As I worked in my studio a few days ago I was going through papers, sketchbooks, patterns, old jewelry, and magazines trying to come up with the inspiration and bits of quirk for The Turmoil Series I have been working on the past two years. I got sucked into a time warp and I found myself going through a box of The Saturday Evening Post from the 1970’s.
I try not to lick my fingers to turn the pages because I am afraid of all the nasty germs from being in dusty storage over the years. There are little spills here and there on the pages, they are 40 years old. I am mesmerized and intrigued by the stories, the advertising and artwork of Norman Rockwell. My heart aches a little as I read the stories and reminisce of time before digital media and technology.
Then as I finished the last page of one magazine and turn to the cover of the next, hot tears come to my eyes and roll down my cheeks. I read the address label. I realize that what I am holding in my hands, is what my parents held in their hands 40 years ago. The thumb smudges on the corners are my dadâs, not some stranger. The tagged pages are ideas that my mom loved or a story that touched her heart. These were seen through the eyes of my parents and now, 40 years later through my eyes.
I did not realize I had these. I thought they were thrown away when we cleaned out Mom and Dadâs house years ago. It seems like when I need an encouragement, a reminder that it will be okay or need an idea or hug, I get a little message from Mom and Dad. I get a little nudge of hope.
Technology is good for sharing stories, like this one, however, sharing what is real, what you feel and what you can hold in your hands and touch is something technology can never replace. Connect with the ones you have in your lives now and hold them in your heart and hands while you can.
Remain original. Be intuitive. Remain true to yourself and honor the feelings when they come. It might just lead you to the answer you have been searching for.
When my dad passed away in 2006, family members each got to pick things from his house and have things from his life’s collections and home. I mindfully choose his work boots.
14 years and several moves later, they hang in my home where I see them almost daily and can gently touch the laces or worn leather to remind me, he is always with me.
I watched him walk and live his life in those boots. As a little girl on the farm, I heard them from my upstairs farmhouse bedroom, thump on the kitchen floor in the morning as he seemed to purposely drop them extra hard to wake us at sunrise.
I heard them thump on the floor after he would come home exhausted from a dayâs work providing for us on the family farm. I heard them when we moved off the farm after a series of heart attacks, and he continued to work daily to support his family. Those boots always were on his soles, to feed not only us, but to quietly feed our souls in his own way.
Every day. He methodically untied them, set them one by one to the side. Then when he was done for the day, he would drop them by the kitchen bench, and they would land with a loud, tired thud.
The next morning, as the smell of Folgers coffee brewed, WNAX-AM âYour Big Friend in the Midwest âradio station loudly announced the farm markets and local news and the smell of whatever his cast iron frying pan breakfast was that morning filled the house; his boots waited for his return to face another day.
They carried him through the 1920s, 1930’s, and then they became the boots of a World War II solider. The boots he wore saw the changing times of the world from 1919-2006 carrying him through it all.
He always purchased boots of quality that would stand the test of time. Their solid build held him through a marriage & creation of a family, and then the loss of his son.
The leather pull on the backs, were tugged on many times with held back words, fears, and tears. The strong leather and soles supported him through making the memories, and the loss of memories, as he laced them up daily through our moms long, drawn out years of dementia and her passing.
He would wear them until they were about worn out before replacing them, alternating them between a pair of work shoes and casual shoes. A combination of 3 pair of sturdy, faithful shoes & boots were all he needed to carry him through his life.
He wore them while he taught, yelled, or scolded me or while silently let me learn hard lessons. He wore them fishing to relax, or while he rested in his recliner for a quick nap, or as he held a new grandbaby for the first time, or let the grandchildren play in the garage by his side.
While he suffered from heart disease and then faded too fast from cancer, he wore them to re-live his memories and stories; to teach us lessons and give us final instructions on how to go on with him not in this earthly world.
His walk was not perfect in life. The boot strings would often break, He would be a lost soul at times, but he would knot them back together and lace it back up to face another day. The hooks would bend and need to be gently pushed back into shape to hold the laces again. The boots were stained and soiled from sweat and tears of his and the others he quietly loved.
The laces that physically held the boots on and together through his life, now spiritually bind us together. Â As we move through this Easter with laces that cannot be tied and our connections with loved ones are separated; and the houses of Our Father look much different than any other Easter in our memories, we need to remember that even though we are apart, we are always together.
May you have a blessed Easter and rejoice, as soon our ties will be reunited with our friends and families and gatherings will happen again.
Artists are lonely. We are stereotyped as loners, but are we? We appreciate and see a beautiful sunrise unlike others, we notice everything, or we focus in on one specific thing. Our brains are wired to connect things in a different way. But are we âlonersâ?
