Continuous Thread, detail, 16″ x 20″, Mixed media collage on deep wood panel
It all started with a piece of hand-dyed fabric made during a workshop in Ohio almost 10 years ago. Months ago I pulled out the box of fabrics I had made and was immediately drawn to the pattern—lace-like, cellular-like, web-like. And then in one of my braver moments (since I usually hesitate about everything) I glued it down to a blank surface. From there the beginning, simple unadorned, but already connected.
A little at the time, I added paint, a piece of a torn calendar, and words from a newspaper clipping (remember those) about the weather. I don’t believe I thought about the time factor while I was painting, but subconsciously it must have been there, why else the weather and the calendar, why not Shakespeare. Oh yes, there is a tiny bit of him as well.
I added more paint and more texture to pull these elements together, but then I left it for months before returning to finish it just a week ago. I found some more of the fabric, a little different piece with circles that seem to fit my musing. Lately, I so often find myself wanting to pull everyone and everything together ( as I know they should be) or alternatively, to escape entirely perhaps using those tiny circles to skip away from reality. But no matter, “Continuous Thread,” is finished.
The title of the piece was borrowed from Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings. In her book she refers to stories and novels following not chronology but rather “the continuous thread of revelation.”
“Remembered,” 10″ x 8″, mixed media collage on board
Make Mistakes—It Means You’ve Tried
There are laws in every state designed to protect the elderly, especially in situations where their judgment may be impaired. I was grateful to learn this when I began this caregiving process 9 years ago. My mother needed help, mine and also the help of many others. Unfortunately, few people, especially attorneys and court clerks, knew much about dementia with Lewy Bodies (LBD or DLB) at that time. They understood memory loss and Alzheimer’s, but not LBD, which is defined by fluctuation in cognitive functioning, impaired comprehension and lack of judgment. Even many physicians and directors of assisted living facilities lumped all dementia together.
When my mother was first diagnosed with LBD in 2010, I was urged to seek guardianship. I began that process immediately, but soon found that her appointed guardian ad litem (GAL) was focused on whether my mother knew what day it was, whether she could identify who was president, and whether she could perform most daily living tasks. The GAL was not really interested in whether my mother understood her long-term care benefits, could prepare her taxes, or make appropriate investments to secure her future.
Work Hard and Be Prepared for Change
Realizing that my mother needed some protection, I convinced her to give me Power of Attorney (POA) and Health Care Power of Attorney (HCPOA)—but only after she had injured her leg and could not physically get out of her apartment for several weeks. What I didn’t understand (and what is the law in my particular jurisdiction) was that POA status only gave me some control. Even though documents were filed with the court, my mother could change it without warning. Also, if my mother disagreed with a decision and could identify herself, she could reverse that decision no matter how sound the decision and how risky her own might be. Yet there was little option at this early stage.
Luckily with art there are always options. Each day I work on my paintings, filling my tables with “wet work and markings” before I begin any reading, research, or writing. I am at my best early in the morning, and unless I am working on a specific piece I make every effort just to let the paint flow and to work in the moment. When I make a mistake, I am prepared to use my tools and my skills to change it. It’s also what you do in life
Make Connections That Are Meaningful
For five years, my mother and I just kept plodding along together for the most part. Most of her days were good, though because of her medication and diagnosis, she was limited in her activities. She did not look different, but she now had some awareness that something was wrong. She rarely wanted to go out. The Parkinsonian symptoms began to be more pronounced such as a flat expression and shuffling feet when she walked. When these symptoms occurred, I began to panic a bit. While current research does not indicate LBD is hereditary, my maternal grandmother had Parkinson’s Disease. At the very least I have a higher chance.
Everything that is happening, every worry, every concern, makes me glad for my art. I believe there is a physical connection that happens: Whatever is in my subconscious thought passes through my mind and my hands, healing me and bringing richness to the paintings themselves. Once the paintings are dry, I add another layer (perhaps something I learned reading) that may be symbolic or literal. After all, it is human nature to attempt to impose order. We want to see a pattern. We want to make sense of things even when they don’t, even when we fear our own threads are not connecting, but unraveling instead.
So I work my back and forth process, putting on a layer, taking off part of another, adding a bit of drawing or sgraffito. I am building a painting. I am constructing and describing a life.
