I want to comment...on another busy October

Every year in recent memory has featured a busy October. Last year, I traveled for most of the month. I’m not complaining about that—I went to amazing places, and had the opportunity to talk about the health humanities and narrative medicine work that is dear to me.

Which I’m also doing this October.

My friend and colleague Sally Jane Brown, who is also the Curator for the Art in the Libraries program (AiL) at West Virginia University, opened a retrospective of the last ten years of AiL with a panel discussion from those of us that had been involved in it. Sally and I first worked on an exhibit of work by Lacie Lee Wallace, a Wheeling, WV-area artist who was also a patient with cancer.

I’m going to crib here a bit from my remarks, just to give this picture some context, and so you get to know a bit about its creator.

Lacie was a 34-year-old Wheeling-area artist and mother of two, who had stage IV colon cancer and was receiving chemotherapy and palliative care when I met her. At the time, I was embedded in the WVU Cancer Institute’s infusion center on a grant-funded project looking at the connection between life stories, quality of life, and preparedness for advance directives. Lacie was the 20^th story of the 72 total I would work on over two years, and stood out among others because her entire story was connected to her work as an artist and artist model. I asked to see her artwork and was immediately struck by it—its bold color and texture, its fearless quality. She texted me a few images, and I began asking around—to anyone who would listen—to see if there was any place on campus that displayed patient art.

In the months leading up to the exhibit, Lacie’s health would continue to decline, but she would talk to everyone—and I mean, everyone, including the nurses, doctors, janitors, people who brought her food, her family, me, and so on—about the exhibit. She had to be hospitalized several times, but still continued to make art in her bed. “Even if I just get ten minutes of collage, it’s a good day,” she told me.

Tragically, Lacie would not survive for the opening of her exhibit, but a small event and makeshift gallery was produced so that she could have the experience of being around others enjoying her art. At the opening event, I was struck by not only the number of people who attended but the array of people: some of the oncology nurses, her massage therapist, and her palliative care physician, professors of medicine and health sciences, students—both from health professions programs and undergraduates, students from my honors class, family members, community members and others. I also remember that the provost at that time, Joyce McConnell, spent a long time with Lacie’s work, and spoke with me at length about her art and her story.

I have long believed in the healing potential of art, and Lacie was one of my earliest and best teachers. The piece included in the retrospective is her cancer self-portrait. It tells the story of medicine turning her into a robot. But in her true style, this is the most fanciful, intricate robot you may ever encounter. She tells a story, if stop and look carefully. Before she died, Lacie asked me to use her robot to teach others about both her art and her cancer journey. She was so afraid that people would either never know her art or forget about it.

When I share the cancer self-portrait to others, one of the first aspects folks point out is the heart stitched to the outside of the robot’s dress. Some might wear their heart on their sleeve, but Lacie was full-frontal with her love, full of life and art to the very end. And this is the enduring lesson that Lacie Lee Wallace shares with us, as we might all be better, more compassionate human beings if we showed our hearts more.

Next week, I’m incredibly grateful for this opportunity:

So, October is busy, but it’s also full of treats.

News and Noteworthy

• Thank you to all the folks who came out to celebrate What We Do In the Hollows with Sally Jane Brown and me! We sold lots of books, had loads of fun, and, I took this picture through the window of Sally getting her portrait done by a caricature artist.

Want a copy of Hollows? You can get in touch with me or Sally, or purchase through Amazon.

• Postsripts love continues! I’m so grateful for Gary Ciocco’s review in the Pittsburgh Post -Gazette. From the review: “Nicholson’s new poetry collection, Postscripts, is a kind of travelog, one which captures not just the vicissitudes, vagaries and vital signs of various places and cultures, but remains rooted in the wilds of West Virginia and also grounded in grief, at the loss of her brother to cancer in 2019.”

• What I’m reading? The Long Run: A Creative Inquiry by Stacey D’Erasmo. It’s a fascinating look by a creative person into the lives and processes of other creative people. It’s helping me to see that there is no one way into creativity—not that I ever believed there was one way, but it twarts those who would be overly prescriptive in discussing the ways of creativity. No one size fits all, and no magic pill here, and thank goodness.

• For the spooky set, I hear Duran Duran is (re)releasing, with new tracks, Danse Macabre Delux Edition. It’s basically the album for those hosting a Halloween party who just don’t want to or have time to make a mix. And also reminds me of eigth grade, when I just loved Duran Duran (and maybe do, again).

• Mark your calendars! My friend, former classmate, and WVU Press-mate Matt Ferrence, author of the recently released I Hate It Here, Please Vote For Me, will be in conversation with Kate Barr, Democratic candidate for North Carolina Senate District 37. What brings these two together? Failure—and the understanding that comes from close encounters with uniquely American ways of political life. You can click here to register for this Zoom event. I also highly recommend Matt’s book.

• Also, I’ll be at Booktenders in Barboursville, WV on November 1, 2024, for World Ballet Day. More details to follow soon on this event, and remember, Fierce and Delicate: Essays on Dance and Illness.

• Final teaser: I did something that’s perhaps a fool’s errand, or perhaps not. I’m part of a competition for those of us Fabulous Over 40. It supports the National Breast Cancer Foundation (my maternal grandmother died from breast cancer). It also is a competition in which I could win $40K—money to support my creative work, including work in narrative medicine. More on how to help me to follow soon (I’ll need…votes???). I figure if nothing else, I’ll have an essay from this experience. And perhaps an answer to that lingering question: is this what literary agents think when they ask, “do you have a platform?”