Strange Grace

An Artist's Journey through Dialysis & Transplant

Diagnosed with polycystic kidney disease in July of 1997, medically phobic, I told my family and friends I would never go on dialysis nor try to get a kidney transplant, that I'd rather die.  And I was determined to find some kind of alternative cure.  By March of 2010, my kidneys failed. 

Once I started dialysis, trying to come to terms with my new reality, I began documenting my experience with photography.  Using these photos as a foundation, trying various materials and processes, I transformed these difficult images, discovering layers of beauty and curiosity where there was pain and challenge, creating artwork, evocative, mysterious, and healing for me.  Surprisingly, my challenging circumstances was like a booster rocket for my natural creativity to come alive in a whole new way.

At some point I realized I wanted to create a book using my art, written reflections and poetry to tell my story.  I hoped it could be a potent offering and honoring of those in kidney failure and their families, pulling back the curtain on the many nuances of that reality, and offering more of an understanding to those who will never know this particular journey.  I thought it could be meaningful for those in the midst of their own initiatory journeys, whatever the situation, to illustrate how powerful the creative process is as an instrument of healing - helping metabolize one's experiences in a unique and alchemical way.  And maybe, my book might inspire someone to consider becoming a kidney donor who may not have ever thought about it before.
 
.Some months after a successful transplant with a kidney given to me by my life partner, Michael, we went back to the dialysis clinic.  As we visited with one man that I was particularly fond of, I realized that under the blanket covering him, his lower leg had been amputated.  He noticed that I noticed.  He saw my expression and he said so simply and tenderly, "It's okay.  I feel so much better now without the pain from my leg."  I nodded in understanding as we looked in each other's eyes.  And I felt this serenity in him, in the people there, and in the clinic.  The words came to me, then, "Strange grace, in this place . . .

I pray that my book will be a vibrant reminder that there will always be some kind of blessing, some kind of strange grace that will reveal itself amidst the rubble, a shining gem as we persevere through circumstances that we felt certain we could not get through.  I hope my story told through my art and writing will be an inspiration for people to embrace the challenges of their life and create gold from them.
 

Images & Excerpts from Strange Grace

As I got into the thick of three hour, three times a week dialysis, Michael felt like he was losing me - I felt like I was losing me, too.

Neuro-chemicals filtered out, a sense of fading away...the morning after dialysis, scoured out, brain fry, hollowed out, brain dry.  Depressed doesn't get it.  A poem does...

Sheer Walls

Gliding in silence,
gliding in darkness,
like the sacred owl.
I can't see the bottom,
only a glimmer of sky

I blindly run my hands
along the Braille walls,
feeling for any hint of
meaning or direction.
I find none

I scratch a cryptic message
In the hard stone,
hoping someone
will come along
and know that I am gone.

I leave a trail of breadcrumbs
that I hope to follow one day,
so I can revisit the self I was
before all this
went on.

Some time after the kidney transplant, when both Michael and I felt better, we went to a flea market in West Hollywood, to find collage materials for my work.  While there, I had to wear a protective mask which felt a little odd, but, necessary with my immune system strongly suppressed.  One man at the market yelled out, "Hey surgeon!"  Smiling under my mask, I nodded hello.  Among other things, I bought a small stack of old Arizona magazines. 

Later, I tore out a page of a landscape which included an owl.  I worked on the piece with paint, pastels and pens, took a photo of what I created so far, then mirrored the image vertically and horizontally in an iPhone application.  Printed out, it became the base of this artwork.  An altered pic of my face was added and I could see antlers and accentuated them. 

I also added an altered photograph I had taken when sitting in dialysis of my tubes of blood, lying on top of a blanket, given to me by the dialysis clinic, which had an embroidered logo on it.  When I mirrored the image, changed the color story, and put it into repeat, it reminded me of the designs on Pendleton blankets.  Next, I added an image of a celestial sky of stars behind it and the phrase, a blanket of stars, came to me.  The thought made me happy, loving the connection of the stars with the Pendleton blanket and the idea of what a blanket evokes, being cozy, safe, warm. 

What my Deer Woman means to me is multi-faceted: The marriage of masculine and feminine (not male and female so much).  The strength of the buck.   Deer are prey animals.  They're also quite lethal with their hooves, though.  We're all prey animals in the end, taken out when life wants us.  What an adventure to be here and survive and thrive, never knowing what's around the corner. Joy? devastation?  Victory?  How to live with this knowledge?  That burning poignancy at the heart of life.  Well, in accepting my pending mortality, I've found a kind of thirst for life that I didn't know I had.

I've seen images of women with antlers over the years and, of course, there's the amazing and iconic painting by Frida Kahlo - I became curious, though, to see what  I could find about Deer Woman online. 

Some stories and traditions describe the sighting of Deer Woman as a sign of personal transformation or as a warning.

Post-surgery, our doctors recommended daily walks to heal and also lessen any adhesions forming in our incisions.  Once back at our rental home, Michael and I took slow laps around the neighborhood - nothing like the speedy ones I took in the hospital corridors, hopped up on sixty milligrams, "I am alive!" Prednisone. 

A challenging thing for me, besides the incision pain, was extreme sensitivity to the sun and light, a side effect of one of my immune suppressants drugs, Tacrolimus.   As soon as I opened the door and stepped outside, I shielded myself from the sun like a vampire, my arm crooked over my head and eyes. I cringed - like Michael, when he gets caught in the rain. It makes me laugh just thinking of it, his jacket pulled up high on his neck, his head tucked in like a turtle in his shell, rushing to escape the rain. 

On our strolls, we took photos of certain things that we loved - different flowers, huge, gnarled roots of a certain tree, or another glorious one with branches reaching dramatically up to the sky.  Beauty was the antidote that delighted and distracted me from the beat down of the sun.  

We walked past this one particularly exotic home many times.  I was enamored with a mysterious, prickly tree which lived in a pot in front of this home and really wanted a photo, but, there was always a car in the driveway, blocking the view.  I didn’t want to be invasive and inappropriate and go up on their property to get a picture, though it was tempting. 

On our very last walk around the neighborhood, my dream came true - no car!  We got a clear shot.  I’ve never seen a tree like this one before or since.  I loved transforming it's image to match the other worldliness of this special tree.