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Textile art is not something I see a lot of, so had to share this.

Jacqui Parkinson, also known as Jacqui Frost, is a textile artist who lives in Devon, England. In 2007 she lost her first husband, Rev. Rob Frost to cancer. In the midst of her isolating grief, she felt the urge to do something both artistically and physically. She took up running and during those long runs had the time to start processing ideas to link her grief experience into art.

She initially used vintage handkerchiefs, stitching words and ideas onto it like a canvas. The colors were mostly blacks, grays, and reds and when finished the handkerchiefs were stretched and then fastened to metal frames and exhibited in Exeter Cathedral in Devon.

The response was so positive, many people identifying with the images and words, that photographs of the textiles were taken and a book entitled "Good Grief?" was published by Threads Publishing. The book includes the photographs of the textiles, but also a textile figure, lino prints and words all working together to communicate the pain of Jacqui's personal journey.

The words that match the textile art are more like poems, for example a detail photograph of a textile piece with a clock bordered by the words 'time does not heal' and in red large print "presentfuture" that is stitched below has an adjacent page with the written words, "Thoughts of ageing alone into the years ahead so strange/ unbelievable /a borderless page with no words/ a stiff canvas with no paint/ a stretch of fabric with no stitch/ so how to begin the years ahead/ alone."

In the past we've mentioned other artists who use a medium reflective of grief itself, like Motoi Yamamoto who uses salt, representing tears of grief and Julie Williams who photographs water, again reflective of tears.  Here is yet another artist, using handkerchiefs which themselves symbolize grief.

To see sample pages of Jacqui's book follow this link.  Photographs of the textiles displayed in the cathedral exhibition can be seen here.

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This is a unique one, and something I stumbled upon listening to an old podcast from Radiolab produced by NPR.

There is a town in France, situated in the suburbs of Paris called Garches. The town has a large trauma hospital, Raymond Poincare, where most of the vehicle accidents come to be treated. Unlike other hospitals that have similar amounts of death from chronic disease and trauma, this hospital has mostly trauma related deaths. In fact approximately 450 deaths a year from injuries. The pathologist began to notice that the trauma deaths had a negative impact on the family members ability to grieve.  Family members walking into this hospital were in shock, and came to claim the bodies of loved ones who were very much alive the last time they were seen.

Thus, a space was created in attempts to palliate the shock. It is both a chapel and a  morgue, where the body is placed for the family to view and say goodbye. The name of this room is Salle Des Departs (translated departure hall or room).  The room was designed by Italian artist Ettore Spalletti, and is meant to be relaxing and beautiful with blue tones and minimalism elements.  The space needed more than calming hues, so two music compositions were commissioned from David Lang and Robin Rimbaud (aka Scanner) to be played in the background if the family chose.

Interestingly, both Lang and Scanner had experiences with traumatic deaths in their past. Scanner, who's father had died in a motorcycle accident, identified with how the lack of formal mourning affected his family and used his own experience in his piece.

Lang, too, was very thoughtful in his work, writing a piece that could not be reproduced in a live setting. He felt that since the piece was about death, to be able to produce it in a live setting would be cheating. His instructions on the sheet music says "like angels", and through the production process, the female chorus never takes a breath, singing in an eternal, beyond human.

He said in the Radiolab episode, "I was trying to make the environment, that would have been the right environment for the experiences that I have already had."  He had to be careful, though, as music so powerfully can manipulate our emotions. He acknowledges this challenge saying, ""Music...bypasses all of your normal protection mechanisms, it goes to the place of you which is not dealing with language or rationality. ... it has this ability to go around all of your defenses. I wanted to make something which gave people permission to examine which way they wanted to go with their emotions."

I've listened to both pieces, which are very different. I wonder if families choose, or if one piece is always played first if they ask for music? In Scanner's piece you hear different voices, water, insects and birds pierced occasionally with synthesized keyboard music, whereas Lang's piece is simply 3 Cello's and female chorus.