One The Edge – Dayle Sundberg
It is quiet when the sun rises, birds chirping, water rippling, wind rustling, cool air touching your face. Quiet. Peaceful and beautiful, another new day filled with hope. A new day.
“She holds the day in the palm of her hand” – Photo: Dayle Sundberg
It is quiet. But like TOO much quiet. A type of hellish quietness that just continues day after day. An epidemic within a pandemic affecting every age. A type of hellish quietness, also known as loneliness. Maybe you are watching a parent sit alone in a care facility with little to no interaction with the world outside the staff. Maybe you have a young person who should be chasing others at recess, having big birthday parties, attending rite of passages like first dates, Prom, or other cultural events that mark significant points in life. We are missing that connection in the wiring.
It does not take much searching online to find studies and research on the rise in loneliness, or how the past year has affected not only physical health, but mental health. Harvard, the CDC, and others have scary rates of the rise of loneliness, depression, anxiety, and suicide. I could link all the articles for you, however, that would take up pages.
I admit it, I am lonely. It is TO DAMN QUIET. I am an artist, self-proclaimed âlonerâ, we spend hours upon hours in our own little worlds creating without any disturbances and we get all flubery-busted when someone interrupts for something trivial, like food, water, or sleep.
Working quietly in my studio.
The quietness of being socially distanced is, well a deafening silence. Humans were made for connections and thrive from that connection and intimacy of a relationship. Keep us isolated and things happen, like thoughts that repeat over and over, chewing nails, cutting, over-eating, sleeping too much, binge watching movies, addictions to substances or screens, and the list goes on, but it looks a lot like anxiety, depression, and yep, you guessed it, loneliness. We are un-wired, with connections missing.
Here, but not complete.
Not only are adults feeling it, but young people who are developing social skills needed to become productive adults that shape out future are suffering with it. Because of the obvious risks during the pandemic of needing to social distance, and depending on technology to connect, learn, shop, and interact it has become un-normally normal to be apart. Being physically distanced and separated from other people puts one in a state of physiological stress, and when it continues day after day it can become a chronic condition damaging to your physical and emotional health, according to former (and recently confirmed again) U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy.
“I found that people who struggle with loneliness, that that’s associated with an increased risk of heart disease, dementia, depression, anxiety, sleep disturbances and even premature death,” Dr. Vivek Murthy told NPR.
Now, knowing how art has trained me to be a âlonerâ and I practiced this loneliness thing in my studio for hours upon hours, I also know how art has helped my mental health. Connecting your thoughts and feelings in your head to paper, canvas, or another media can help one maneuver through the mess of crossed wires in our brains and bodies.
Art helps heal and can bring connections and community together through creating and sharing. I have created a way to help move my dark, deep thoughts from my body to art and create a safe space to share. Art heals. Art re-wires. Art creates connection.
January 2019, we do not know what the calendar days will offer. We do not know what stories you will add to our life by the end of December 2019. But what I do know is that 2017 & 2018 added stories that impacted my whole outlook on life of late. (Yes, itâs 2021, just keep reading.)
These crutches have been with me for about 9 years, I just keep adding my artistic flare to them while I sit and heal.
In December 2017, I broke 3 bones in my foot and the x-rays showed the severity of the breaks. I was scolded by my doc and had to be non-weight bearing on the foot and it was the end of May before I could gingerly walk on it. In that time, I had to learn new ways to do my daily routines; I had to ask for help (& I really do not like doing that); I had to be extra cautious, because being on crutches in a South Dakota winter is hazardous, and in turn, I tended not to leave the house much or get to my art studio. I isolated and protected myself.
We traveled to Biloxi in May 2018 & with help from family, I managed to get my toes wet in the sand! Crutches and sand are not an easy combo.
For me 2018 was all about hurting my foot, asking for help, maneuvering crutches, and trusting my feet to walk on again. Or was it?
Not only had I hurt my foot in 2017-2018, but I had also gotten hurt in a way that is not physically seen, and it can easily be masked. I had gotten an emotional sledgehammer bashed into my head and heart. It was an awakening that shook me to my core, my values, my ethics, and everything in my world that I THOUGHT I knew to be true turned upside down.
And because of that sledgehammer whack, I lost my trust in people. All people; not just a few. All, except a select group of two or three that I have always held the closest in my life. It has always been hard for me to trust since I was young after some traumatic events and I had worked hard over the years to trust, and I had the illusion that I was “peopling” well. (Insert the sledgehammer whack sound here).
With my foot healed in July 2018, and the inner bruising of the sledgehammer whack, I just wanted to run away, who wouldnât? So I took my teenage daughter on that 3 week long summer road-trip of over 1500 miles. I had to get a new point of view, I had to see the goodness in people from somewhere besides the recliner I sat in as my foot healed. I had to show her that it is a big, beautiful world and remind myself of that also. I had to learn to trust my instincts again; find and trust my story; and trust what I saw through my artistic lens.
