What Evert taught me

Book inscription from Dutch calligrapher, Evert van Dijk

One of my oldest and dearest friends here in Holland is an impassioned calligrapher and retired teacher of handicapped children.

My encounter with him when I first came to live here changed my life as an artist irrevocably.  Evert saw my dilemma clearly. I was no longer growing artistically because I was caught in the prison of the  prevailing aesthetic in the middleclass American  milieu where I grew up. I’d  learned that art had to be ‘beautiful’ and that my calligraphy had to be as close to perfection as the human hand would allow.

Evert, with his wonderfully ebullient personality and outspoken views, blasted through that shell of pretense and released my authenticity. I think this is the task of all true teachers and mentors.

This altered view is also what releases calligraphy from craft and lifts it to art. My letters and mark making became much more expressive of who I was, and this had a ripple effect throughout my life; one I am only truly coming to understand about 20 years later.

In the article I am writing about art and dementia care, this theme of authenticity keeps reappearing.
Artists accept people with dementia as completely whole, viable, interesting human beings, and therefore often elicit lucid repsonses where trained staff have failed.   In an art session, the person ’s markmaking is seen in the context of authenticity rather than conventional aesthetics.  I am not after a pretty picture (this would expose the person and me to the potential of ‘failure’)  instead, I look for interaction and engagement.  The rules change, a person’s  raw and spontaneous line becomes the new context for  ’beautiful’.  The Japanese have a philosphy of aesthetics based on this called Wabi Sabi*.  

It is the ability to see the worth in something or someone just as they are without requiring that they fit a preconceived ideal.

 

*Wabi Sabi is an asethetic of the fragile, weathered and transient. It is the opposite of the Western tendency to aspire to the imposing, large and powerful. We idealize a perfect rose in bloom, Wabi Sabi cherishes the rose past its prime:  a chipped flea market wooden table with flaking paint as opposed to the latest design statement in glass and chrome.

Message in a bottle

A low key time. So I’m writing from the doldrums, sending out a message in a bottle and hoping for a breeze. Navigating still waters is part of being a creative too.

My oil painting, inspired by Krabbé’s show, shipwrecked. There was no inner drive to push forward. Not now at least. 

I gave a pleasurable and I hope informative workshop for the local ALzheimer’s café on creativity. People pounced on the delicious materials I had laid out and created beautiful things. The atmosphere was of possibilities, which is so important since discussions about dementia here tend to focus on limitations.

The things that are inspiring me now are developing an innovative educational tool for people who work with  Alzheimers patients, and writing a book on creativity and dementia.

The artist inspiring me now is once again Keri Smith. Her new book out in the fall goes straight to the core of things that I also have been thinking about and that matter to me.

I’ve painted our front hallway all ready to receive customers in my mini-gallery,   only to find out that I really don’t want to do this. So I am staying with this resistance and trying to trust what it might be trying to tell me.

Basically after years of soloing, I really am more interested in collaboration. I enjoy being connected to the community and area, and to other networks of creatives.

This is evidently a period of sitting tight and holding still. Waiting in alertness rather than initiating something just to feel busy or effective.

Dementia and Dementers

Here comes a rant, be warned.

When I first stumbled upon the work of John Killick and Kate Allan in  creativity and dementia care, the first thing I learned from them was never never never to refer to someone with Alzheimer’s as ’senile’ or ‘demented’.

In Holland where I live, there is an even more insidious term used, ‘dementerende’, which means ‘dementing’  or ‘dementer’ (which has its own associations from Harry Potter!, ‘dementor’)- in the process of getting demented. 

Otherwise intelligent, compassionate people across all the disciplines and organisations involved with dementia care use this unconsciously without realizing how ultimately degrading and outright damaging it is. 

Once someone has been diagnosed with dementia it is almost as if they’ve lost the right to define their own identity,  (paraphrased from ‘Communication and the Care of people with Dementia’, Killick and Allan). 

Repeatedly referring to someone as a ‘dementer’ ( I have a one page brochure on ‘Activities for Dementers’ here from the national Alzheimer Non-Profit which uses the term 5 times, interspersed with ‘patient’), is defining them exclusively by their illness. It effectively wipes away any trace of personhood. On the other hand if you simply say, ‘person with dementia’, as you would say ‘person with cancer’ or any other disease, you address the wholeness of the person first, and the illness second. Or if you are a doctor who must use the term a lot, then PWD (person with dementia) , or Dutch MMD  would work too.

This depersonalizing of people with dementia is a grave violation of human rights. It makes possible situations like the one I heard of near here, where a beautifully situated waterside psychiatric nursing home is getting gutted, the residents moved to a less idyllic location, and apartments are being built because, ‘The patients don’t know the difference anyway and can’t appreciate the scenery’. Need I say more?

 

Dementia activity tip- Scaling activities

The simplest things can be the most rewarding. A friend gave me an atelier route booklet in which all the photos were printed in black and white.  It came with a pack of coloured photographs with self-adhesive backing that you could match up with the correct black & white photos in the book and stick in yourself.