You can listen to David Lang's "Departs" with some photos of the Salle Des Departs on Vimeo here.  To listen to the Radiolab podcast follow this link. The Scanner piece, "Channel of Flight" can be listened to if you have RealPlayer through a download here.

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Annie Tempest is a British cartoonist by trade, the author of  Tottering-by-Gently, a strip that runs in the UK magazine Country Life.  Most recently, however, she's moved into sculpting and had an exhibition in London this past month called "Play as Cast"

Communication

Her sculpting, like so many other artists, became a way to deal with the grief of the death of her son.  Freddy Tempest McConnel died last May, at the age of 18, of a heroin overdose. Annie said in an interview with Louette Harding of The Daily Mail,  "That's how I've been dealing with it. I haven't seen therapists; it's sculpting that has kept me going. Because it wasn't just on 28 May and afterwards; before that, we'd been through the highs and lows of recovery and relapse...It's been hope, crash, hope, crash - heights as well as depths... my sculpture has helped me through."

How many of our patients and families use those same terms dealing with terminal illness? "Hope, crash, hope, crash..." they talk about the roller coaster they're on, even in the last days.

Anguish

 One piece that is not on display is something she did right before he died and about which she had her last conversation with her son.  She says of the piece, "A week before Freddy's death, I knew in my heart he was gone.." She describes it as, "Two figures, fighting to hold on and to let go. It's a goodbye...It looks like a fight, but it's also a hug...It's two adults hugging and pushing. I was a primal scream." She actually sent her son a picture of the piece and his emailed reply to that was her last communication with him, he wrote "Mum, I absolutely understand and love your sculpture, I'm sorry. I so want to beat this. Love, Fred."

Solace and Seclusion

Although I haven't seen the piece, I think this too would be something our patient's families would resonate with.  There is a pushing and pulling when a loved one dies; we want them to stay but don't want them to suffer - what a great visual of a hug/push.

Each of the pieces communicates so well with the use of three dimensional space. I encourage you to see all of the images from the gallery at this link.


As an aside. Freddy was an aspiring musician, and tragically one of the songs he wrote, "Will You Remember Me" is about an early death. You can listen to this and other songs at http://soundcloud.com/user7770177


To read more from the interview with Louette Harding go here. 

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When composer Nigel Westlake's 21 year old son was suddenly and tragically killed in 2008, he didn't think he'd be able to write music again.  An entire year went by before Westlake realized he couldn't spend the rest of his life stuck in grief.

Walking back into the studio again after so much time, he found a previously written piece lying on his desk called Missa Solis.  He'd forgotten about the piece and began thumbing through it again, finding an old Italian poem he had put to music about the sun.  It reads, "My joy is born every time I gaze at my beautiful sun, but my life dies when I cannot look at it. For the very sight is bliss to me. Oh sun, immortal life giver, do not hide, for I know that when I am unable to see you, life could not be worse."

In his current grief stricken state, the context changed.  All he could think about was his son, the similarities to the sun could not be ignored.  He began to write and work again, using this poem as a starting point. Daily his work became like therapy, a way to put the spirit of his son to rest.

The orchestral requiem premiered in October 2011 with the Sydney Symphony, but has just recently won Australia's Orchestral Work of the Year.

The work is in 8 movements, lasting 44 minutes. It really is breathtaking, and I encourage you to listen to it in its entirety.  You can watch video from the premiere from BigPond.com by following this link.

The titles of the movements are as follows: Prologue, At the Edge, Song of Transience, Aurora, Nasce la gioia mia, Hymn to the Atan, Sidereus Nuncius, and O Sol Almo Imortal.  


Some of the themes are less subtle when dealing with death, as the Song of Transience which is an excerpt from the Tibetan book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche. There is a solo in this movement, by a young male treble singer. I couldn't help but think of Westlake's own son as the boy sang.  To read more notes from each movement visit this website written by Westlake himself.

