Our nursing center residents are getting paintings ready for a public art show. They needed frames. A carpenter in our town who has done alot of work in building houses, brought his tools and volunteered his time to help us make the frames. He had scraps of woodwork and even some old wooden fencing that he had routed for framing. That is what we used. They are beautiful. Now we are ready to stain them.
Games can happen in the moment….unplanned and wonderfully interactive. At Parkview Nursing Center many were milling around waiting for supper. I dug out a container of “things” that could be used for rhythm sounds. One was an old Ball jar of all kinds of marbles. Shaking it made a wonderful sound to go with the songs we were coming up with. It wasn’t long before Ben started taking the marbles out to see what they would sound like if you dropped them in a metal pan. Before long, the washtub that we were using for a drum ended up in the middle of the floor and the marbles were divided up and we were seeing how many could hit the tub with the marbles. If you got a hit, everyone knew it because of the wonderful sound it made. One person said, “This is just like when we were kids…having fun with whatever you could find”
James usually sits quietly in a wheelchair in the lounge with us while we do creative things. He participates by watching. Though a vibrant and verbally expressive man at one time, he is now unable to talk much. Like many, he is grieving loss. His daughter died unexpectedly. The tears drop one by one.
I was starting to clean up the paint and put away the easels one evening. James was still there.
“Do you want to paint this time? No one is here and you can be on your own.” I explained to him that it didn’t have to be “something”. It could be emotions and colors. He could paint in the moment. That is what he did. He painted in the moment. He spent over an hour, painting and watching to see what the colors would do. He ended up with a nonobjective but very expressive painting.
I was given some art trading cards from some artists at an art show. Each little drawing was the size of a baseball card and was an original. I think it is great to trade art, but I really have enjoyed carrying those cards around and sharing them with our nursing center patients when they are just sitting around. It brings a smile, conversation, reminiscence, and color/design stimulation. A quick conversation is better than none and I would rather converse on something besides the weather or the frustrations of their limitations. I now have a large bunch of empty cards and we are making our own pocket art. Why is it so much less inhibitive when you draw small? Hmmmm. Pictured are some we have made.
It’s the “Galaxy of the Horse”. That is the name we came up with after a group painting session (10 wheelchair patients) done to the tune of the “Hallelujah Chorus”. It all began with a canvas and paint in the middle of our church time at the nursing center. “How can we reflect the “glory of God” on one large canvas”, I asked. Rainbows, fireworks, angels singing, the universe were amongst the many suggestions. We decided as a group to paint our rendition of the universe. The assignment was for each person to take one to two minutes painting with whatever color they liked and brush the strokes to the beat as I played “The Messiah”. By the time we were done, a horse started emerging. It was finished with a bridle and an eye and we had what I consider a masterpiece. If you want to see it in person, bring your sunglasses!