“Water Timpani,” 48″ x 6″ square, Four-sided painting, mixed media on wood
Making Connections
You create your best art when you are focused, motivated, and care about your work. I can photograph beautiful waterfalls, lovely sunsets, and expansive views of oceans and be truly moved by these natural wonders. But my best work is not capturing the light or the movement of the water, but rather making connections—personal connections. Connections with places, sounds, smells, and memories.
When I take photograph for a study, I always try to learn something about the area, even if it’s just about the topography. When I kayaked in earlier years I knew that straight line I saw across the river was a fall line, the hard ledge across the land that indicated where the water fell vertically into a pool below. I’ve since learned a waterfall is formed when a creek or a river flows from soft rock to hard rock. And of course, the size of the fall and the formations within the fall area continue to change over time and sometimes with each season.
Noticing the Little Things
For someone with dementia, especially dementia with Lewy Bodies like my mother it is similiar. When she was first diagnosed, trips to the doctor were much the same as they had been before—except I was there to listen and guide her. Now taking my mother to the doctor requires at least four hours. Because she is a fall risk I have her transported by the assisted living facility, and I meet them there. Once we are done with the doctor and all of the various tests, I again contact the facility and they meet us to transport her back. It wasn’t always this complicated, but in the last year while she can walk with a walker, lifting her feet more than a few inches is impossible.
While I am with her at the doctor I often work in a sketchbook or play in my head, connecting the photographs I have taken to the process of caregiving, illness, and dementia. In some ways it’s easier to see the changes in land and water than in a person you care about. The changes are so small, so subtle that you dismiss them at first as just “aging.” There are no piles of dead leaves, fallen limbs, or huge boulders that alert you to the changes. But they are there. And I believe we sense the changes, although we don’t always acknowledge them.
Finding Ways to Let Go
When I get into the studio, I have learned to focus, to let go of the problems outside the door, and to hopefully find ways of putting those feelings into the artwork. So while I am applying textures with brushes and palette knives and fingers, I am both painting a river and painting a life.
Like most artists, paintings are somewhat like my children. I have a lot of time and effort and angst invested in them. So I want to send them into the world well equipped for any struggles they might encounter.
All of these are magical places. Transforming places. Since childhood, these were places that opened me to myself, soothed my soul, and offered me solace, inspiration, and just plain happiness.
“Campfire,” 11″ x 14″, Mixed media on canvas with paper, fabric, and charcoal pencil
It is a very hot July day, and I have just hiked two miles over a moderately difficult trail. Of course I hear it before I see it. That’s always the case for waterfalls, but I do not expect it to be so large and powerful. As the trail flattens out at the last rise, there is a railing. I stop immediately, finding myself being cooled and tickled by the spraying water from Rainbow Falls. It is difficult to believe something like this is in the middle of the forest in a gorge in North Carolina. A discovery all my own; a discovery shared by so many.
Peter Wohllenben, author of “The Hidden Life of Trees,” believes trees speak a “silent language,” one that communicates via smell, taste, and electrical impulses. But it is not just forests. I have also seen the ocean speak. I see people sit and stare at it for hours, bathe themselves in its saltiness, and walk its sand looking for reminders of their visit to what can only be called a sacred place. Now I know waterfalls also speak.
All of these are magical places. Transforming places. Since childhood, these were places that opened me to myself, soothed my soul, and offered me solace, inspiration, and just plain happiness. So, you can understand why I have a difficult time understanding those who would destroy it for their benefit and who would try to convince me they were actually doing it for mine.
Artists have either painted or used almost every aspect of our natural world as model or inspiration. We are quite indebted to its beauty and power. I am particularly indebted and have made a small gesture acknowledging my thankfulness. I know it’s a small gesture; “a drop in the bucket” would be the term. However, as I have noticed in many plumbing events at my house, many drops do fill a bucket. So I have aligned myself with a generous site called For Mother Nature—which links artists with those who love nature. It is not a direct sales site, but rather a network of artists who support various environmental causes with a percentage of their sales. As part of their network, I have pledged to donate 10% of all my sales to Friends of the Earth.
Friends of the Earth (https://foe.org) has been around for almost 50 years working to protect people and wildlife through systemic reforms and collaborative effort. They have grassroots groups in 77 countries and currently focus on clean energy and solutions to global warming, protecting people from toxic and new, potentially harmful technologies, and promoting smarter, low-pollution transportation alternatives. They also believe that the fight for justice and the movement to protect the health of the planet are part of the same struggle.