If you cannot listen to the entire orchestral work, YouTube does have snippets from the 5th movement and the final movement.  You can hear the climactic choral section below, interspersed with percussion that reminds one of fireworks or gunshots. Just when you think it is over a sudden quiet and peaceful ending with the strings section occurs, symbolizing a laying to rest.


Once again, from death, art has been created. I'm grateful to artists like Nigel Westlake for courageously allowing us to experience the process.

*photo from the Australian Broadcasting Network piece on Nigel Westlake. 

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Araya Rasdjarmrearnsook is an art teacher and one of Thailand's' foremost female artists.  She had her first solo show in New York last month with a video exhibition showing historic art history pieces from western culture to rural and religious people in Thailand in an exhibit titled "Two Planets/ Village and Elsewhere"

However, for me, it is her previous work I wanted to touch on for this post.  Araya first made headlines in the US with an group exhibit in 1996. More controversy came in late 1990's and early 2000's when her exhibits began incorporating corpses.

In works such as "The Class II" Araya is seen on video lecturing a classroom of corpses. The topic for this lifeless class? Death.  You'll see her ask the dead bodies, "Did you die in autumn?"  You can see this video on YouTube here. I was struck by the seriousness of her tone as she interacts with the class on a topic they surely must know.




 In "Conversations I, II and III" she meanders through a room of corpses humming.  In "This is Our Creations" she actually lies down next to the bodies and is heard saying, "I came here to know you, lying here motionless. Once my father sent me a postcard from very far away. Its sentence: only a still pond can reflect the starts."

My first thought was, what experiences has this woman had with death that has led her to express herself in this way? I had to do much searching to find the answer, but in an interview in 2005 with Oliver Benjamin, she told her story.

Her father was a physician, and at the age of 3, as her mother labored in childbirth with her father as physician, her mother died.  A week later the young sister born also died. In the following 3 years she lost a step sister aged 18 months, her grandmother and great grandmother. As she said in her interview, "From this reason, I guess, I have been interested in examining death"

When you look back, even to her etching "The Dream of Mother" in 1990,  you can see the processing of her life events.

Sometime in there, her father then died of cancer. In response, new pieces such as "The Dinner with Cancer I" and "Th Dinner with Cancer II" were done.

Araya has used art as a way to deal with death. Specifically in her words, "I choose art as process of thought for the meaning of death".  Araya spoke of that meaning in an interview with Brian Curtin in 2007 saying "In reality, life and death should not be understood as opposites. People deal with death by trying to hide it. They hide death behind ritual or hope to prevent it with medicine. I want people to have more imagination and confront reality!"

In the interview with Oliver Benjamin in 2005 she concluded talking about the topic with, "I'm tired of death! May be too much."  That's the goal isn't it? To work with our patients and families to process through it? For now the artist does seem done with death, as her art has moved on to exploration of different ideas.

Whether you are repelled or connected to Araya's work with death, it's what I love about art - a vehicle to express ideas which then stimulate the viewers mind.

To see works listed up until 2002 visit this site. For those 2002 and on visit here.


Oliver Benjamin interview published in Citylife magazine Oct. 2005
Brian Curtin interview published in Art Signal Oct. 2007
Works in order of appearance "Conversation I" (2005),  "The Dream of Mother" (1990) and "The Dinner with Cancer I" (1993)

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Christian Wiman, editor of  Poetry magazine since 2003, was recently interviewed by Bill Moyers about his journey with cancer, falling in love and finding faith in the midst of death. Wiman was diagnosed with Waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia 6 years ago.  He's recently undergone a bone marrow transplant and tells Moyers he's in the "wait and see" phase.

As only a poet can do, Wiman's experience of being in danger of dying has allowed him to capture sentiments many of our dying patients may identify with.  His latest book of poems, "Every Riven Thing" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010) captures these moments so artistically that it's easy to resonate with each word.

In the interview with Moyers found here, Wiman reads a poem he wrote while in the hospital. It was right before chemotherapy started, and written in just one day.

