The First Angel

Yesterday's angel post brought a mama friend to mind, Kate, who had made Jessie (back when she was just a wee thing, but still full of piss and vinegar!) a window overlaid with art (Jessie as an angel) and inspiration (six symbols of spiritual strength and the feminine).

The original source of the piece was a polaroid picture (remember those?) taken at a church bazaar, where you could put your face into an opening in a wooden cut out angel figure and have your picture taken as an angel. Jessie was so small Dan had to hold her up (you can just see him in the background) and she jutted her chin out in a way that she had that indicated the beginnings of either defiance or determination. Anyways, a glimmer of something that all my mama and women friends recognized and honoured.

Kate borrowed the polaroid and created this delight, fashioned from a cast-off window and stained glass paint. It was a miracle gift to Jessie, and to me. A blessing of love, reflection, depth, and beauty.

Today Kate and I messaged back and forth (we no longer live in the same city), sharing images and words from that time long ago. And I thought of all that Kate taught me (and teaches me still), and meant to me (and means to me still), and brought to Jessie's life (and does, in her own way, still). And I am grateful that the window, which transforms the light, is still there for Jessie to explore as she grasps her own womanhood. May all our girls have such magical women in their lives, a clutch of feminist fairy godmothers.

For those curious and intrigued, this is a shortened version of the symbols:
Light One: Full Moon and Three Stars. full moon=matriarchal, primary feminine sign, protected or consecrated space where all participants are equal.
Light Two: Fate. the three goddesses of fate (fairy godmothers) who hover over infant's cradley proteching and supporting the child in mystical ways.
Light Three: Interlaced Cross. a sign of interdependent dualism, think yin/yang. Earthly world is horizontal and green, spiritual world is vertical and purple, and they interlace, what happens to one must affect the other. 
Light Four: Ladder. sacred laddeer with seven rungs, ladder to heaven, also leads to the heaven in the first light.
Light Five: Spiral. Death and rebirth (and of particular meaning to Kate, appearing in each of her pieces and a symbol of divinity for her)
Light Six: Triple Arrow. symbol of unity.    

Jessie Flips: About Making a Difference

I’m an artist with Down syndrome and I’m in a professional mixed ability and non-profit contemporary dance company called Propeller Dance and we are Ontario’s only integrated dance company. Propeller dance reaches over 5,000 people and we do lots of outreach workshops and we also have community classes. Propeller also has a children’s program on Saturday mornings and we have an amazing staff including Ximena Puente, Shara Weaver, who is the main teacher, then me, Jessie Huggett who is the teaching assistant.

It’s important that people who have Down syndrome are seen as leaders, teachers, mentors and role models. Why? Because we can show them that we are responsible, talented and mature. It shows that we too have gifts to bring to the world.

I have a challenge for you!!

As this is National Down syndrome awareness week, I want all of you with Down syndrome to get involved by making a difference in your community just like I do when I teach. The reason why this is important is because if we all do it, it will be a more diverse inclusive world where ALL of us have a voice.

Thank you.                    

Imagine Hope Inside My Dream

That phrase has echoed around in my head and heart for a long while and it is still not finished changing me. That’s the kind of transformation that happens at H’Art studios—for both the artists and those lucky enough to own or view  some of the paintings—a jolt of recognition and joy, and a slower more gradual process of awakening to a slightly new way of seeing or being in the world. A way that is firmly rooted in life—with its joys and sorrows—and hope.

Many of these painting make me laugh out loud in joy and delight—Mark’s Rake Tree, Julie’s Rainbow Butterflies Dancing, Anna’s Fancy Dress Cupcake Ball; others draw out a certain sadness or even grief—such as Joe’s This Is the Way Friends Used to Be. All are fairly vibrating with life, as was the Green Door restaurant this evening, where H’Art’s most recent show opened. 

The artists greeted friends, supporters, collectors, and strangers, welcoming each one into the circle of creativity and community created by their bright colours and bold imaginings. A creative community built for artists with developmental disabilities, honouring their way of seeing and being in the world, and giving them a space to share their vision, and themselves, with the wider artistic and urban community of which they are an integral part.

