The author had the urge to create, and a spinal cord injury was not going to get in her way.
By Beth Livingston
Beth Livingston (and Max) in her Montana studio. (Photo by Mike Coil)
“Art is the stored honey of the human soul.”~ Theodore Dreiser
I met with the social worker in the quiet, stale-smelling office among a maze of grey-cloth cubicles at the Rehab Institute of Chicago. Fidgeting with the trinkets on the edge of her desk, there I was, in my chafing back brace and my dollar-store wheelchair, to talk about my future.
There was a dizzying amount of paperwork in front of her and an equally nauseating, unending barrage of questions I needed to answer. We plowed through what seemed like meaningless formalities until we got to the heart of the matter. What is your educational background, the social worker asked? I had just graduated from art school, not two months before my car accident. What were you intending to do with that degree, she responded? Be an artist, I said.
Swinging her chair back towards me and squaring the paperwork in my file on her desk she muttered in a low voice to herself, “Well, you’re not going to be doing that anymore.”
Enter the battle over free will. I heard what she had just mumbled, and I was in full fight-or-flight mode. In the past 30 days, I had just about everything I knew about myself and the world around me torn to pieces. Now I was looking down the barrel of bureaucracy telling me how to spend the rest of my productive life, being a drone. They wanted me reprogrammed, tethered, dumbed-down, grey, lifeless, easy to track, compliant, in a ready-made, institutional, “handicap-friendly” setting.
Being an artist was not something I schemed up for a four-year college degree for lack of a better idea. It was a lifetime dream, an expression of who I was and had been since childhood.
I found nothing she had to say from that point on, helpful.
She had more suggestions and guidelines for me to follow. I shouldn’t live in Montana anymore. People in wheelchairs can’t manage in the snow, and the cold is bad for my circulation—make that potentially fatal. I should consider relocating to a place like Southern California where it’s warm and they have lots of curb-cuts and handicap accessible busses.
Being an artist was out of the question. Handicapped people aren’t artists, she said, other people are. I could enroll in Vocational Rehab, learn a skill, train on a computer. (I loathe computers, and they have a healthy disregard for me.) Maybe I could answer phones somewhere, perhaps in a customer-service setting or catalog sales. I would get a neat “head-set” with my new job.
Statistics showed that my husband was most likely to leave me in the next 30 days, she said, and I should begin to wrap my mind around the idea of moving back in with my parents. I couldn’t live on my own.
I will give her the spouse abandonment statistic; it is tragic and true. But do you really want to hear it from your social worker whom you have known for all of 30 minutes, in a miserable cubicle?
Ingredient of Chance
Upon being released from The Rehab Institute of Chicago two months later, I returned home to frigid Montana with my husband and my “hell on wheels” attitude to prove the naysayers wrong. I resumed the dream and work of becoming an artist, and remembering who I really was.
I dealt with Montana’s climate by taking to its winters with gusto. I learned how to ski on slopes and cross country on adapted skis, and I got good enough to compete on the USA cross-country team in the Salt Lake City Paralympics in 2002.
It was because of my Paralympic credentials that I was invited to participate in my first art exhibit, 14 years after graduating from Parsons School of Design, in 2003.
It was a fluke. I was visiting a friend in Los Angeles who was the curator for an upcoming celebrity/ artist show to benefit the Zimmer Children’s Museum. Sitting in her car, stuck in traffic on the 10, Kate wanted my help to think of famous people from all backgrounds whom she would invite to create a piece of art for the show. The celebrity side line-up already included, Liz Taylor, Dan Aykroyd, Paula Abdul, Alicia Keys, Diane Sawyer, and Buzz Aldrin. On the artist side was Charles Arnoldi, Gary Baseman, and Robert Graham to name a few. Out of touch with the youth sports culture, Kate asked “who do the kids look up to in sports now?” My answer and contribution to the guest list was “Tony Hawk.”
The following day, Kate phoned with some amazing news. The executive director of the Zimmer had suggested that I be in the show to represent Paralympic athletes. Stunned, I said yes on the spot. The show was entitled “Show and Tell; The Art of Communication.” It was a sister show to an exhibit held in Tel Aviv the previous year. A book had been published beautifully photographing and detailing the art represented in the show. One artist’s work was chosen to represent the exhibit on the cover of the book.
I saw the cover from Tel Aviv, and remarked to Kate, “I want to create a piece that would be worthy of the next cover.”
I said what immediately came to my mind; in the moment, my filter was gone. It was an outlandish thing to utter out loud, to dream of, or to wish for. Kate thought it was a great idea, smiled kindly and said, “You’d better get crackin’.”
The piece I was working on for the show was entitled Follow Your Heart, and was dedicated to my daughter Lila:
“To lovely little Lila, who glows like a firefly at dusk. Crafty number 50 on center ice. Deforest the earth with your drawings. Treat life like one continuous dress up party. Eat ice cream sundaes for breakfast. Always wonder ‘why?’ And always follow your heart”
I had intended my dedication to be a loving maternal guideline for my daughter to follow throughout her life. In hindsight, the name of my piece, and the last line of the dedication to Lila were to become a metaphor for my life as an artist.
Follow Your Heart
Follow Your Heart was a 6-foot bejeweled flying mermaid. It was enormous and heavy. I quickly learned I wasn’t able to work on it by myself. I needed help to maneuver around it, or I could make no progress. As the deadline for its completion ticked forward, I relied on a variety of friends.
I was creating a piece of art seemingly beyond my physical means, yet I refused to accept that my chair would prevent me from executing my very large idea. With faltering faith, I was determined to follow my heart. It was a turning point in how I was to perceive possibilities. First, visualize the end product. Next, map out how to get there. If I were unable to envision my work completed, in all its potential fabulousness, then I could never find the gumption to begin.
At the opening of the Zimmer show in Los Angeles the following May, I was greeted by great fanfare, congratulated and handed my copy of the opening show’s book. I didn’t understand all the hype, but in my hands I held the book archiving the “Show and Tell” exhibit, and the image of my flying mermaid, Follow Your Heart gracing its cover and smiling back at me. My work had been selected by committee, from 75 other artists and celebrities, to represent the show.
Just often enough I succeed more than I fail, and that keeps me inspired. I continued to donate my work to The Zimmer Show for the next four years.
My last 20 years in Montana have been filled with raising children, starting and running businesses, being broke, getting divorced, struggling in the snow, volunteering, becoming a Paralympic skier, losing a child, losing a parent, single-parenting, wondering who I am, celebrating my children’s success, watching them fly from the nest, and being an artist.
Throughout all the changes in my life, art continues to keep me grounded. It is the best of what I have to offer. It is what seeps out of me with honesty and originality and candor. I have continued to run toward being an artist all my life. I have given art the same unconditional love I have openly offered my children. My art does not always listen, is not always on task and does not always live up to its potential. It is often noncompliant and nonconforming, but I give it the room to “be enough.” This state of being has offered my creativity the opportunity to be brilliant sometimes, often daring, always innovative and generally at ease. And I have no regrets.
Beth Livingston is a frequent contributor to Action. Her last article “Accessing the Wild West” appeared in September-October 2009.