Washington State overlook
Fast forward to 1/18/2020. Add another sledgehammer whack, this time from a one day summer stalker who instilled fear back into the budding trust I was regaining. And those crutches, they may not be physically by my side but they are still invisibly holding me up as I learn the walk of trust again. My feet still gingerly walk, being cautious about stepping forward into anything. My healing is mine that only I can maneuver my crutches through. But at least I have my crutches sitting by my side. My instincts tell me to keep the faith, itâs holding me like my crutches have been. I am in a story, I am a sentence without an ending at the moment. This chapter WILL eventually get written and move to the next.
The trusty trio
I snapped a selfie to see what this masked untrusting one looks like. It’s filtered, it’s not to be trusted because it’s not the “real me”. It was me I saw in the phone photo, but I did not like it, so I filtered it, like one filters thoughts. The reason I took a selfie was to show a jewelry line I started to carry and grabbed a necklace that said: “TRUST DREAMS, TRUST YOUR HEART, AND TRUST YOUR STORY”. How fitting that I grabbed THAT necklace, right? But what I reflected on after seeing my photo was: when stuck in your mind, thoughts can often give you a skewed and fearful view. What you see and what is felt, can easily be âfilteredâ.
2019 Selfie
The fears take away the trust in how you see yourself, that you may not be good enough, look, or act the right way. The fears make you not trust your instincts, and sadly the intentions or actions of others. My goal in 2019 is that I will take unfiltered selfies…and I need to trust my story is going right where it is supposed to go.
This is my first step, without crutches in 2019, to trust you with this post.
Wait a hot minute. 2019. What? 2019 you say? Yes, I wrote this blog post in January 2019, but I donât know if it ever was shared. Here I am reading it going, âHmmmm, this story sounds familiar forâŚoh I dunno, 2020?â If you know me, you would know I broke the same foot again in October 2020, have been on those crutches ever since.
I do not recommend collapsing ladders or broken navicular bones.
And just this past week, slowly I am trusting my walking on my own again. Crutches and faith sit in the corner carefully watching over me.
Also, Covid arrived in March 2020, JUST as I was ready to start reconnecting and gently, slowly trusting again. Globally, many of us got connections and trust taken away. Covid instilled a different type of fear and trust factor that each of us has experienced in our own unique (and isolating) way. And now you may be learning to walk without crutches again, slowly trusting, and reconnecting.
I have learned in the past three years a way to use my art to help me get all the dark, grimy, fearful thoughts out of my head and soul onto paper to find that healing path.
Maybe you will walk with me a bit and I can show you how I have been working on a more positive mental health journey.
Now there is a big, in your face question you never want to even consider.
Ask any of my three kids about their mom and technology, they will tell you “she’s cursed” or “anything she touches, goes bad” or “she always screws it up”. This is one area that I will completely agree with them. (How’s this related to suicide? Just keep reading.) In fact, as I went to sit down to type this quick blog, my screen split in two and there are coding symbols on my screen with things that say, “chrome 68 update”, “event listeners”, “DOM” or “eager evaluation”. And things with color codes, font size numbers, padding. I have never even heard of PADDING in computer terms until recently. I just HOPE when I get this typed that it will publish, and my computer will continue to work.
This website thing is not new to me, but it is a struggle at times. I have found a wonderful lady helping me to rebranded and rebuild it all. I need to update and work on this site if I want people to see and sell my art. I slowly, but surely am adding new content, then I remove it, then add it again so that is not soo large it doesn’t fit the screen, and so on. Today I was stuck, absolutely stumped, and needed a brain break so I went to the office âthinking chairâ.
The comfy chairs
My office has a 1950’s extra comfy, sink down to the bottom chair, and my vintage bookshelf, which holds all my art books, full sketchbooks, and multiple books on multiple subjects. Stuck in between all the books I spy a spiral notebook and pull it out. I have not seen it for years, it has words written in white script on a soft green cover saying: “take a chance”, “take your time”, and “relive a memory”.
This small, hard-covered notebook is the one that sat out at all my previous art exhibitions and served as a guest book where folks could leave comments. I did several exhibitions and entered many shows shortly after I graduated in 2004 from the University of South Dakota with my Fine Arts degree. (Yes, I got a late start, I did it backwards: had the career, the hubby, had the babies and THEN went to college.) But I finally found my calling by making art, exhibiting, and living my dream.
Enter life. Kids growing. Jobs change. Moves. Illnesses. Death. I waivered between being a mom, an artist, and finally back to âpart-time jobs” here and there. Life won and my art sat quietly in its place waiting for me to give it a voice again.
