Working BIG - Art with the Elderly

A facility where I teach is adding a new wing. The activities director decided there should be ART on the temporary walls. My Assisted Living class got one panel. So with short notice, on the fly, I drew flowers and dogwood blossoms, to create two work levels for my students. Most are in wheel chairs.

First brush strokes

The aides seated the class in a semi-circle. 

The effect was so relaxed: art as in-the-moment miracle, one you could relax and observe.

Painting together

The mural took three one-hour sessions to finish.

Two artists, side by side

What made it so fun? No one was totally responsible, for starters. Fine motor skills no longer mattered. Big marks were easier to see with older eyes. But I think it was also the thrill of the forbidden - how many of us long ago were told never to draw on the walls?

Our panel's on the left. Two more panels, center and right.

 In between sessions I filled in the big areas. Sky first, greens last. 

Finished!

 In another week or so, the sheet rock, and the paintings, come down. 

Someday, though,I'm painting on my own house walls.

Alzheimer's Art: Winter Scene

This week my Alzheimer's art group collaged winter scenes.

It is a stretch, to move them through three different concepts  - black trees, white snow, and collage - in one hour.

 But the hard work paid off. Each person found something that worked for them and pursued it. 

They finished happy, some so much so they stayed an extra 20 minutes, working or just talking about their art.



I always line the finished pieces up, and point out how good they look together. Then I  remind them that each piece is different, because each person is different.

One woman never says a word. But as she left, she turned to me and held out a last deer.

 "Would you please put this in the corner?" She gestured to a painting. I glued the deer down. "Thank you," she beamed.

With love

Some out-of-favor polka dots, skimmed with crimson and gold. Then a black-and-white text paper, veiled with crimson. Finally, lots of related circles from all these and more, using a Papertrey die so  hoop and circles match.  Little messages from tiny Papertrey stamps. Nice break on a quiet afternoon.

Last week, we made Valentines in Assisted Living. Something about all that pink brings out the best in everyone.

 Residents made cards. Staff joined in.  

"This should go on all day," declared the director.

 Cards were made for spouses, children, grandchildren. I talked one woman into making cards for her granddaughters in college. High point of my day.

The week before, I led Heart-Felt Collage at the Arlington Center for the Arts. 

So much loving creativity.

 And lots of paint.

Big hearts, creative people.  A great afternoon.

First snow and tactile art

Home-made clay, sticks and old CDs = snowmen this week with my Alzheimer's art group. "They are all wonderful. And all different." Just like the folks who made them.,

Art with the Elderly

"The house I grew up in" -- Joanne

The folks in my classes wrestle with more than age.  They face the blank page, not only in public and perhaps for the first time, but with dimmed eye sight, arthritic hands, and failing memory.

Through the magic of the internet, I discovered Jane Filer.  Filer's  combination of abstraction and whimsy inspired  my students like nothing I'd seen before. We used a detail from Filer's "Hillandale Road."

Even the simplest version catches the geometry and the rhythm of the trees.

geometry of landscape

This resident layered the watercolors for deeper hues, and added trees at the bottom.  

Vineyard view

This resident, an artist in her day,  had avoided my class, wrestling with doubt and self-consciousness. But Filer's artwork pulled her in. I love the pink she used for the fields.

Pink Hills

A woman who usually paints traditional decorative flowers worked on this image for three classes. "I've never done anything like this." Wonderful.

New Horizons, after Jane Filer "Hillandale Road"

  

Thank you, Jane Filer, for the inspiration. Find Filer's work, including "Hillandale Road," here. She is a joyous, sharing artist. Watch her at work here and here.

Elder Art: Collage

Scraps from my studio become art supplies

I brought a pile of autumn-hued fabric scraps to my art classes this week.

Adding leaves to a painted ground

Folks were surprised  that fabric could be an art supply. They loved the colors, the textures. Several noticed the silks and the remnants of hand-dyed table cloths. This is the generation that treasured those linens. 

