Making Art With Seniors

Over the course of a year and a half, I did monthly art workshops at a local seniors' home. Having no previous experience working with seniors, it was a pretty big learning curve. I had to design activities that could be completed in 1-1.5 hours, with little money for materials; sometimes there were three participants, other times there were up to 15. The levels of ability were extremely mixed, from fairly keen and competent to those who physically struggled to hold a paintbrush, or were unable to focus on any given task. I'd never worked with people with Alzheimers or dementia, and at first it was a bit intimidating. But over the course of these workshops I really got to know some of these seniors, and I enjoyed hanging out with them and trying to offer them interesting experiences. 

The first time I went to the home, my husband Milé came with me. I was in the throes of organizing the first Firelight Lantern Festival, so of course we made a lantern! I made the structure in advance, and the group helped cover it with tissue paper. I think it turned out pretty great!

Sticking with the theme of "do what you know," the next project we did was a scarecrow. I've helped make a lot of these at Small Pond's annual Scarecrow Festival. I brought a bunch of clothes that the seniors could choose from, and they helped stuff the guy full of straw. They named him Marcel, and I delighted them with spinning him around like a dance partner. Fun!

One of our other annual festivals is Stickfest, and I always have a collection of big beautiful beach sticks on hand. The seniors each painted one or two sticks; I whisked the sticks away and strung them into this mobile before returning it to the home.

We did two large-ish paint chip collages, inspired by a substantial donation of paint chips!

These collages were some of my favourite projects, as they easily accommodated a large group of people and a wide range of abilities. I used corrugated plastic for the base.

For Halloween we made these lanterns from mason jars. This was a bit tricky for those with motor skill issues and required quite a bit of assistance from me and the staff. Tutorial here.

We did a few different drawing projects. I love the brightness of chalk pastels.

For Easter I made these salt-dough egg ornaments; I made my own cookie cutter from a tin can. When they came out of the oven they looked an awful lot like cookies, so I gave them a bright base coat before giving them out to the seniors for them to decorate.

Someone still tried to eat one. Whoops...

Our last project was a papier-mâché sculpture called The Wishing Tree, inspired by the story of a very special tree in Prince Edward County. I brought in the foundation of the sculpture, made from cardboard and masking tape, and over the course of three sessions we applied the papier-mâché, painted it, affixed the leaves and made a collage base from those very useful paint chips.

What I will remember most from these workshops were the conversations we had; about life and about art. There was one woman who was a somewhat reluctant participant in some of these workshops; reluctant because she had been a professional artist in her day, and she thought these projects were perhaps beneath her. She showed me some of her work, and when she did participate she made great contributions. I will never forget how one day she looked at me and said, "You remind me so much of myself." Maybe one day I'll be in her place, and an artist will come to visit...

Lighting Fall Fires

This fall Small Pond has been positively abuzz with activity. I've been working like mad on my project Puppets Without Borders… and then there was Stickfest… but oh no, that is not all! A few weeks ago we hosted the Experimental Lantern Laboratory, which was the first creative step in what will become the inaugural Firelight Lantern Festival in the works for April 2013. We brought together artists and community members in a free-form workshop, where they could play around with the materials and make anything they wanted.

Many worked in pairs; everything is more fun with a friend.

In the month prior to the festival, these creative souls will be our workshop leaders, going out into the community, hosting 20 workshops around Prince Edward County. They’ll be working with people of all ages to create lanterns which everyone will bring to the festival and carry in the procession. Other lanterns will be made to hang in shop windows on Main Street Picton.

We call ourselves The Department of Illumination. Our goal is to bring our community together and light up the night with creativity. If this initial workshop is anything to go by, I think that we’re in for an amazingly fun time.

Back row, L to R: Norman Markland, Nella Casson, Krista Dalby, Shelby Larner, Susanne Larner, Liz Zylstra.

Front row, L to R: Mile Murtanovski, Chrissy Poitras, Kyle Topping

This past weekend we hosted a writer’s retreat let by Chris Kay Fraser of Firefly Creative Writing, called “Spark Your Creative Fires for Fall.” With eight participants, including myself, it was a weekend filled with not just words on the page, but also with great kindness – both to each other, and to our creative selves.

Chris led us through a series of writing exercises and prompts designed to get our engines running.

There were two periods of completely silent writing time, where we were encouraged to not even make eye contact with one another, and were free to work on whatever we liked.

I love having a house full of writers. People moving about in silence, respecting the tranquility of others and finding space for their own thoughts. The constant flow of caffeinated beverages, keeping those big, beautiful ideas silently blooming in every corner of the house, the yard, the grounds. What I will remember most was on the second night, when the silence was broken, and people shared the stories and poems they'd written. It was very moving to listen to all of these incredible, vivid, inner worlds bursting out into the world for the first time. We discussed how we could tell when a piece of writing was “good,” and one of the writers said, “I know a piece of writing is good when it makes me want to cry.” I sense that I wasn't the only one who had a lump in their throat that night.

On our last morning together, and as our last act as a group, we each wrote on a rock a few words that were meaningful to us.

We walked out to the woods, relishing these last moments as our time together drew to a close. We placed our rocks in the forest, amongst the other art on the artists’ trail.

Then Chris gave us one last gift, reading us a poem, stoking the fires within us with one last breath of wisdom and beauty.

Chris reads us one last poem

Although autumn is often thought of as a time of endings, this year the fall seems rich with new beginnings; small, precious fires that will keep us warm all winter long.