I love when creativity in one genre begets creativity in another.
As I looked at the artistically striking handmade birthday card I received, I wondered if the creator, whom I had never met, had secret access to me in my long-ago Greenwich Village apartment. The card pictured a young woman with long hair and a cat on a window sill watching her work, a scene I had lived and written about many times. Only now it had a dish of marmalade.
Then it came to me.
Teresa Blatt, who follows Senior Moments in the Los Angeles Daily News, knew about me from my writing. The card was inspired by a poem I shared in my column recently written by a 91-year-old woman, about old age being like marmalade. Many people commented on it but Teresa read it and created “Moment in Marmalade” a shadow collage named after the title of a poem by David T. W. McCord.
Her path from a retired secretary to a shadow collage artist came about as a way for her to celebrate life after breast cancer and retain her cognitive skills while recovering from chemotherapy. She began by stitching quilts inspired by words from Emily Dickinson, which to me is a poem unto itself. Then on a whim, she began photographing shadows and sunbeams and reflections and turning them into collage. She had found her artistic home and an enthusiastic audience for her creations.
Her work follows the themes of joy, grief, healing and whimsy. Many people in the literary, theatre, musical and medical arts collect her collages and Teresa uses them in outreach to cancer survivors. She said her shadow characters “seem to me as spirits captured and made visible.” Her generosity of spirit, combined with a talent that she discovered later in life, are an inspiration to anyone of any age wondering “What now?”
Included among the many galleries and organizations where her work has been exhibited are Long Beach Arts, Pen and Brush and Fredericksburg Center for Creative Arts in Virginia. Examples of her work can be found at www.fccava.org in the Fredericksburg archives.
Email patriciabunin@sbcglobal.net. Follow her on X @patriciabunin and patriciabunin.com
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