shared, redoubles

“After great pain, a formal feeling comes.” -Emily Dickinson

Grace comes from small gestures. A short note. Kind words. The shiva for my friend unfolded on Zoom like a song, each person in turn adding the music of their memories. Repeated over and over, these words: generous, funny, brilliant, thoughtful, loyal, kind. Each memory confirmed the loss and also the bond between those left behind. More than one friendship was rekindled during that hour. So the gifts of loss slowly become visible, and grief gives way to mourning. I make another batch of muffins for my family, listen to artists talk about their work, and get ready to move on. Thank you for your kind words.

A sudden loss

here

then gone

Midweek, a late night phone call. A friend is gone. Impossible to believe but true. Sometimes Death comes while you are looking the other way.

This friend was chosen family: loyal, generous, always there. Now she’s not. We saw each other through career struggles, divorce, infertility, so much more. We were to see each other at last next week, when our vaccines settled in.

Now I join the widening circle of friends and colleagues who are shocked and sad. We knew of each other. We are all reeling. If we could get together this one time, what a relief to meet at last, share stories and memories. Instead, another damn Zoom funeral.

What an unkind year.

My friend was an academic who loved politics and justice. I’m an artist who loves stories. At some level we barely understood each other, but she was deeply a friend.

Be Here Now

Presence

Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time. - Thomas Merton

I’ll admit it. I was raised on a late 50’s diet of classics: Ancient Rome and Dutch masters. Rubens and Victorian sentiment. A frosting-heap of Impressionism. As a girl, I gravitated to lush landscapes and ladies in billowing dress. I never thought much of contemporary art. Small allowance made for geometry and no sympathy for the 20th century.Studying art history in college didn’t help. The emphasis stayed on history. (And the main text included not one woman.)

However, along with isolation the pandemic slipped contemporary art into my path. Last spring I started listening weekly to Mark Daniel Nelson. He generously illustrates his composition lectures with recent artists’ work. Suddenly I am dazzled. Diebenkorn and Morandi. Edmond Praybe and Lucy MacGillis. Ken Krewley and Peri Schwartz. Their art, especially their still lifes, stop me in my tracks. I find myself asking, not just How did they do that, but Why does this work?

Extract from Google search for still life Peri Schwartz

Click on that image. Look at a still life. Which one grabs you? What does it say? What’s left unsaid? Where does the artist direct your eye? How do the shapes interact? The colors? What surprises you? What feelings do you get? Why do you linger?

So much conveyed through so little. A lemon, a bowl, a window, a chair. A few colored bottles on a window sill.

The artist uses these to expresses the ineffable. To make us, as Ram Dass said, be here now.

Maybe an analogy to music helps. When you listen to music, the composer, the musicians, have already made choices and done hard work. They don’t play all the notes, any which way. Before you ever hear them, they edit, practice, rewrite, review, so that when they do perform, they can center us in the moment as if it were no work at all. They carry us into a timeless space. We happily enter, again and again.

Somehow a painting does this too. It takes you out of time. Stop, look, and a moment glows. The artist’s effort becomes transparent. The labor, the practice, the failures – all disappear into the resonate NOW. You look and you see. You forget about  worries and must-do’s. Instead, for a few moments, you simply exist. In wonder.

We artists were put here to say what matters. Your job is to take what you love and explore it. Deconstruct. Examine. Edit. Expand.  Hold up that thing - the lemon, the bowl, the window- that calls you. Let it express the moment. Show your viewer why it matters. Say “Be amazed. Be still. Be here now.”

And they will see.