It’s just a story…
I heard a story told that rings true: a friend who also works with seniors told me someone who was a resident in the senior living community where she works. This woman had been an artist, an amateur, a Sunday painter, in her earlier years. She no longer painted. But the woman’s daughter entered her mother’s paintings in a show at their church. The satisfaction, the happiness, the pride of this 80+ woman was heartening to hear and see, I understand. She had to hang her show. She had to attend the opening. She was still an artist. She was still someone.
Why can’t that be for all?
We should make it so!
Another voice
I can’t quite imagine the thoughts and feelings of Charles Darwin when he learned of a rival’s simultaneous articulation of the origin of species by natural selection. Reasonable scholars have identified it as ‘dawning horror’. For me, discoering that others write the same things I think is the opposite. I see something more akin to burgeoning satisfaction. I felt that when I tripped over Jan Greenberg’s post Writing, Creativity and Aging on the blog I.N.K. (Interesting Nonfiction for Kids).
Jan writes of her own challenges to write for young adults as she is aging and how considering how others have aged creatively (great artists are always great company) has solidified her resolve to do the same. What worked? She mentions a new subject, a new discipline, and a new view (in this case of the world). Interesting, yes; inspiring, absolutely!
What is the difference?
What is the difference between a mantra and a bumper-sticker? I’ve never before needed to ponder that question but now I do. Pithy statements perceived to be of importance; okay that’s the same. But…what if anything is the difference. Time will tell.
Sherri Lynn Wood is an artist, especially if your definition of the role includes provoking thought. Her work in a show at the Weatherspoon Gallery at UNCG and upcoming workshop Group-Stitching Mantra is intriguing. More soon. After I’ve group-stitched a mantra or two.
From The Wine of Life
“What I discovered then, without really understanding what I was discovering, is that to survive we only need food, clothing and shelter but to live we need art.”
Rachel Popowich, drama teacher and Director of the West County Players wrote this in a viewpoint The Wine of Life in a recent issue of the Shelburne Falls & West County Independent (this is only a placeholder for the paper which will come back on line in due time).
Need Art to Live
I am looking for a better quote than this is a paraphrase but recently I read that while we need food and shelter to survive, we need art to live.
Does anything more need to be said?
Can We Create an Earthquake?
Last week I enjoyed a telephone conversation so much I felt I gained a phone friend. And it’s with the very special Lauren Volkmer of ARTZ (Artists for Alzheimer’s). In this rambling introduction to ourselves we used and then repeated various images to agree that there is something very special happening around creativity and aging and creativity and dementia; it has to be a phenomenom of earthshaking proportions. So many wonderful people are working in so many wonderful ways that have deep connections – and Lauren and I agreed we were part of this. But is it a tidal wave or an earthquake? But does it matter as long as it keeps happening?
But the tidal wave seemed to flow through this week’s newspapers here in Greensboro, North Carolina. The first was Monday in that voicebox of capitalism, The Wall Street Journal. There was an article on pyscho-oncology which piqued my interest: “A New View, After Diagnosis“. It is about making life meaningful in the face of fear, in the face of mortality. And from what I read, being creative is, for many people, part of what helps. In my book, creative living in the face of cancer is creative aging at its best.
Another whisper of making meaning is the ad for a set of lectures by James Hollis, Jungian Analyst and Author. He’ll be here at the Presbyterian Church of the Covenant Friday July 17th and Saturday July 18th for Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life and What Matters Most. I haven’t found a description of these programs but I’ve already fallen in love with their titles.
The next piece that reverberates for me is in Meet the Artist in GoTriad section of The News & Record. It’s on Robert ‘Bob’ Postma and he is a living and breathing tidal wave of…creativity, creative aging, community creation, and everything of great meaning. I’ve got to meet this man!
Gardening, a creative way
Came up to Washington DC yesterday to attend the National Center on Creative Aging’s sure-to-be-exciting conference. Arriving the day before allows some part of Washington’s own creative scene to be enjoyed. On a spring day made my way to the U.S. Botanic Garden, always a refreshing spot. One of the many areas to be savored was a collection of photographs entitled Places for the Spirit: Traditional African Americans Gardens of the South. Vaughn Sills has done us all a wonderful favor by sharing these creative and traditional gardens. This is creativity in one of its most important forms: yes it is something new and something that has value but it is also created purposefully by someone for themselves.
The important question
The neatly dressed woman stood quietly, waiting patiently, until almost all the other glad-handers had gone. I’d just finished a breezily-entertaining (and I hope enlightening) presentation on brain fitness and we all had enjoyed ourselves. She approached and I turned. She asked the important question: “How do we get people to try?” Try painting, she said, because painting was the greatest mental challenge she’d ever had and ever enjoyed. But if we can’t get people to try then they’ll never be able to succeed.
Great question. And I have valid fragments of an answer but no truth. How do we get people to try? Try something new. Try something challenging. Try something hard. How?
Another slice at the meaning of Creative Aging
Since our aging process begins at birth, creative aging could begin at any age. Customarily people in this field define it as occuring in the second half of life, or 50. There are many heartwarming and inspiring stories of people choosing to age creatively; I met last week a provocative example of the name of Roz, an 80 year-old woman whose feet still call her to dance and whose art is literally award-winning. More about Roz in another post because I am still in awe of another example of aging, of living creatively I read about some months ago. Her name is Carol and her forte is poetry, specifically the Japanese arts of Haiku and Tanka. What gives Carol’s story such resonance is that she is living and aging creatively in an iron-lung. Yes, Carol was struck down with polio in the 1st grade, in 1955. Since then she sees the world through the window, often only through the mirror over the head of her bed, but what a world she sees.
Her sharp knife quick
to peel, core, slice the red apple
we talk of childhood fears
how I blocked my ears
against the fair tale
This award-winning Tanka links the homely, yet violent act, of cooking, perhaps an apple-pie with those great Western Massachusetts Cortlands, with the terrors the children find so often in our world. I’ll never peel an apple again the same mindless way. Now that is the power of creativity and art. The old made new again.
Civic Engagement with Older Adults? Yes!
One of the most powerful purposes, components, of the Piedmont Triad Initiative for Community Arts is the connection between art and civic engagement. Our two presenters embodied it: professionally and personally. The whole day conveyed powerfully the potential, the ability, of art to change our communities in many ways, whether it is by changing us, our attitudes and actions, or by changing the system. Now, almost by accident, I’ve learned we here at creativeaging are not alone in seeing a natural connection between elders and civic engagement. Now civic engagement might not easily trip off your tongue but in this case it is defined as “Late life civic engagement encompasses actions wherein older adults participate in activities of personal and public concern that are both individually life enriching and socially beneficial to the community” (ASA). And one of the most dynamic professional associations for seniors and professionals who work with them has an initiative to promote and encourage this movement. Their national conference will include a special focus on it next March. Let’s All Get Going and Make a Difference!
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