Jessie is lucky to have snagged a spot at H’Art this year. While her primary medium is dance, she has participated in H’Art during the summer or on school breaks (it is tailored to adult artists) almost since its inception in 2002 (with original funding funneled through the local Down syndrome association). When a regular spot came up this fall (Fridays), Jessie was excited and determined to make it fit in her schedule. I have to admit, this surprised me. I’ve never really pegged Jessie as a visual artist (I know, I know, so many individuals with Down syndrome are visual learners and communicators, but, as with many other so-called typical traits, this one didn’t seem to be attached to Jessie’s extra 23^rd, —in fact, she was assessed as an auditory learner early on. Although that doesn’t quite explain why she doesn’t listen to me. Or, maybe it does!) As a child she loved to paint and glue (or, let’s be honest, loved to squeeze out the paint and the glue, I think it was more of a sensory thing), but even with paint and other materials within easy reach, as she matured she rarely chose crafts or painting or even pencil and line drawing as an activity. It was (and is.) mostly dance and writing.  

But I think that being in an artistic/creative environment, where self-expression is honoured, encouraged, and celebrated [see this post about disability and art], offers Jessie a kind of freedom to be that is rarely found in other spaces. For many of the other artists, who, like Jessie may have been bound by preconceptions and imposed limits, the studio has become a very special, safe, and exciting place to explore and share their perceptions of the world around them. For some, the studio is a safe harbour, for others it is their calling.   

 

So now Jessie goes to the studio every Friday, spending the morning exploring themes, journaling, being supported in the creative process, and the afternoon prepping her canvas and painting, working with other artists, some of whom have exceptional talent and are willing to mentor those just beginning. And tonight was the opening of this year’s fall show, and once again the art invited me to slow down, look, and be infused with a kind of joy and respect and wonder that is at the heart of all true art. It will feed my soul for months to come.

What art programs are out there in your community? How are artists with disabilities included in the creative community where you live?

The H’Art show, Moon Is Laughing Gas, is at the Green Door Restaurant in Ottawa, October 1–27, 2012.  

Jessie Flips: About Her Creative Side

Jessie's latest Flip, about how important the arts are to her.

Links for the organizations she is talking about: Propeller, Ottawa School of Speech and Drama, and H'Art of Ottawa.

Tie Dye Day

Jessie’s friend Rachel called this morning. She’s been working incredibly hard but has a day off and asked Jessie if she wanted to do tie-dye t-shirts. My knee jerk reaction when I heard “tie dye” was NO!

There is a reason that the kit Jessie was given almost 6 years ago has never been opened… I have spent most of those 6 years hiding it in various places so when Jessie and her friends asked for it, it couldn’t be found. While Jessie and many of her friends delight in painting and crafts—Rachel in particular, is quite a wonderful and whimsical artist, in any medium (see picture of the chair she and her sister Rebecca made for Jessie before she headed off to university last year)—Jessie always seems to get more paint or glue on herself and her clothing than on the paper or shirt or piece of furniture that they are working on.

I gave up being a crafty-type mom when Jess was about 14 and I realized that no matter how old Jessie and her friends got, Moms still cleaned up the mess. Instead, I became a crafty mom, one who learned to misplace key ingredients for the more involved crafts—those that required super-indelible-never-come-off-until-you-die kind of paints and markers and glue.

So when I heard the words “tie-dye” I panicked. “No Mom,” said Jess. “I’m going to go over to Rachel’s to do it. I just need to bring the kit.”

I sigh with relief and relax. But that just goes to show you how low I have sunk, because Rachel’s Mom, my friend Cathy, is away and I am so totally willing to let Jessie go over to Rachel’s and do tie-die, knowing that the ensuing mess might still be waiting on the back deck for her when she returns from Cincinnati later this week. Cathy. If you’re reading this, sorry!

RETRO JESSIE: Art and Disability [June 2008]

In the Press
June 2, 2008 (yup, 2 years ago!)This in another “in the press” week for Jessie. A radio interview about the upcoming Propeller Dance performance at the National Arts Centre 4th Stage and a TV interview. Propeller Dance is one of the performing groups that Jessie belongs to (the other being Dandelion Dance Company). Propeller is an all-abilities/integrated dance company that includes persons with a wide range of abilities—including those with intellectual and physical disabilities)

Jessie has had her fair share of press, when I look back at it, for all her dancing and performing, and she has an uncanny ability to speak about what moves her. I forget, sometimes, just how articulate she can be. There is a proud Mom factor here, but also, when I step back, a wonder at what she reveals. That she speaks from the heart and somehow finds the words to express her joy and her intention. She blows interviewers away and absolutely loves the attention.