It begins,  "Love's last urgency/ is earth and grief is all/ gravity and the long fall/ always back to earliest/ hours that exist/ nowhere but in one's brain."

The poem later ends with "mystery mastering fear,/ so young, standing unstung/ under what survives of sky./ I learned too late how to live./ Child, teach me how to die."


Wiman goes on to talk about the opening line of the poem saying, "I think there's a notion that  when you're sick, when you're in danger of dying, that you want to get beyond. You know, you would think you want experience that takes you beyond earth. You want some since of an afterlife or ...beyond. But My experience has been the opposite, that when you feel threatened, what, in fact, you want is the earth. You want concreteness.That's what rescues you."

How profound. I also identified with the concept of going back to "earliest hours that exist", don't we experience this in palliative care? We often counsel families to not be alarmed when hearing a strange story from a loved one. It actually may be a memory that existed, "nowhere but in one's brain."

Besides being confronted with mortality, Wiman has also experienced excruciating pain throughout his disease process and treatment. He said that this even more than the idea of death has impacted him.

An essay he wrote related to pain was published in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin for Winter/Spring 2012  and Wiman read it during the interview. In the words below I am struck with his isolation but also with the final effect of desire for God in the aftermath.

"Six years have passed since I wrote the first words of these notes. I have been in and out of treatment, in and out of the hospital. I have had bones die; joints lock in my face and arms and legs so that I could not eat, could not walk; cancer pack[ed] my marrow to the point that it began to expand excruciatingly inside my bones. I ... filled my body with mouse antibodies, small molecules, chemotherapies eating into me like animate acids. I have passed through pain I could never have imagined, pain that seemed to incinerate all my thoughts of God and leave me sitting there in the ashes, alone. I have been islanded even from my wife, though her love was constant, as was mine. I have come back, for now, even hungrier for God, for Christ, for all the difficult bliss of this life I have been given. But there is great weariness too. And fear. And fury."

Thanks to Chris Okon for steering me to the interview. For those, like me, who had not read Christian Wiman's poetry or prose, this will be someone to add to your collection.

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I don't really mean to be on a skeleton kick... but was exploring this very old work done by Hans Holbein the Younger in the 1500's, and thought I'd share it.

Holbein, a German artist, was really known in the 16th century as one of the great portraitists of his time. Many of his portraits, such as of Sir Thomas More and Henry VIII are housed in the great museums of the world.

However, at least initially in his career, much of his money was made doing religious commissions. These works were often done as woodcuts for easy reproducible printing. The work I found interesting was his "The Dance of Death" published in 1538.

Experts agree the engravings were done 12 years earlier in 1526, which was very close to the reformation and peasants' rebellions of 1524.  These events are reflected in the thematic elements of justice in his work, as well as the top down approach of death's activities.  The message is very clear; summed up in the words from the book, "De la Necessite de la Mort qui ne laisse riens estre pardurable" translated "The necessity of death leaves nothing and is eternal". Another way of saying this is, no one will escape death.

The book consists of a series of 41 woodcuts depicting death as a skeleton robbing people of life in the midst of every day activities.  The first 4 woodcuts are regarding Adam and Eve, as if to provide the foundation of death itself. Then symbolically all people are included, starting from the most powerful (the Pope) to the lowliest (a child). Accompanying each etching are Latin quotes based on scripture.


I enjoyed scrolling through the images as they provide a glimpse of societal structure at the time.  There are duchesses, emperors, attorneys, doctors, senators, clergy, etc. Holbein is known for his symbolism as well as sarcasm, so many of the pictures depict this. For instance the nun is caught with a lover, as death extinguishes the religious candle. The doctor is depicted with death having brought him a dying patient, as if to mock the doctor's attempts at staving off death.

Besides this rich body of work, there was a version of this dance of death done as an alphabet by Holbein in 1526 but not published until 1538.  The same characters from the book are depicted with letters of the alphabet. Wouldn't this be a nice children's learning tool?

