| Home |
| Dedication |
| Founder's Message |
| Youth Participant |
| Elder Participant |
| Arty's Story |
| Nana's Letter |
| Katie's Letter |
| The Projects! |
| Contributors |
| Community:
Lorraine Gibb |
| Art:
Kathleen & Jim Stiven |
| Story Arts:
Donna Otter & Kathi Olsen |
| Story Arts: Donna Otter and Kathi Olsen | ||
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| How does a story become art? First, you live it. Then you remember it. Then you tell it. Someone listens. If you’re lucky, someone asks you to tell it. Maybe they even ask questions to make you say more about it. Then, to make sure it doesn’t get lost, they make something out of it, give it a shape, a title, colors and textures. They make it bigger. They glue ribbons on it. Or put it in a big wooden box with your picture on the lid. Or make a quilt out of it. Or paint it on a stepladder and add gold footprints. |  |
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| In our role as art consultants and inspirers to the Youth in the Legacies Project, we were moved by the Elders’ stories we heard. As we read these stories, we gained an awareness of the ways we as individuals select and collect our life’s experiences, the way we reflect and make meaning, beauty, pleasure. As we listened to these stories, we appreciated these lives and also our own. | ||
| Then we watched the Youth shape the stories and move them into a form that honors, enhances and preserves them. We heard the impact of the interviews—gifts gleaned from inter-generational intimacy: David, expressing his astonishment at all that Eric has accomplished in his life, said “And he’s not even famous?!” | ||
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Katie speaking of her Elder, Lola, stated, “Lola is so incredibly cool that I decided if Elders are like her I am going to start volunteering at an Elder community so I can hang out with them!” | |
| Maggie was touched by the 57-year marriage of her interviewees: “I’m awed by it — when people can give that commitment to each other.” | ||
| Rachel knocked on the wooden art box that she had chosen to work with to hold Horst’s life story, “This is solid—this is a story. It made me want to go look up my family history.” | ||
| And Genoveva spoke of her visit to Mexico in November to collect her grandmothers’ story: “You have to make a fire to cook — the smoke gets in your clothes — you don't smell it ‘til you get here in Encinitas.” |  |
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| “Everyone has at least one good story,” we tell our StoryArts clients who are uncertain whether they have anything to share. Luckily for us, our Legacies Project Elders have many wonderful stories to share and the Youth worked hard and creatively to make sure these stories will be remembered. | ||
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