Art and Death: Holding Our Own

I watched this extraordinary documentary with three good friends this week. I had seen this film in a class on Caring for the Grieving last year and I was so moved I had to have my own copy. I tracked it down and made a movie night. It’s not everybody’s idea of a chick flick—but really, in a sense this is the ultimate love story and a heartbreaker that makes you happy to cry a lot.

Holding Our Own is about fabric artist Deidre Scherer who creates  “paintings” from her real life sketches of people who are dying. Her work is extraordinarily beautiful and her craft amazing in the ways she creates super-realism in portraiture using layers of fabric. But the other beauty is her belief in and her philosophy of the role that death plays in life.

The second focus of this film is the Hallowell Chorus in Burlington Vermont. Hallowell is a group of amateur and professional singers who volunteer to sing at deathbeds and in hospitals with people who are near death. Again, no, it doesn’t sound like fun but in fact this is stunning.

Watching this extraordinary film with close friends led us to an intimate conversation about our beliefs in life after death, and what we might like for our funerals and our desires for the way we’d like to experience the end of our lives.

Holding Our Own was produced by Paul Newman and it’s available from Netflix or can be purchased on Amazon. It’s a fabulous intersection of creativity and death—which is to say generation-- or life and death.

Holding Our Own: Art and Death

Tonight in our class on Death and Dying we watched an extraordinary video called “Holding Our Own”. The subtitle is “Embracing the End of Life”.

This documentary is about fabric artist Deidre Scherer who creates fabric “paintings” from real life sketches of people who are dying. Her work is extraordinarily beautiful and her craft amazing in the ways she creates super-realism in portraiture using fabric. But the other beauty is her belief and philosophy about the role that death plays in life.

The second focus of this film is the Hallowell Chorus in Burlington Vermont. Hallowell is a group of amateur and professional singers that participate in Hospice in Burlington. They come to homes and hospitals to sing to and for people who are actively dying.

These artists speak about their feelings and beliefs about death and what they have learned about their own lives thru the experience of singing for and creating art with the dying.

This video was produced by Paul Newman and it’s available from Netflix or can be purchased on Amazon. It’s a fabulous intersection of creativity and death—which is to say generation-- or life and death.

Chekhov's Double Life

Today is the birthday of Russian writer, Anton Chekhov. In addition to amazing plays and stunning short stories, he also wrote:

“Medicine is my lawful wife. Literature is my mistress.”

Art and Courage

This has been my arts week. New York City for museums and dance and an absolute miracle of good luck at the theater. I scored the last—the very last --ticket for the opening night of Boris Godunov –and it turned out that the very last ticket was in first row center. It was a guest or reviewer ticket and I got it. The play was wonderful, the staging stunning—being in the first row put me in the jury box for this production which turns on the audience at the end.

But the thing that really has stayed with me since coming home from New York is the courage of the artists I experienced this week. Declan Donnelan, who directed “Boris” got to take a rousing curtain call on opening night and I looked at this 55 year old man imagining the choices that he has made in the last 30 years: a career in theater, in theater that is not “popular”, to work on the edges and take creative and therefore financial and therefore personal risks. Are a curtain call and a great big review in the New York Times compensation? Does compensation even come into the equation? Does he feel courageous? Or creative? Or is that my imagining for him? My projection?

Where do we take courage in our lives? The bumper sticker advocates for daily acts of kindness. Maybe we need small acts of courage each day and kindness will take care of itself.

Starry Starry Night

I went to the Van Gogh exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art. His most famous painting, “Starry Night” was in a room by itself. Sadly, it is impossible to look at Van Gogh painting with out hearing Don McLean on the internal sound track in my head. The song just came. I fought it, then I let it be. There is a cultural collision: painter and song writer; a song about a painter and when we see the painting we hear the song.

Van Gogh said, “When I feel the need for religion I go outside to paint the stars.”

I realized, standing in that gallery, that when I feel the need for faith and consolation I go to art museums. I always find comfort, quiet and reassurance. I am held together by the power of art. If there is not a God then art will save me. But how could there be art if there is not something bigger and even more creative.