Take some time to scroll through the work in entirety on the Project Gutenberg site.  This other web site has the alphabet and contrasts each letter to the referenced Dance of Death book image.

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Art collector Richard Harris, while visiting an art fair in 2001 in the Netherlands about the inevitability of death, had an epiphany of sorts. Why not start collecting art that deals with death as its theme? More than a decade later Harris now owns over 1500 pieces of art and artifacts that deal with the subject of death.  I think Harris should be an honorary pallimed member, since our mission has been to explore all things art and humanities, related to the subject of death.

Harris's art works are really a Memento Mori or "remember you will die" collection. The representation of death is that of a skeleton, rather than a depiction of the process of dying itself. The symbolism still invites the viewer to examine death and contemplate mortality, while still being somewhat removed.  Harris, age 74, told an interviewer that the collection also provides him with inspiration, he said that, "before I do die, before death does come to me...I should put together something of an overall view of death from my perspective."

The collection spans over 6,000 years in time, with historical as well as contemporary works. There are artifacts and photographs and cultural materials all exploring death. Starting January 28 and running through July 8 some of Harris's massive collection will be displayed at the Chicago Cultural Center in an exhibit entitled, "Morbid Curiosity: The Richard Harris Collection"

To read more about the exhibit and learn more about Richard Harris visit the Chicago Cultural Center.  To see a few more images of his collection go here.

 All images are part of the Richard Harris Collection. 

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I am often drawn to artists who have experienced death and then use their work to process the loss.  Julie Williams is just such a person.  She is an Australian photo-artist, who in 2004 lost her partner.  In an effort to work through her grief, Williams began to visit familiar places in nature.  One spot she kept returning to, was a waterhole in the Hartley Valley.  It seemed that as a drought back in 2004 the valley ended, and the River Lett began to flow again, her grief also moved with it.  She picked up her camera and began to photograph the water, the light, and the movement.

                                                                   
Each time she returned over the next weeks, months and then years, the waterhole was different. A metaphor for her journey, that grief seems to change moment by moment, just as the water flow changed.  The subject matter itself, being water, is somewhat symbolic of grief - as we think of tears being shed, of streams down someone's cheeks.  Williams herself has pointed out that even the images, elusive and inexplicable, can be like grief itself. 

These works were on display this fall, entitled "When first knew this place" at the Western Plains Cultural Centre in Dubbo, NSW, Australia.  Williams says of the title, "The grief pulled me up, the water drew me in and that was when I began to really see. It was when first I knew this place."   When asked about her upcoming plans, Williams told an interviewer that she wasn't done with the waterhole yet, that it continues to keep drawing her back.

Personally, I enjoy seeing images of every day surroundings,  portrayed in such a way that they appear magical, moving, or unrecognizable.  These images then to me, are aesthetic and mean even more in the context of grief.

To see a complete collection of the artists works, visit her page here.
The above images are "Untitled # 3" and "Untitled # 21", both copyright 2011 Julie Williams

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I am a huge fan of Radiolab, and happened to hear their story of the Resusci Anne, or CPR Annie, recently. I thought Pallimed Arts readers would enjoy this as it fits well into our field.

Most of us at some time have at least seen CPR Annie, others of us have actually pounded on her chest, and preformed mouth to mouth as we went through the CPR steps.  The same face has been used since the beginning of CPR training in the 1960s and Annie remains the most popular CPR manikin face.

This face is not just a plastic computer generated face either. There is a unique history to Resusci Anne.  The designer of Annie is Asmund Laerdal, a Norwegian toy maker.  Laedral agreed to participate in this new training idea when friend Dr. Peter Safar, the father of CPR, asked. Laedral, however, needed inspiration and so while visiting his parents he noticed an attractive mask of a woman's face on their wall and knew immediately this would be his model. The face he saw was actually a death mask, known as "L'Inconnue de la Seine"

If you need a refresher on Death Masks, Amber talked about it in a post a while ago. They are plaster casts made of someone's face, soon after death, used as a memento.

