Two stories to end the year….

Playing with Santa's hat

Art = Wellness

A mother brings her twin daughters to visit the residents at Golden Abby.  They come every Thursday and this week, they brought home made cards to hand out.  The twins gave the cards to everyone but sometimes took them back and opened the envelopes themselves.  It didn’t matter, the residents love every minute they can watch these wonderful little girls wander around the rooms, touching things and offering to share their baby dolls for a moment.  I’d love to share their photos but will only include this one which doesn’t show the face; it only shows the fun of having a child around.  This is such a special gift and the mother is teaching her children the most wonderful lessons about being kind and giving.

 While working on the collages at one facility, a daughter came to visit and the parent handed her the finished calendar and said, “Here, I made this for you.”  The daughter said that she was reminded of when she was a child and gave her mother things she had made for her.  Tears filled her eyes as she acknowledged that now the situation had reversed itself.  But, we pointed out, her mother was delighted to be able to give her something she made and the circle of art and love continues.

2012 Calendar Collage Mania plus More Wreaths

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Just when we thought we’d finished with the wreaths, more greens turned up at Riviera!  So once more we dived into the supplies and waved the magic glue gun to help create wreaths to hang on doors and walls. You can see abundance of supplies and the joy in the faces of those who played with us.

The other facilities worked hard on collaging their 2012 calendars. As you can see by the piles of paper, this became a mighty big job!  It entailed getting people to select 12 or 13 images for their calendars and many were stuck on the idea of monthly themes – May Flowers, June Brides – but we found that there are only so many images of those subjects  that you can possibly find in National Geographic, Forbes and Paper Crafts.  By the last day, working one-on-one at Fairgreen, we were able to steer people into selecting images that made them happy.  This included lots of dogs, weird sea creatures, all sorts of framed images and a range of art in pastels.  This worked out much better for the participants and volunteers as well!  No desperate cries of “what does March get?” and “I can’t remember what September means…..”  This group quietly looked at all sorts of images, discussed them, and chose things they found funny or interesting. Mary ended up with pages filled with dogs, big and small, crowding her pages and Ed settled on creatures from the deep – both sea and space. Juanita chose textile images and many framed items while Betty selected pastel colored works of art.

We found this project much too involved and stressful in three of the buildings.  The project was too big with 12-13 images in a 1 ½ hour program.  Most days we didn’t get out of the buildings within 2 hours! It worked well at Fairgreen on the one-to-one but usually we are working one-to-two and three.  As we develop our workshops for the coming year, we’ll have to revisit this project and see if we can streamline it or modify the process.  Meanwhile, those who have their calendars worked hard and enjoyed getting their own calendars where they can track their EPD dates as well as their doctor appointments and important dates like birthdays.