Artist’s Statement
To help me select the participants in this book, I turned to the members of the South Dakota Peace and Justice Center, with whom I had been long associated. The Center put out a call to their members for nominations for the book and received over fifty marvelous nominees. From this group the SDPJC Board of Directors helped me edit the list to the fifteen elders who were invited to participate.
From January of 1995 through the early summer I traveled the region interviewing and photographing the elders. It is impossible to express in written form the depth of the experiences. The landscapes, the communities, the homes, the families, the kindness and hospitality of the elders were learning experiences on many levels. I used a standard set of questions in the interviews though occasionally I omitted one or more.
The written product from the interview was a distillation of hours of conversation that many times meandered into multiple interesting directions. My first drafts of the interviews were edited by the former director of SDPJC, Legia Spicer. Her guidance greatly improved the written component. The interviews were lastly reviewed by the elders themselves, making certain I was correctly reflecting their thoughts.
The portraits were painted in the summer of 1995 using photos and notes from the interview sessions as sources. I would many times combine various aspects of different photos of an elder to create an image I felt better reflected the character I wished to convey. The portraits are not meant to be a photographic likeness of the elder. Had I wished that effect I would have used photographs. Instead I wanted to use the emphasis of texture, color, and line that is part of my painting technique to create an interpretation of the elder. I found painting the portraits just as rewarding an experience as the interviews. My subjects had a tremendous variety of facial qualities enhanced by the details of the many decades of living. The cloud pattern in the background of each portrait is based on the sky the day of the interview.
Doing these portraits led me to contemplate what I would call the “aesthetics of age.” We live in a society that puts prime value on youth and the visual beauty of youth. The desirability of youth is constantly marketed to us in obvious and subtle ways. It has been said that if an American has just turned fifty years old and mentions it to a friend, the friend may well respond, “You don’t look a day over forty!” In traditional China, in the same situation, when the Chinese mentions turning fifty the friend might respond, “Oh, you look at least sixty!” Both friends are attempting to be kind but in traditional China it is positive to look old.
I believe there is an aesthetic – a type of beauty – to aging. The study involved in doing these portraits certainly helped to reinforce this belief. As we age we physically change. It is a natural process: lines deepen, hair color changes, sometimes even eye color and skin color change, shapes and forms change. These changes reflect not the tight, smooth beauty of youth, but another kind of beauty of texture and line. They are a beauty reflecting time, a beauty reflecting character, and can be a beauty of reflecting wisdom. I hope my portraits convey some of that aesthetic.
As I look on this project with its diverse and thoughtful faces and words, I feel fortunate to have had the experience. I also think of the thirty-five nominees who were not interviewed and painted. I also think of elders who are all around us – in the grocery store, at the movie, walking on the street, at the doctor’s office, in our immediate families. There is so much to be learned from our elders in religious matters and all aspects of life. We simply need a small amount of wisdom ourselves to have the sense to ask them.
Mark W. McGinnis 1995
Note: On the publication of the eBook version in 2011, many of the elders in this book have passed on, leaving us the goodness of their lives including their words in this book.
Beryl Blake
born 1911
Beryl Blake has been member of the Methodist Church all her adult life. She had a long career as a social worker with an emphasis in child welfare and is now retired in Watertown, South Dakota.
Question: What is your spiritual tradition and how does it form a foundation for your life?
Answer: I grew up in a very spiritual home. My family had their own ideas, but they also had a sense of tolerance of other ideas as well. It was the horse and buggy days and we had pastors that came out from town to preach in our school on Sundays. We would have a variety of ministers of various denominations that would preach to us. We would go to church no matter which preacher was there. My parents felt we were in need of spiritual guidance and were very uncritical of the ministers. My parents would say when they did not agree with the pastors but they were careful never to put them down in front of the children. They would explain why they didn’t agree, but they would make it clear that their disagreement did not make the minister wrong, as everyone has the right to their own beliefs. My mother was a Baptist and my father was a Methodist. Later in my childhood, Mother even taught Sunday school in both churches. Sometimes they would go to services at the Baptist church, sometimes at the Methodist church. We children were allowed to go to whichever church we wanted, and we were not baptized until we were adolescents and could understand what baptism meant. My parents, through my religious traditions, taught me to accept people where they are.
Q: How has your religion and religious practice given meaning to your life?
A: My religion is the core of my life. Religion is the center and creates meaning in what I have planned for my life. God as the Holy Spirit is my guide in this planning. God is my center, and to me God is a spirit and not a being. I don’t know if God is a he or a she and I don’t care. Too many people get hung up on little things when it comes to religion and miss the more important matters. I need the community of the church. I need the strength of the group and the support of people that I know will stand by me.
Q: What do you believe are the most important values to uphold and promote?
A: Which values I think are the most important would change depending on which day you might ask me. Today I might say integrity. But then I think of all the white lies I have told to spare others feelings — that’s not integrity, but maybe it is. Another important value is openness, but then I think that openness is a value only to a certain point. Minds must be open to solve problems, but there is also merit in some firmness of beliefs. Patience is another important virtue, but again how far do you go?
Q: What has given you the most joy in your life?
A: I have been given great joy in my life by the love of family and friends and people in general, and I interpret that as the love of God coming through them. I also received much happiness through my work, as I always loved my work. When I think of the afterlife and think of some people’s description of heaven as doing nothing! I don’t think it’s going to be that way. I hope we will have things to do; we will continue to be productive.
Q: What are your hopes for the future?
A: I hope daily for more awakening to understand the power that lies within us. There is so much we have yet to learn of each individual’s potential and how to release it.
Q: If there was one thing you could communicate to youth, what would it be?
A: Unless the youth ask for advice, I wouldn’t give it. Young people don’t learn from what you tell them; they learn from your actions. If anyone would ask me, I would first say, “Be kind.” I feel that young people don’t think often enough of the consequences of their actions. We as parents are often too protective. If a youngster should climb a tree, fall and break an arm it will mend. It is better to break an arm than to be afraid to reach for challenges.
Ted