Art as Service by Clare GoodwinLetters from Eternity - Show Review by Pat Cahill

When I was diagnosed with cervical cancer, in 1993, I had the loving support of many friends, family and colleagues. I was exhausted after surgery and during the lengthy treatments that followed. It is documented that being in a support group can improve the quality of life and potential survival from this disease. (D. Spiegel et al., The Lancet, Vol. 2, 1989, pp. 888-891) Driving 50 minutes, one way, to a cancer support group at the hospital was not an option for me. However, an idea that kept returning was that I wanted to give something back to my community for all the help I had received and in gratitude for my life. At the time I thought the form that this service would take would be through running cancer support groups.

Since then, I unsuccessfully offered two different groups for people who have had cancer. Last year I heard of a few other therapists who had tried to run this type of group with no results. Most of these sessions were offered with very low sliding scale fees. One community organization even offered two different programs free of charge. Yet, not one of these cancer support groups ran due to lack of enrollment. It clearly wasn't the money. What was going on? Groups had run in the past. Why weren't people joining? Was there another route to serving this growing population of people diagnosed with cancer? Perhaps the following experience with the art show "Through the Eyes of Cancer" will be instructive.

As an artist and therapist, I have long appreciated making drawings as a way to access my own process and the feelings waiting to be expressed. I considered this work to be different from my mandala art "for the public". These quick sketches were kept private, only shared with my therapist . So, it was natural that I would turn again to a resource which had helped before. As Ferrucci says: "We should greet our drawing as if it were a person coming from a distant land whose customs are very different from those of our own country. We seek to resonate with it and intuitively capture the message it gives us about ourselves." (Ferrucci, Piero, What We May Be, Turnstone, 1983, p. 37) This method worked for me and my mandala work also became deeper in the process.

Gradually, I recovered and was able to return to work as a staff member at The Synthesis Center in Amherst, MA. As my energy increased, I participated in a 10 week support group for cancer survivors offered by Dr. Dorothy Firman. During this time, each of the five participants revealed a strong interest in creative projects. Whether we called ourselves artists or not, the photographs and paintings were there and a part of our healing process.

The obvious next step was to display this beautiful work and perhaps inspire others who had cancer to find a way to nurture their own spirit. A date was set for December 8, advertising went out and plans were made for a one day exhibit of work created by people who had cancer. The show was titled "Through the Eyes of Cancer". From limited early advertising, I received calls from four more women who had cancer and wanted to participate. A popular writer for a local newspaper called and wanted to do a story. When I approached our public radio station, they enthusiastically agreed to interview several of the artists for a segment of their program. The Synthesis Center donated the space and funds to help support advertising and printing costs. This kind of serendipity wasn't there when I was offering support groups.

Right before our event, New England was belted with a ravaging snow storm for 3 days. Trees were down, power outages were everywhere and much damage had occurred. Yet the morning of December 8 the sun was out and Amherst had power. We decided to "go ahead with the show" and leave it up the following week for those who couldn't get out due to weather. Over 60 people from the community attended that day. One elderly guest, who had recently been diagnosed with cancer, maneuvered her "walker" over four blocks in the ice and snow . She said she wouldn't have missed it for anything.
Another visitor, whose mother died of cancer, returned later in the week in order to experience the work privately. A student, who saw our sign on the street, decided to take a break from her studies to be a therapist and see our show. A young woman was moved to tears when she read an artist's statement "When life gives you lemons, make lemonade" posted by a crocheted wall hanging. $300 in donations were contributed to The Subsidy Fund for cancer survivors seeking therapy at the Synthesis Center. Several offers were made to take the show to other locations. Everyone expressed gratitude and many were clearly touched by what they saw.

The exhibit included the work of 10 women who had cancer and used art to tap into their creative spirit and give meaning to their lives. One woman's powerful work (Joan Schneider 1954-1995) was shared posthumously. As her friend, Blake Walton, wrote for the show program "She was a chiropractor, an avid outdoors woman, a prankster, a courageous and deeply spiritual person. She used creative expression on her healing journey towards wholeness. These drawings are inspiring glances of her life path with cancer". Her contribution reminded us of what true healing is.

Barbara Clearwater Liberty, had been cancer free for 29 years and showed us that a cancer diagnosis doesn't always equal death. She thanked me for promoting the exhibit as she hadn't shown her work in years and this was the motivation she needed to "get back out there". Linda Waynelovich couldn't attend the show because a tree was blocking her driveway. We all admired her work and were certain that she was a "professional". How startling to discover that she had never shown her work publicly before! Another of our original group members assured us absolutely that she was no artist and yet sold more of her work than any other participant.

