Arts and Eats

Location: Flannery Apartments

Date: Wednesday, October 31, 2012; 6:15-7:30 pm

“Let your creativity flow with CHA seniors living in a Chicago Housing Authority building”, said the description of this opportunity on the Chicago Cares website.  Having made my crafts teacher extremely happy that she would not be seeing me after my last class in the 7^th grade, I was not too confident about signing for something that said ‘Arts’.  I wrote to Alice, the volunteer leader and she assured me that I would be fine. 

This Jack-o-lantern knows how to party!

Flannery Apartments is a senior housing community and once a month Chicago Cares volunteers get together with the residents for an evening of arts and crafts (Eats part is cookies).  This time we were doing holiday wreaths using colorful craft paper, decorative gems, buttons and other such accessories.  Alice had already made a sample wreath and the rest of the volunteers took their cue from that.  Two of the regular attendees who knew Alice very well, came down and started creating their wreaths.  Initially I was quite content trying to provide the senior residents whatever they required in terms of passing them the scissors or glue or other accessories, but soon realized that the point of this exercise was not to create a masterpiece but to participate.

Some of the leaves that went on the wreath

 

“It’s not the thing you fling. It’s the fling itself.”

I started by cutting the craft paper in the shape of colorful leaves, something that was being used a lot on the wreaths.  Since it was Halloween night, one of the volunteers decided to make a ‘Jack-o-lantern’ from an orange colored paper.  I asked if I could decorate that and upon receiving approval, stuck whatever accessories I could find on its face to make a truly garish looking thing.  At the end it looked so gaudy that all of us had a big laugh and one of the ladies put it up as a headpiece on her wreath.  

Another volunteer, Jenny, was using colorful fuzzy sticks to make a girl.  I told her that we should accessorize her and by the time we were done, she was carrying a bag, wearing earrings and a pendant and had a flower in her hair.  It was amazing how much fun we had that evening, creating things that may not have looked pretty, but were precious due to the joy that went into making them.

 

She's ready for her night out

As we prepared to leave, I noticed another resident who had joined us late and was working by herself at one end of the table.  The previous month, Alice and other volunteers had helped paint tiny jewelry boxes and this lady was putting finishing touches on hers, by decorating it in a wonderful manner.  It looked beautiful and something many artisans would be proud to display.  The wreaths we made were hung in the lobby including the one with the Jack-o-lantern. 

“Volunteers will assist the seniors with creating something beautiful and bring some good cheer to the residents”, the opportunity description had concluded.  I hope we succeeded in at least one of those initiatives.

Epilogue:

I walked to the train station with another volunteer, Serin, who had just moved to Chicago and was working as a gemologist.  As we were waiting for the train, a guy dressed in black approached us and asked if we could take his picture against the backdrop of an  Apple products advertisement.  I thought this was a strange request, especially after he posed with his back to me and facing the opposite platform.  In any case, I complied and he gave us both a candy box.  It was after all Halloween and he was perhaps going to a party dressed as Steve Jobs.  I put that candy in my office desk drawer and days later I noticed that on the box there was a website address. Curiosity led me to check it out.  His website is a tribute to Steve Jobs, whom he calls one of his ‘design icons’.  It was indeed ironic that on the day where we ‘designed’ our own version of holiday wreaths, I came across someone whose hero was one of the pioneers of design and creativity.  Heroes can come from anywhere, any field, any background.  Something tells me that those seniors in Flannery Apartments would take Alice’s design team over Steve Jobs’ every single time.