Poo Poo Pa Doo

I was thinking about my analogy in the last blog about the artists working in urine and feces. Crapping on Mary, the Holy Mother is not my idea of art. Maybe it's just me, but pasting buttons on a cartoony picture of a celeb is not art for me either. Maybe I am just an art snob. I have never even considered the idea of calling my painting or my sculpture, or my writing true art, as if I had the definitive talent to do so. Maybe it's my insecurities that bubble to the surface showing how, even though I have been paid for my "art" in several forms in my lifetime, I still hesitate to consider myself an artist. Or maybe, if you live long enough, you learn not to believe your own press.

Years ago when I was working at a nursing home just outside the inner city, but still within crack house range, I had a patient who loved to draw on the wall. Intricate, sometimes broad stroked murals were painstakingly drawn on the wall beside her bed, as she was bed ridden and unable to walk or stand to be ambulatory by herself. Every night I worked on her floor, I would sneak in on rounds to watch her draw her next creation on the wall. Sometimes she would explain to me in great detail what she was trying to portray, others she would scream, "Get the hell out of here!" I tended to tiptoe in and see the mood of the room before intruding on her work. One of the nurse's aids would come in berating (we'll call her "Helen") Helen for writing on the wall. I would then try and get the aid to stop and see what Helen was trying to show us. "Look at the detail she put in tonight," I said in a whispered hush. The aid then looked me square in the eye and scolded me," There ain't no detail. She coloring on the wall that I will have to clean off! Tried to get her to use pen on paper, but she won't do it." The aid then went off to get the disinfectant we needed to scrub off the latest piece, a grand sweeping mural that went from one end of the bed to the other. Within moments the mural was gone, the canvas clean for the next night's masterpiece.

Here's the thing about Helen's work: She drew in poop, her own to be exact. She would dig in her behind to get a perfectly ball shaped piece of poop and then begin to draw the images only she knew the meaning of. We did give her writing and drawing utensils to no avail. During the day she would sit in her chair, sometimes chattering away, sometimes very quiet, but never wanting to draw with conventional tools. I am not sure what fascinated me, and irritated the aid more; the fact that Helen refused to draw with anything other than her own feces, or that her work was sometimes incredible. I said once out loud, "She has an impressionistic eye.." The response I got from my co-workers was, "You are shit crazy, you know that? Don't be stupid, that woman doesn't know a single thing she is doin'."
I stood after being admonished for what they called "wishing nothing was something", staring down at my shoes. I went to the place of thinking I had spent too many hours on my feet with little food, not much sleep, so maybe I was trying to get a sweet idea from a poop pie.
Once when Helen talked to me in the hall late one night when she refused to sleep, she told me of a car full of boys who had raped her when she was young. She told me the make and model of the car, the look on the boys faces, the way they had hurt her and tossed her out the car when they were done. I figured this would have had to happen in the 1930's or 40's. I ran to the aids who had known her longer, breathless, I said in a begging voice, a voice that sounded scared, horrified, desperate, "Is it true Helen got gang raped when she was young? Is it true? Oh, God..." I stood before the crew waiting for an answer. Helen was diagnosed with dementia, so I was hoping for some solid information from a rational person. I had already checked the chart and there was nothing about our patients social history, and most of the medical history only dealt with medications and surgeries. We never got to know when they had suffered some huge trauma, unless the family told us, or someone who worked there knew them in their previous life.
The older aid, the more experienced aid looked at me and said, "I am not sure. She has told that story more than once, so I wouldn't be surprised. At night, sometimes she cries about it."
And there it was for me, the reason I knew had to exist for the poop art that was carefully drawn on the wall every night. Some of the crew never believed there was any insight into the drawings, but I had always maintained there was, there was some sort of catharsis going on for Helen while she expressed herself on her bedroom wall. Was the poop a metaphor of some kind? Did she even know why her compulsion to do wall art every night before she slept existed? I never got any more answers to my questions. I still do not know if the tiny woman in the wheel chair was gang raped as a very young woman. I tend to believe it was true. I saw her face, her eyes as she told in detail what seemed to be her greatest pain. She didn't make much sense in her other conversations, being confused by daily events, never knowing time or place, but this she knew.
From that moment on I paid attention to every stroke mark, every dot, every purposefully put mark she had made on her wall. Some nights were stark in contrast and content, some nights there were sweeping images with light and shadow, texture and layers.
I wish I had seen this during the digital age when I could have taken pictures of her artwork. Of course, we had to scour it off the walls due to it's unsanitary nature, and the smell. Oh, the smell on some nights was horrendous. I am not sure how she got through it without gagging. I will tell you this is the only time when someone worked in feces I ever compelled to talk about. I wish I had the images to show you, maybe you would see what I saw, too.
So none of Helen's great artwork was saved or even seen by anybody other than the staff.
It's a pity really, some if it was really great stuff.