{"id":4989,"date":"2009-07-27T21:48:42","date_gmt":"2009-07-28T04:48:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/?p=4989"},"modified":"2009-07-27T21:55:51","modified_gmt":"2009-07-28T04:55:51","slug":"portrait-of-ardis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/2009\/07\/27\/portrait-of-ardis\/","title":{"rendered":"Portrait of Ardis"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kate’s first caregiver, Ms. Gladys, (blog mentions of her are here<\/a>) retired last week.\u00c2\u00a0 I used to hang out with Gladys when Kate was a baby. Usually it was to nurse (since Kate was adverse to the bottle and I am adverse to the pump) but sometimes when I’d go in for that afternoon feeding, it was hard to leave. I’d help out around the room, giving a bottle, changing a diaper, or rocking someone to sleep. The perk was that it meant I got to talk to Gladys. Gladys can tell it straight, but has a way of gently leading you to the answer so that you come to it in your own time. She is such a wonderful listener that it is easy to get carried away and babble on and on to her soft affirmations. Eventually, it got easier to ask her questions. This was how I learned about her daughter, Ardis, who died shortly before the Flood came and engulfed their home, taking with it most of their physical memories.<\/p>\n

Abeona threw a big surprise retirement party for her last Saturday, with people there representing her 27 years of service.\u00c2\u00a0 We helped a friend put together a book, scanning pictures and sending photographs from Abeona’s first three years.\u00c2\u00a0 She did a fantastic job on the book, which included photos, stories from families, scanned art projects, and memories reflecting many years of work. But I wanted to do something else and asked for help from staff to make it happen.<\/p>\n

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As I understand, it took some serious work to get this photograph scanned — the last one taken of Ardis.\u00c2\u00a0<\/p>\n

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As usual, I forgot about taking photographs of the process until I was well into the piece.<\/p>\n

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This was my toughest portrait to date, mostly because I was so very nervous to do it.\u00c2\u00a0 It felt very personal and, in a way, invasive to be doing this as a surprise.\u00c2\u00a0 She hadn’t asked me to do this because she felt I could do the job correctly — it was something I was just doing.\u00c2\u00a0 What if there was something I missed?<\/p>\n

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This is the only finished photograph I have — I didn’t take any of it in it’s frame.<\/p>\n

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Even now, I’m at a loss of what to say about it.<\/p>\n

This is Ardis.\u00c2\u00a0 She was a beautiful, smart young woman born to an amazing, compassionate woman.\u00c2\u00a0 It was a pleasure to draw her.<\/p>\n

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Kate’s first caregiver, Ms. Gladys, (blog mentions of her are here) retired last week.\u00c2\u00a0 I used to hang out with Gladys when Kate was a baby. Usually it was to nurse (since Kate was adverse to the bottle and I am adverse to the pump) but sometimes when I’d go in for that afternoon feeding, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[81,100,142,80],"tags":[229],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4989"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4989"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4989\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4996,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4989\/revisions\/4996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4989"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4989"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.coldspaghetti.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4989"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}