"L'Inconnue de la Seine" actually means the 'unknown woman of the Seine'.  The story goes that this beautiful woman was pulled out of the river Seine in Paris in the 1880's.  Her beauty struck the workers at the morgue, so a death mask was created. The reason for her death was guessed to be suicide and from there her legend grew. In time reproductions were created and people captivated by her unknown identity and beauty began to display the mask in their homes as art.  

Her identity to this day is unknown, but this has not stopped her allure. She was a bit of a sensation, especially in the 1920's and 30's, and well known writers such as Richard le Gallienne, Jules Supervielle, Claire Goll  and Anias Nin mentioned L'Inconnue in their works.  

The Radiolab episode commented on the irony of this whole story. The unknown beautiful lady who drowned, is now symbolically resuscitated in CPR classes around the world, over and over again.

I found a deeper irony in my research. Both Peter Safar and Asmund Laerdal had children who required resuscitation. Asmund's son nearly drowned in 1954 at the age of 2, and his Asmund, despite not knowing CPR, was able to revive him. Dr. Safar had a daughter with severe asthma, who had a tragic asthma attack in 1966. Dr. Safar was able to resuscitate her with CPR, however she had anoxic trauma and died several days later.

I would highly recommend a listen to Radiolab's piece, as they interview Laerdal's son and do a superb job telling this story.   Most of all, the next time you do CPR training, remember the story of the "L'Inconnue de la Seine" as you do your, "Annie, Annie, are you okay?"

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I recently came across an educational computer game called "The End".  The game was developed by UK broadcaster Channel 4, specifically their C4 education branch.   Channel 4 commissioned the software developer Preloaded to write the program, geared specifically to 14-19 year olds.  The game also just earned a BIMA Award for "Best Game" this month.

The producer Charles Batho says, "The End sets out to level the playing field, presenting a variety of views about life and mortality from famous thinkers of our time. It's not a non-religious game, just philosophical"

I found it interesting that in designing the game, the producers actually interviewed 14 - 19 year olds, asking them about death, even having them draw out their ideal funeral.

The game starts after you design your own character. In the first moments in suburbia, a meteor falls from the sky and your character is whisked into the afterlife. There are several objectives at hand, as you explore 3 different worlds.  First is to collect "death objects", you do this by playing logic games at the end of each level.  There are also quotes about death and living by famous people interspersed throughout the level.

The level itself is peaceful. The character walks and jumps around collecting stars and light. No worries if you fall off a cliff, your character is already dead, so you get as many re-trys as you want.

A sub theme to this game is self identity. There are yes/no questions in each level that you must answer. These questions are purely personality driven, for example, "Is it possible to be happy simply living in the moment?" and "Would you still be yourself if your mind was put into another body?"

Each question you answer gives a more accurate plotting on something called the Death Dial.  This aligns your personality with other famous thinkers.  These questions then become a conversation piece as those who play the game can ask others what their philosophy is.

The best news- the game is free.  You can play it this moment at http://playtheend.com/game

For such a heavy topic the developers did a good job making something approachable, fun, and slipping in a little philosophy as well.

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Happy Halloween everyone!  Traditionally here at Pallimed Arts we've used the Halloween holiday to focus on skeleton art.  In years past we've looked at the incredible drawings of Laurie Lipton and the breathtaking work of Kris Kulski which incorporates skeletons.


Even more broad, this year I decided to just find some great pumpkin art.  Using skeleton's as a theme, this is a compilation of pumpkin skeleton carvings.  If you've procrastinated this year and need some ideas, perhaps one of these will interest you.

In an effort to provide something educational, does everyone know the history of carving pumpkins?


