A Faint Memory
Art from the Hearts of Alzheimer’s Artists gallery
The imagination never gets ill, and it never gets old, unlike every other part of us,” said Lynette Schweigert, co-founder and director of the nonprofit organization Moments of Memory.
Schweigert’s father was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease seven days after her mother died in her arms of breast cancer in January 1994. She began caring for her father, along with his 125 sheep and 17 Afghan hounds, and soon started devoting her life to Alzheimer’s care.
She started out with a social club where patients would come and have fun with people in the same situation they were in—giving the caregivers three hours a week to themselves. Now, she does art classes for Alzheimer’s and other dementia patients—and teaches caregivers how to do art with their loved one—through her nonprofit organization. The gallery of residents’ art at Arbors Memory Care Community (AMCC) will be open throughout the month of July for Artown daily from 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Greeting cards with reproductions of resident’s art and framed prints will be available for a donation to benefit the program. And on July 13 from 11 a.m.-3 p.m., AMCC and Moments of Memory will host Memories in the Garden Art, where anyone can come out and make their own garden art to take home.
Schweigert has done weekly classes at AMCC for five years now, which I got to visit and help with.
“I don’t really teach them, they teach me. Seriously,” Schweigert said. “And, as you could see today, there’s singing, there’s laughing, there’s joking, and literally, this is the only time they do that because they’re all focused on the same thing. And I think this helps distract them from the sadness of forgetting.”
During Schweigert’s class, the residents of AMCC talked with Schweigert about what they saw in the abstract paintings they made in the previous class, if the paintings should be vertical or horizontal and then cut the paintings into mats to frame self-portraits to be made the next class. All the while the residents were happy—with one resident’s favorite band, the Beach Boys, playing in the background.
For those with Alzheimer’s Disease or other forms of dementia, a sense of self worth and independence and staying active, physically and mentally, becomes difficult. Stephanie Hanna, AMCC community relations director, explained that doing these art pieces really helps the residents develop these things while she showed me the residents’ artwork framed on the walls throughout the facility and their patio where four pieces of art were blown up on the walls, and the walls were repainted to match the color schemes of the art.
“It creates a really strong sense of independence because this is something they’re doing themselves,” Hanna said. “While Lynette might be providing guidance or inspiration, the artist is doing it themselves, which there’s not much they’re able to do themselves anymore. Art is no fail. They can’t make a bad flower because it’s art, which is great because a lot of times they get really frustrated because they can’t tie their shoe right or they can’t put on their shirt right anymore. But they can make the piece of art right.” Ω