This student, usually hesitant, often disappointed, loved the process.

a rich scene

For the Alzheimer's patients, however, tasks remained discrete. Think about it: gluing is made up of many steps. It requires a sense of what is possible in the immediate future, and that's just what Alzheimer's robs away. 

Every student needed one-on-one attention to get anything glued to paper. Then, the collaged image didn't hold together in their eyes. "It looks like blobs. There's too much white."

 So we backed up and worked on the processes that made sense to each person.

Trimming a rough edge

Adding leaves to a painting

A bit of green linen for ground

Adding color to the background

One woman painted the tree's edges green.  I handed her a brush with orange paint on it, and she carefully over-painted all the leaves.

a second layer of color

 Then she painted the trunk orange. And smiled a huge smile.

I come home to world news and this work seems so small. But it requires time, attention, patience, creativity and quantities of love. We could all use more of that.

 "Your class is a constant in a sea of change," a director assured me. "What you do makes them happy. We see the effects for hours afterwards."

Elder Art - Winter into Spring

Spring Trees, by Memory Care resident

 After a series of winter themes -polar bears, snow men, Christmas trees,  I told my class, Spring IS coming.  I told them about the cardinal I saw singing his heart out in a bare tree. Then we painted from this picture, borrowed from the internet and "cleaned up" in Photoshop, to simplify the image:

 

The search for basic shapes was almost too hard for my Memory Care class. The strong lines of the branch  distracted. Perhaps, too, the image should have been only of one bird. (One student painted both of them, tho.) But everyone worked hard. The students kept me so busy I forgot to take pictures until the second class, of Assisted Living residents, took their place:

 

The male

 This second group grows in numbers each week. As folks return, they bring questions, ideas, even work they did between classes. It is all so heartening. Here are some of their pieces after a short hour together:

The female. Wonderful color mixing.

Notice how the details -eyes and bill -tend to blur. This, I'm learning, is unavoidable when you combine the media (watercolor) with the short time and shaking hands. I'm exploring other options - colored pencils, markers - but must remember also to provide a means for correction. Suggestions, anyone?

Beautiful sketch

 They had such a good time they didn't want to stop for lunch. We hatched a plan for the following week, when they meet without me.

Ready for Spring

Everyone got a copy of the photo clipped to their painting. They will finish the images next week. A satisfying solution for everyone, including me.

art with Alzheiemr's patients

Every two weeks I lead a watercolor class for Alzheimer's patients.

  

Every class starts with loss, disorientation.

Then, gradually, focus displaces doubt.

 Color appears on the page.

An hour becomes timeless, the minutes

articulated by mystery 

and the eternal surprise of creation.

aging

One of my childhood memories is of working on a profile drawing of my grandfather, while he played cards with the grownups one summer evening. I think I was in fifth grade.


Now when I teach my students - all elderly - I study their faces and hands. I want to draw them.


For now I grab moments when the class is contented, and quickly sketch. So much experience and feeling in their faces. This is Edith, one of my best students when I started. She had painted all her life and did such delicate work.



Then she began to forget, grew angry. The last time I saw her she asked "Have I done this before?" She missed the next three classes. I'm just the art teacher, but I'd come to love her. I wonder where - and how - she is.

Travel in Time

Pearls by Linda Dunn

Back from 8 days on the road, or was it seven? We traveled from Boston to Lancaster PA, through Maryland, back to Philadelphia and then home. We visited 5 women, all in their 80s. Two will be 90 the next time we see them. Then today a poem by Sharon Bryan on Writer's Almanac about middle age. A fragment:

you can see your life whole,
beginning and end not far
from where you stand,

the horizon in the distance—
the view makes you weep,
but it also has the beauty

of symmetry, like the earth
seen from space

I am awash in images: old faces, old kitchens, tidy sitting rooms settled years ago. Layered on that images from a day at the Philadelphia Museum of Art: the huge productivity of so many male artists. Who washed their dishes and clothes? Did they cook their own food? Care for their children? So I do the laundry and plan my afternoon in the studio. A lot to think about.