The Mom Factor
The Mom factor here tries to deflate her getting too used to it. But also needs to step back to let her enjoy the limelight and remember that as others listen to her, she is breaking down barriers and opening doors for all people with disabilities. She speaks from the heart, and when others listen they stop and wonder at all the spirit and understanding that exists in her heart and head and maybe, just maybe, stop to think about their preconceptions about persons with intellectual disabilities. There is so much there for us to learn from. Jessie is just one voice (of all the voices that we tend to discount), and maybe her voice opens up doors for other voices to be heard.

The Circle Widens . . .
. . . and Jessie is on a high, even this morning as she gets ready for school. I drove her this morning, because she was late and because she has another performance tonight. And in the car she smiled and said “I am so excited about tonight!” Another performance would just exhaust me. But she is excited! That performing part of her certainly comes from Dan, not me! And she just exudes life on stage. And joy and a certain generosity of spirit that catapults energy across the stage and out into the audience. Tonight she and the group perform Underground Wonder —a piece that she has choreographed and I am looking forward to seeing that. In her own words, “it’s about living in darkness underground, caught in the cold and the snow and then breaking free so each of our colours, our beingness can emerge and greet the world.” She does go deep sometimes!

Opening Up Vistas . . . Painting with a New Palette
The Propeller Dance performing group has opened up vistas for her and has given her a space to work with other performers and to create and to perform from her inner sense of joy. For me, the Propeller Dance classes and performing group has opened up a whole area of my heart that makes me look at the world differently.

It also generates a measure of anger, when I look at what an amazing performer she is and how much that is her passion and how the “regular” channels (school) cannot shift the elitist attitude that constricts what is valued to only those who fall into the “established” palette of value. While drama has always been a strength for Jessie, she was not allowed to apply to the high school for the arts (we don’t take kids like her—i.e., kids with an intellectual disability), nor was she allowed to apply for the drama focus program at her own high school —because she didn’t have university or college level English (one of the prerequisites).

What then, or how then, do we foster the passion and strengths of each of our students? And in the arts, of all places, where seeing and being outside the box is often the norm and the place from which many create? This continues to frustrate me, although you think I’d be able to let it go. I can’t, for some reason. BUT, am so grateful for all the opportunities outside school that the community offers for individuals like Jessie and others who don’t fit the mould. She is also lucky to be living at this time and in this place where new arts groups and opportunities are growing and where the wider community is opening up and making room for artistic expression for those with disabilities, who in turn are changing the environment in which we all create.

Connecting to Our Deeper Selves
We connect to our deeper selves through art and performance. To a deep sense of love and laughter and joy and pain. To a celebration of just breathing, of turning in a chair and flying with our arms through the woven ties that sometimes bind us to the ground and to each other and, if we watch and listen with our hearts, to a certain freedom that allows us to fly beyond the lies and the pretences.

Okay. Then there is the other side of our experience. This part tells you that it is all about people. Tis people, tis people, tis people. Jessie also loves to sing. She is a wonderful performer on that front as well. But she cannot, and I mean this seriously, with all the love that a mother has, she cannot sing on key and only recently has managed to keep a beat. By her own admission (through tears, when listening to a tape she made with friends) “why does my voice sound so wrong when theirs is so right?).

So. We have a child who, over the years, has belonged to a number of school and church choirs and who absolutely loves to sing! She stands on stage and it’s hard to take your eyes off her because she exudes joy and her whole body sings with her (if you can get past the off-key part...and usually we hope that the choir is big enough that most people won’t notice that). But there is no doubt that she sings off key. Really off-key.

And Yet . . .
And yet, and yet....the choir and voice director at her school asked her to join the voice program! Jessie came home from school one day to tell me this with pride. I was sure that she a) got it wrong or b) the choir/voice teacher was just being kind and thoughtful. But when we were choosing classes for next year, the high-needs coordinator at school reiterated that yes, Mrs. B thought it would be wonderful if Jessie took the voice/choir class. I smiled and nodded. Jessie beamed! And it is a curiosity to me that the school makes it impossible for her to pursue her passion (and what she is really good at), but will make is possible for her to pursue a passion where she has little talent. Go figure.