This tradition stems from folklore told in Ireland, Scotland and England. The tale goes that a man by the name of "Stingy Jack" tricked the Devil into promising not to take his soul when he died. The nature of these tricks varies from region to region. In one story, Jack carved a cross in a tree the devil had climbed, trapping him until the promise was made. Jack ultimately dies and because of his orneriness is not allowed into Heaven.  The devil holds his bargain as well, not allowing Jack into Hell.  He's left to wander the earth as a soul. Jack begs for a light as he wanders, and the Devil kindly tosses him an eternal ember from Hell.  Jack then carves a lantern out of a turnip for the light.  He henceforth becomes known as Jack of the Lantern... or Jack -O-Lantern. The lantern became a part of rural superstition, as carved faces in the lantern were meant to ward off evil spirits as one walked in the dark. The lanterns were then placed on porches to guard the house overnight.  On the left is an example of a traditional carved turnip lantern.
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As people from the British Isles immigrated to the US, their autumn traditions continued, however instead of turnips, they used the more abundant and larger pumpkins. As time went by the carved pumpkin became associated with the Halloween holiday.  Now, as the pictures suggest, this creative decor has evolved into elaborate creations!

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There are multiple ways an artist may choose to deal with personal grief.  Some allow the theme of their work to capture their feelings. Artist Motoi Yamamoto has taken his grief work one step further by choosing a medium that itself is symbolic of death.

Yamamoto was in art school in 1996 when his 24 year old sister died, just two years after her diagnosis of brain cancer. Immediately he began to use art as a way to deal with his grief. His exploration led him to the medium of salt, which is a part of the death ritual in Japan. At the end of funerals, mourners are handed salt to sprinkle on themselves as a way to ward of evil spirits.

Not only is salt a funeral ritual, it is also allows his masterpieces to be impermanent. When the exhibit is finished, the piece is destroyed, and visitors are encouraged to take some salt and place it back in the sea. Symbolic, I think, of human life; a masterpiece that must come to an end, and the body returned back to the elements from which it was formed.

To create the works, Yamamoto uses a simple plastic bottle, often taking 50 hours or more to complete. The amount of salt used is expansive, in the range of 2000 pounds and up.

When you look at his installations, it is obvious that the process is tedious and time consuming. This too is intentional, as Yamamoto said in an interview with the Japan Times, "I draw with a wish that, through each line, I am led to a memory of my sister... That is always at the bottom of my work. Each cell-like part, to me, is a memory of her that I call up"

I find the work breathtaking in both the intricacy and the overall finished project.

To see a video of Yamamoto at work see below or follow this link.

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The Lien Foundation has done it again.  They're making us smile by doing unconventional projects that incorporate ideas about dying into the arts.  Like their project "Happy Coffin" done as apart of the overall Life Before Death campaign, the Last Outfit project attempts to reduce the stigma that surrounds death and dying.

This photographic project was instigated by the The Straits Times, a leading Singapore newspaper, who partnered with the philanthropic Lien Foundation. Eight professional photographers captured 23 subjects in their outfit of choice for burial.

Most burial outfits are favorite clothing picked out by a patient just prior to death, or very often picked by family members. The idea traditionally is not about creativity, but respectful formal wear.

The thought from the Last Outfit project was, what if this were changed? What if our final outfit was a statement about who we are? This personal flare is quite obvious in the photographs taken.  Lee Poh Wah, CEO of the Lien Foundation says, "Each exit outfit is one that best expresses the subjects' unique life. Their outfits and candid attitude have given us a fresh and fun perspective on how to deal with death. If there's something like funeral fashion,they are setting a trend by wearing their souls on their sleeves"

One of the subjects actually was on hospice for this project. Madam Foo Piao Lin had cancer and took her role more seriously. She chose an expensive cheongsam, which she had never owned, for her final outfit. She has since passed, byt her wish was fulfilled as she was buried in her cheongsam. She is pictured in the middle photograph in the series at the bottom.

The photographs are definitely conversation starters. I wonder, though, if faced with death like Madam Foo, if indeed these same outfits would be chosen.

What do you think? To those involved in hospice, how often is the last outfit actually brought up or discussed? Do you like the idea of creativity in a burial outfit or is it too much?

