This is my grandma: Elouise Ethel Laverne Holmquist. For the last few years, I have watched as my grandma's Alzheimer's has swiftly taken away her ability to make new memories. That's the thing about Alzheimers-- it allows you to remember obscure details of the past, but it makes it hard to remember what you did that morning, or that your husband has been gone for 11 years. I chose to show you two pictures--one that has my grandma in it so that you can see how lovely she is, and one that shows a picture that she painted while we were using some watercolors one day.We have the newspaper delivered to her everyday now. I think that the familiarity of it--the black and white images, the typeface, the texture, the bold headlines--all provide a sensory experience for her that allows some routine back into her drifting, lonely days.
Sometimes I try art-related activities with her to see if this different form of communication will allow her to recover some of her lost memory, or just to have some stimulation introduced into her day. The first thing I tried was something called Reminiscence Therapy. It's very simple in theory; basically, you use visual representations of the past to evoke conversation and to recall memories. Since those who suffer from Alzheimer's are often able to recall their childhood with more ease then their present, it can be a calming activity for them. You can do something like a shoe box filled with things that would remind them of the era that they grew up in; or, you can put together a photo album of pictures that include images of the person that you are showing the photographs to. The photo album was the path that I chose to take. It brought me great happiness to see that my grandma was healthy and happy at one point, and I think it made my grandma happy too.
The second thing I tried can be seen above in the painting that my grandma made. I wasn't sure how painting would go--I'm not exactly comfortable with paint myself, but since my grandma was more nervous about it than I was, it was easy to pretend like I knew what I was doing. I think I painted a tree...my fall-back idea. My grandma, however, started with a house. She started painting the house while viciously critiquing her work. (Now you see where I get it.) She then moved to making jokes about her house. I don't know if you can read it, but she painted the words "No less than 1 million bucks" in reference to her painted home. After this, she pushed her painting away, and then soon pulled it back to write "failure" (underlined and in red) at the bottom of her painting. I felt sad to see this. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised seeing as how I know how hard my grandma is on herself, but I don't think that she would have ever said that out loud.
As someone going into art education, I know that there is a very good chance that I will learn things that will make me very sad (or angry) about my students' lives through their artwork. Even though it scares me, I feel privileged to be in a position that allows me to work for change.
I thought it was a very nice house that my grandma painted.
This is a reminder that pictures can show just as much as words on a piece of paper. I think that children in art class sometimes show their emotions through drawings. As we become teachers, we will need to recognize signs of children's feelings and emotions and ensure they are safe and healthy. I can only imagine what it would be like for a child to draw or paint something that shows they are being hurt or that they are sad and how we will need to address the situation.
ReplyDeleteThe communication through art is a a huge form of literacy, something that I think gets overlooked. I never realized how much a picture can be read if you really look at it. I was sad to see that your grandmother wrote 'failure' on it because I thought it was quite lovely. If you take away that word, you could infer lots about what she was trying to say with the house. I don't know her, but maybe it's how she envisioned her old house or a house she would have liked. We don't know, but art has a way of showing a different side to people.
I have never had a family member with Alzheimer's but I think that using pictures and creating memories through paintings and drawings is a great way to communicate with that person.
I can add that doing art often creates a climate in which young kids (and now I see older adults, too) really open up. I'm sure Jenna knows this already since she mentioned art therapy, but one way to get troubled kids talking is to give them a crayon and paper, a piece of clay, some paint and a paintbrush and not long after they start making art, their little tongues loosen up and you can make progress in helping them work through their issues. I remember doing art with my fifth graders--with everyone--and it was like we popped the cork on the whole classroom. I could eavesdrop on any group of desks and hear really special conversations among kids who might not otherwise talk to each other during the day.
ReplyDeleteSo where's the literacy here? Jenna's grandma's picture was all about communication. I chuckled when I read her caption "not less than a million" since I thought this was a sly commentary on the ridiculous price of real estate these days! We haven't talked much about writing/painting/drawing as being a process of discovery, but putting words and images on paper often starts without a clear outline and then suddenly we see our way as a result of just getting stuff down on paper.
I'm very interested in art therapy. I wonder if Jenna would like to take an available opening moment spot to talk more about this area of art eduction?
First of all, this post reminds me a lot of my grandparents. The picture of your grandma actually looks a lot like mine! Thankfully, she doesn't have Alzheimer's, but the picture that your grandma painted made me think a lot of my gradnma. Not only does her comment about selling the house for nothing left than a million seem like the kind of humor my grandma would employ, the fact that she wrote "failure" on it is something my grandma might do. Unfortunately, the older they get, the more both of my grandparents tend to make self-effacing comments, particularly my grandma. Sometimes I think that they are disappointed by the fact that they aren't able to do as much as they used to and subtle remarks are often how they choose to express their feelings. This post makes me wonder what my grandparents might paint or draw if they had the opportunity to do this activity.
ReplyDeleteI feel like pictures are a great form of expression for anyone and can bring out feelings that may be buried. I recently read an article about how children's pictures can be used in school. I chose to read it because I know that students are sometimes told to draw pictures with their vocabulary terms in order to show that they really understand what the words mean and I wanted to see if the article would talk about that. However, the article talked about how sometimes students will even hold back when doing art for fear that what they want to draw will not be accepted by the teacher. For example, one student discussed in the article didn't draw the dead deer he wanted to draw, at first, because he thought that his teacher would not like such a violent drawing. However, to him he liked hunting with his dad and a picture that may be considered violent was an expression of an activity he shared with his father.
It is important to to remember that students may hold back even in the most freeing of exressive forms and that sometimes what people draw can bring out feelings we didn't realize people had. One thing the article I read talked about was how important it can be to talk about artwork sometimes because sometimes the way we interpret things is different from what they were meant to be. Reading art is an important form of literacy to learn, but it can also be important to use other forms of literacy with art in order to get to know a student better. Giving someone the opportunity to communicate verbally or in written form about a piece of art can allow students to express even more about their artwork. It can help inform what they are trying to create.
I enjoyed this,Jenna. I understand where you get your humor! ;) Also, I wanted to agree with everyone in saying that reading pictures/paintings/sculptures is a literacy that is important but I think few appreciate. In Paris, I took many random classes, including an art history class (focused on the French, bien sur). When going around the Louvre, I realized that people (tourists) looked at the pictures and saw the beauty, but weren't reading the paintings. For example, David's Napoleon's Coronation is a popular one to see. In this painting we see Napoleon dressed as an ancient Roman emperor. Many people wouldn't know that this was painted during the neo-classical period when artists often looked for the perfection in form that is found in ancient Greek and Roman art and this is part of the reason for Napoleon's dress. It's a nod to the good ol' days of ancient Rome.
ReplyDeleteWow, Jenna. How sweet of you to take the time to "work" with your grandma. I also think that she drew a very nice house.
ReplyDeleteArt is definitely a form of literacy from which people can feel excluded. Whenever I try to make something out of nothing with paper, paint, pencils, or ink, I am always left feeling like your grandma, a "failure." It makes me think about students who struggle with reading or writing. I know that I have witnessed, in just the short amount of time that I've been in classrooms, students who have been discouraged because of their inability to produce the results they, or their teachers want.