Shifting Fragments, 16″ x 16,” Mixed media painting with collage on deep wood panel
We all know you can’t prepare for everything. We want change that is gradual and slow so we can see it coming, but life has way of sideswiping you when you least expect it.
Almost 6 years ago my husband had a “heart incident” as we like to call it. His heart fluttered, skipped a beat and threw a small clot. Even the paramedics could find nothing wrong when they arrived, but he felt a pain like “toothache” in his chest. So just to be safe he went to the hospital. While there was no damage, we discovered that sometimes he has an irregular heartbeat. “Sometimes” was really hard to deal with at first, but now after so much time he just exercises, eats right, and carries nitroglycerine in his pocket.
I was reminded again of how slowly, and quickly, things change and could change, while hiking the trails in Stone Mountain State Park. The large rock faces with layers and splits big enough for climbing were formed by geological exfoliation. While they seem impenetrable, as if they will be there for thousands of years, the reality may be different. The change to these rocks is climate related and normally happens very slowly, but according to the park rangers because we don’t know the depth of the splits there is always the risk that rocks, particularly those with vertical and horizontal cracks, will shatter and slide. Of course, should there be an earthquake, they could crumble very quickly.
It’s both a bit scary and a bit comforting how human life parallels nature. Mostly, the changes are gradual, but we are all shifting.
“Untitled,” 16″ x 20,” mixed media collage on deep panel
The week has just started and I am tired. To say it has been difficult to concentrate on art the last few weeks is well…an understatement. Illness, my own upper respiratory infection and my elderly mother’s increasing anxiety, has consumed me.
Finding myself the bad guy is not a new role, just one that comes and goes. And no matter how you feel at the moment, you really don’t want it to return. You want all hatchets buried, all peace pipes smoked. But usually, life doesn’t work that way even with the most optimistic outlooks. To keep my own head about me, I paint.
Lately, I have been working on paper, which doesn’t create my usual amount of texture. But it still allows quite a bit, just more visual than tactile. And because there is less preparation, I can work in the moment. Luckily, most of the layers also dry a bit more quickly as well.
This one, as yet untitled, is likely part of a new series. I feel myself moving a brush, a pencil over the paper as if it is a landscape I want to explore—even though there is no definite destination.
Do we need one? Can’t we just begin a journey and see what will happen, where we will go if we follow a line?
For someone who spent a lot years working with words, I find that many,many times what I tried to say was not what was heard. Then every once in a while, I stop and say nothing, and my silence is taken as acquiesce as if I don’t care. When considering the vitriol of our current elections, I can’t help but wonder if the Saxon derivation of much of our language has somehow imparted a measure of staccato belligerence into our speech.
Words are certainly powerful. They can divide us or bring us closer together. They can draw a line in the sand that can’t be crossed—at least not without anger and resentment. Of course our world would be less civilized without some verbal and physical boundaries, but the question is whether those boundaries can be crossed to pull us together as communities. Clearly we can’t do this without the appropriate words. Learning how to communicate what you mean and what you feel is not something that happens when we reach some magic age. We must continue to learn, change, and occasionally question the wisdom of our boundaries.
“Water Timpani I” and “Water Timpani I” detail, four-sided, 48″ x 6″ x 6″ x 6″ x 6″
“Water Timpani I” and “Water Timpani I” detail, four-sided, 48″ x 6″ x 6″ x 6″ x 6″
I’ve spent a lot of time in the woods, and the time I’ve spent lately has included more listening. That means I’ve heard the difference in the sounds of water—depending on whether it is a small stream, a river, or a waterfall.
The connection between timpani or kettledrums came when viewing a PBS film on crafts that talked about how different drumsticks change the sound of the drum. Some sticks are made with harder tip, others have more, and softer felt. This last trip to the woods I’ve tried to notice why the sound of the water might be different. Is it the force of the water, the height of the waterfall, the number and type of rocks below the water, or even how those rocks or logs lay in the stream or river?
So the start of the 4-sided painting has become the first in a series about the sound of water. I love what painting and listening teaches me. Even a small waterfall can rumble.
This small piece started with a demo of a photo transfer. I can never bear just to throw something away, so my boy with the hat began to tell his story. He’s not looking at the camera. Like most children he is looking ahead—to tomorrow, to next week, to when he is big.
Sometimes I think I put too much in a painting. Wanting to keep the focus on the image, I only put in some texture and a horizon line.
Patricia Steele Raible 