To scroll through the 23 images and read short bio's of the participants visit The Last Outfit web page.

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I came across this inspiring story of artist Casey Shannon.  Casey is an artist that lives in Carmel Valley, California. At the age of 36, already a mother, wife and high school art teacher, Casey had a massive left hemispheric stroke.  The stroke was debilitating, leaving her aphasic, wheel chair bound and with no use of the right side and little use of her left side.

She writes about the loss of identity and longing for her old self on her website here.  As a part of her recovery she learned about Wabi Sabi which is the Japanese tradition of celebrating the beauty in what's flawed or worn.  She also turned to art, writing that, "as soon as I could sit for more than just a minute in my wheelchair, I began practicing holding a pencil in my left hand and started doodling and scribbling and such. I intuitively knew that, for me, I needed to get drawing again. And fast, if I was going to save myself"

She ended up drawing 5 pictures a day, having incorporated it into her daily home rehab program. The act of creative expression helped to improve her self-worth and self-esteem.

It's been 19 years since her stroke, and Casey has regained her speech and the ability to walk, though has lost the use of her dominant right arm.  She continues to paint, teach and inspire other stroke survivors with her story.

Casey graciously includes art work on her website from before the stroke, during recovery and current pieces. The first piece above is a sketch done in the year or two prior to her stroke. Her drawings from her recovery period, are taken from about 4 years post stroke. At that point in her process she combined inspirational sayings with her drawings, like the picture to the right.

As she has recovered,  her style completely changed, not only because she now uses her left hand, but because she now does contemporary sumi-e paintings. Sumi-e painting incorporates meditation before painting. As Casey describes on her artist's page, "I concentrate on trying to capture spirit as the ink is transferred to the paper with the stroke of the brush....If your intention is correct, the object in the picture seems to 'breath and take on life'"

I find Casey's story a good reminder of the power art can play with our patients dealing with debilitating disease.

For more of Casey's paintings check out her galleries here.

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Artist Ray Johnson is mainly regarded as a correspondence artist, having founded something called the The New York Correspondence School, which basically is an ever changing group of people who send each other art work through the mail.

During 1963-65 Johnson produced 12 unbound pages of mail art for something called "A Book About Death". He sent these one page essays about death to other artists in the correspondence school. Johnson committed suicide in 1995 and in an effort to commemorate him the art project "A Book About Death" was started.
In 2009 artist Mathew Rose, taking inspiration from Johnson's death themed art pages, organized a massive exhibition of similar mail art.  The call went out to artists all across the world to submit postcards on the theme "A Book About Death".  The artists were to create 500 postcard copies of their pieces and mail them to the gallery of the exhibition.  During the show, which was held in September 2009, visitors could then collect postcards from the hundreds of artists and take the postcards home to create their own unique book about death.

Since the original ABAD show, there have no been 23 installments, as the project continues to move around the world with new additions continually.  Each ABAD exhibit is slightly different, some like the recent exhibit in May at the Willo North Gallery in Phoenix, Arizona called for postcards with a memento accompanying it.


The most recent ABAD project is open now, July 31- Sept 2 at the Second Avenue Firehouse Gallery in Long Island.  This unique exhibit is entitled "A Book About Death: The Ties That Bind".  The curator of the event LuAnn T. Palazzo asked artists to submit larger works on pages, one copy to be displayed on the wall for the exhibit and the other to be bound in a book on display during the show.


I've enjoyed browsing the images for the different shows, a few which are included here.  The interpretations on death are as diverse as they come.  Some of the pieces are accompanied by poems, like this piece below with image on one side, and the poem on the back of the post card.


I wonder if there would be a place to do some collage work as a self care session for hospice and palliative care in this way, or perhaps a work shop at a national convention resulting in a Hospice and Palliative Medicine edition to A Book About Death?

Art work credits from top to bottom:
Steve Dalachinsky
Laura Sharp Wilson
"The Call" Sophia Oldsman
"Sustenance" Kim Triedman