So back to this notebook I spied on the shelf, I plop down in the office chair today and on the inside cover I had penned, “Guests, please share!”. This is where there are pages filled with people who had taken time from their lives to view my artwork and share what they saw in my pieces. That is where they left me testimony about my art, and today, they brought it all back and challenged me to reflect about my art, and their words have been in my head the rest of day. I know my sculptures have a powerful impact on people and reading the words on the pages, their testimonies, reminded me of faces I had seen passing through my solo exhibits with my figurative sculpture pieces.
Which Direction? | Dayle Sundberg | @2002
I read the words on one of the pages. I flash immediately to the moment. A man about 50 years old, he was tall, thin, and looked completely exhausted and lost. Before anyone looks at my pieces, I always ask them to please read my artist statement, to grasp what these random body parts lying around mean to me. This man, stood at the wall, staring at a white piece of paper with black ink, slowly reading and taking in every single word of my artist statement.
Then he dropped his head, shoulders sank, and he began weeping. He had not even looked up to see at my art yet; I was thinking “what on earth did I just do to this guy!?” I was worried, scared, concerned, and searching for a box of tissues. This was not the reaction I was expecting at all. I remember it like yesterday, it impacted me profoundly as the message in my art was validated. I will never forget that moment.
On the Edge | Dayle Sundberg | @2002
He regained his stance, I watched. He looked around slowly at my sculptures, randomly touching one or two, taking in the textures; all while his eyes were searching. Searching for the artist. He walked up to me, his strong hands took mine and he pulled me in for a bear hug that was like no other I have ever received. He then squares up with me, put his large hands on my shoulders and with tears in his eyes and a shaky voice trying to say the words a parent never wants to hear out of their mouth, he said to me: “NEVER, EVER stop doing what you are doing. You are making a difference. My 19-year-old son committed suicide last week” and then he broke off, unable to continue. I wasâŚspeechless.
You see, my professors at USD challenged me to address a problem in my art. I addressed mental illness and what is it to “be normal?” and “Why try to act normal when nothing is normal?” I am far from normal and so are every one of you, especially after the past year or more. So, from the frustration of technology today and to the lady who is helping me rebrand my website and talking about needing an actual testimony to add a âtestimonies sectionâ on my website, and here I am thinking I had nothing to put there….
I just happened to glance at that notebook a few minutes ago and thought, âI do have testimonies of how my art touches peopleâ and I will add those testimonies on the website. I sure did not plan on writing a blog entry about this subject tonight. But I did, and I have realized in these last few paragraphs, as I am randomly writing what comes through my thoughts, my experience, and my hands, that I need to HONOR that father. Today more than ever, because too many people are acting “normal” and we are far, far from it. And too many parents are speaking his words.
You are not alone. Reach out. And if you have not heard from someone you usually hear from. Reach out.
Technology and testimonies. Wow, that was not where I planned on going with this blog entry. Now, please go read my Artist Statement below, and forgive me as I have yet to figure out how to make the “Sculpture” page on my website look all pretty and “normal“. That will get worked on next week and we will see how technology works for me then.
Have an un-normal week-end everyone.
(Please God, let my computer work after I close out these weird screens. And may you grace my hands with works I am to put forth.)
Artist Statement: Dayle Sundberg
The song âI Hope You Danceâ is an inspiring factor in my work. Working through my own bouts of depression, grief, trauma, and stressful events I found hope again through determination, hard work, friends and art. By talking and sharing with others my experiences of depression and grief, I have had many people approach me and express their feelings of despair and fear. Some asking where they can go for help to get better. Through my experiences I have gained many close friends and an excellent support system. If I would have covered it all up and appeared normal through it all, would I be as strong as I am today? Would I be here today, would I have hope today? My art is my therapy and my way of expressing to others that they too can go through challenging events, and still have hope.
The goal of my art is to create a dialog among the viewers and to encourage them to talk about their personal losses, their illnesses, anger, family issues and stressors. Do you cover up your feelings to appear normal or do you face the feelings and uncover them? What is normal? Do you cover up a subject to cover it or should you uncover it and reveal it to others?
The artists that inspire me are all sculptors, Auguste Rodin, Alexander Calder, Manuel Neri and George Segal. Neri and Segal are the main influence for the plaster pieces in the exhibit, after seeing the expressive qualities Neri used with his life-size female figures by using texture and bright slashes of color. I was inspired to find my own voice by using the female form. I create my works by using the same technique of body casting as Segal and the heavy texture of Neri, however, my colors come from burning each sculpture with fabric. In each piece I burned, it became a ritual type of event, symbolic of releasing the hurt into the flames, a healing process of sorts. If you are to touch the pieces, you will feel the harsh textures and beaten areas. Hidden through the flame-colored marks are soft, subtle areas that are sensuous, smooth and indicate hope and peace that is within us all.
What does it take to hope? Can you have hope without faith, humility, and wonder? Can you reveal your hope?
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