I made this booklet into an activity on 3 different levels with 3 different residents today.

1 With Mr. M. who doesn’t understand the content at all, we simply matched two colour photos to the right black and white ones. He needed assistance with that, but he helped me peel the backings away, and after I placed them, he patted the corners down.

2 With Mrs. R. we talked about the various artworks pictured and easily matched up the coloured to the black and white photos.

3 With Mrs. B. who has excellent understanding, we discussed the route, the art and the artists, and sticking the photos in was simply a side issue. However, since she can’t use her hands well, we peeled off the backings together and stuck them down together.

I loved this activity, it was so elegant and simple and satisfying. I will have to design more similar projects where simple images can be matched up and stuck on, without scissors, glue or anything really!

Follow-up to Activity 1

At first Mrs. V. didn’t seem overly interested in the folder I made her.  But later in the afternoon she did become fully occupied in arranging the  contents. Since I was working with a group in another lounge, I could only look in occasionally.

Before I left, I peeked in again, and the folder was put aside. I opened it and perfectly placed among the papers, was…..a slice of fresh pear.

Well, at least it was being used!

Activity Tip 1 (dementia)

Outside and inside of folder for Mrs. V

Mrs. V was a dressmaker in her life before being institutionalized. She is very neat and precise and likes arranging objects, folding cloth, smoothing wrinkles out, and squaring pieces of paper off against table edges.  When given sewing materials, she plays with them, but seems uninterested or unable to use them. For instance, she wraps the thread tightly around the needle again and again until the needle is hidden.

Last week she found a folder of mine and went through all the pages and organized them. At the end of the day I had to ask for it back, but it gave me an idea.

So I made the folder above for her. It is low-to-no cost and easy to do.

Here are the contents:  old business letters, colourful test sheets for monoprint making, a colour sample page from a brochure for laminated plastic counters, a few calendar pages from this year, etc. The pocket at the left was made by glueing an envelope to the inside cover and filling it with colourful postcards and scraps of coloured paper. There are 4 paper clips (only include these if the person is not prone to putting things in her mouth) as well as a large paper clip with rubber bands and the starfish gift tag.    The other gift tag is revealed by pulling the blue ribbon (see above image ).

This afternoon I will leave it on the table for her to find and see how she responds.

Art and dementia care II

In dementia care, I don’t accept the convential assumptions about the limitations of someone with the condition. As an artist I look first at the person not the disease, and secondly I focus on potentials and build on those.

Another helpful skill that transfers easily from art to care (and isn’t art a form of caring in itself?) is accepting something at face value and appreciating its intrinsic worth.
For example:

Situation 1
A member of staff gives a person with dementia a pencil and paper in the hope that he will write or draw. When the person starts to wind his tie around it, she gently stops him and takes the pencil away, perhaps trying another tool.

Situation 2
An artist or other person trained in creative thinking watches what the man does with the pencil and the tie. She notes the interest in the object and that there was some pleasure in the action of wrapping.
If it were me, I would provide dowels of different thicknesses and some string, wool and other cord. I would sit and accompany the person in wrapping cord around sticks and I think they would gain satisfaction and interest in the resulting object.

Art/care basics:
full attention for the subject/person; open attitude free of judgement; playful experimental stance; willingness to risk and learn from the situation; inventiveness; and appreciation for what is, for the moment, and for the magic of the encounter.

Art and dementia care I

The reason why it isn’t such a big leap from drawing to dementia care is that art is an encounter. It doesn’t matter if the encounter happens on the page or between people.

A meeting between people is relationship and relationship is the basis of care. Without it, certainly in dementia care, there is only custodial maintenance of a physical body- feeding, cleaning,clothing, exercising, etc. (Jitka M. Zgola, Care that Works). Peoples’ emotional, spiritual and social needs have to met as well. The arts can provide ways to do this.

Because dementia is such a complex and unpredictable condition, people working in the healthcare system resort to protocols to give them security in dealing with the affected person.  But in my experience, the minute I say, ‘I know’, or, ‘He always does that, it doesn’t mean anything’, I have shut off a vital source of new information.
So starting from ,’I don’t know’, just like with drawing, is the most creative and ultimately caring stance.

I think artists learn early on to be comfortable with uncertainty and even with chaos. Every book, painting or sculpture goes through a period where it is unresolved and you have to sit with that discomfort until the next step reveals itself. If you are truly exploring new territory with your work, you will have to continually take risks.
The same is true in dementia care; a person is a living, changing entity, so every moment is new territory. And discoveries are constantly being made.

Artists are used to seeing familiar things in a new light. So when someone who has lost a lot of their vocabulary starts to use other words, I appreciate their courage and inventiveness in finding new ways to communicate. I can often sense the poetic or symbolic meaning behind the words. Families say their loved one is speaking nonsense, but I always go from the assumption that every gesture and word has a meaning and it is my responsibility to interpret it.

continued in part II