What was going on? I asked the four new people if they had been in a support group or had any interest in one. Every single one of them answered that they didn't want to sit around and talk about their wounds. Creativity was what gave their lives meaning. Author Julia Cameron, in The Vein of Gold tape series, says "The only way to heal a creative wound is through creativity." Perhaps it is true of all wounds that it is through creativity that the human spirit heals and is able to come through.

Art as Service by Clare GoodwinLetters from Eternity - Show Review by Pat Cahill

Light pours through a skylight.

A dancer wearing white gauze is surrounded by images on the wall: The sun breaking through a notch in the mountains. A bird rising in the air, its tail leaving behind a stream of colors. Circles filled with fragments of color like kaleidoscopes.

A framed photograph of herself, dancing.

The dancer is Alicia Morton of Amherst, who was diagnosed with invasive ductal breast cancer in July. She is one of several cancer survivors who performed at the opening of a multi-media show called "Through the Eyes of Cancer" last week at the Synthesis Center in downtown Amherst.

The pictures are still there, as the exhibition will be on view Thursday through Saturday this week, during limited hours.

It features paintings, drawings, poetry, weavings and photography by women who have been to the brink of eternity and lived to tell about it.

The idea for the show grew out of a cancer support group led by psychotherapist Dorothy Firman at the Synthesis Center a couple of years ago. "She got us in touch with our creativity," says B. Clare Goodwin of West Brookfield who was diagnosed with cervical cancer in 1994. "It was a kind of 'show and tell.'"

Later Goodwin, who is also a therapist at Synthesis, came up with the idea of displaying some of that creative work. for the public. Last year a show was mounted for the first time. The 10 participants included all five women in Goodwin's support group.

This year 14 women are featured.

Among the most powerful works are three poems by Susan C. Botfield, Who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in 1990. One of them begins:

Botfield read her poetry aloud at the opening. She told the audience that she would soon be going into hospice, but described her self as a "twotime hospice graduate." For the show, her poems are mounted on gold backgrounds, secured by wide flowered ribbons, framed with silken cords.

Barbara Clearwater Liberty of Wendell contributed several of the small weavings she makes in her business called Treesister. They represent animal and human figures, sometimes with symbols of nature-a tree, a sun.

Liberty, who survived Hodgkins disease, has been cancerfree for 29 years.

Karen "Wren" Gore has half a dozen oil paintings in the show, hanging above the words of cancer survivors she interviewed. One of those women is her mother, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1977. Based on her mother's words, Gore painted a large canvas of a female nude, her back to the viewer, seemingly trying to crawl into a tent-like mound of cloth.

The show is filled with a profound consciousness of the female body, scarred, mutilated, mythic, all-encompassing. One of Gore's paintings, based on a cancer survivor's vision, shows a realistic Christ and angel floating above a woman curled in her sickbed. They all hang in a black void, the universe - but even that is circumscribed by a fleshy round frame that suggests a woman's reproductive system.

Before she died of breast cancer, Joan Schneider-the only woman in the show who is not still living-asked her friend S. Blake Walton of Goshen to photograph her in the last phases of her illness. The results are haunting but unsentimental black-and-white photographs of a hairless, breastless woman.

Walton herself, a massage teacher who offered seated massage at the opening, was diagnosed with invasive ductal carcinoma in 1993. Goodwin says that without Walton's experience in hanging art shows, the current exhibition might never have happened.

Goodwin is known for her "mandalas," bright circles filled with abstract or realistic shapes.

But even more powerful is the portfolio she kept while recovering from cancer in Firman's support group. "These pages were never meant for your eyes," reads the first page.

Here her unpolished brush strokes are raw, or dreamlike, or bizarre. They show tears, crosses, an angry woman in a red gown, a bearded "worrier" amid autumnal colors, a female doctor surrounded by angels with pink and green and yellow wings.

Also in the show are the journals of Ricki Carroll of Ashfield, the color photography of Laura Coelen of Leverett, the crochet of Marjorie Holmes of Spencer, the landscapes of Marcy Marchello of Sunderland, the pastels of Ellin Randel of Amherst, and the poetry of Jacqueline Walker of Northampton and Anne Ziff of Connecticut.

Admission to the show is free, but donations are welcome. Most of the works on display are for sale, and a portion of the proceeds goes to a "subsidy fund" for cancer survivors seeking psychotherapy at the Synthesis Center.

Morton, who performed at the opening, called her dance "Movement Mantra." As the audience watched, she unfolded into a seamless series of poses-hands in a prayer-like position, knees drawn up, face hidden, arms opening up and out . . .

The movements flowed with such precise and deliberate slowness that she might have been moving through water.

As she stretched open her arms and finally lay still, applause rolled over her like the ocean.