7 minute read
The Redeeming Power of Art
How repurposing medical supply discards and other found items fostered creativity and hope for one parenteral nutrition consumer
by Mica Coffin
In 1989, I was critically injured in a car accident. The doctors lost me twice during the first surgery but were able to revive me. I was only given a 5 percent chance of survival and took forty-four units of blood the first night. I had four more surgeries and ended up with only eighteen inches each of small and large bowel, and a jejunostomy. After five weeks in the hospital, I was finally able to go home.
In the weeks and months that followed, I grieved many losses. My daughter was three months old when I had the accident, and I was no longer able to nurse her or care for her. I had been very active—hiking, camping, playing football with my ten-year-old twin sons—but now I needed a
My biggest hobby had been cooking. I had over two hundred cookbooks in my collection. But now I could only eat Jell-O and popsicles. I couldn’t even watch TV because seeing commercials with food in them caused me such grief.
My whole life had changed, and the future seemed hopeless. I felt I had lost all the things that made up my identity. I also felt disconnected from people. I was living in Michigan, but on vacation in Arizona when I had the accident. We moved to Arizona so that I could continue with the same doctors and home infusion team. This meant that I had no friends.
My mother had been driving at the time of the accident and she said seeing me on the intravenous, or parenteral, nutrition (PN) made her feel too guilty, so I felt alienated from my family.
I struggled to take over my own care and the care of my children and to be able to walk and drive again. I also tried to look for new hobbies and new ways of filling my free time. I decided to take a watercolor class at an adult learning center. I’d always been told in school that I was terrible at art, and my D and F grades in art had confirmed that assessment. My teachers had suggested I stick with my strengths, math and writing. Now, due to a closed head injury, I was still unable to do math or accounting, and I couldn’t remember words or used the wrong ones. I wanted to try something new. I had always loved looking at art. Now was the time to be daring and try doing it.
Daring to Create
I found that I loved painting, and I was eventually able to sell a few watercolors. I started to experiment with using different materials to paint. I had been on a liquid medication that I no longer needed, so I did a series of “watercolor” paintings using someof it. I loved the effect it had in the paintings. I found that I could paint with iris flowers by squeezing them as I drew and using the liquid that came out. I started using rice paper and other collage materials inmy art. I am named after the mineral mica, and I would often put a thin piece of mica next to my signature.
I started to work with other materials and other types of art. I started sewing material onto shirts, creating unique collages (see photo below). I began painting cowboy boots. But most of all, I loved doing mixed media pieces. I started to collage on things other than paper or fabric. I would collage items onto picture frames or glue pictures and items such as seeds, buttons, or wood into mint tins. I enlarged on the idea of mixed media and began doing sculptures using found objects.
Mica Coffin, wearing a shirt she created and standing in front of one of her paintings.
I started out using mostly natural elements such as feathers, rocks, mosses, lichens, shells, and berries. But I was soon drawn to using small knickknacks, tools, cigar boxes, and other items.
New Value in Old Things
My art has given me a new sense of identity as an artist and creative person, a person who canmanipulate and transform things around her. It has also led me to new friends who value art and creativity and are themselves artistic and creative. Creativity has given me the courage to try new things. I have started exploring spirituality and have become a spiritual director. I have written and published a book about my search for meaning. I have started leading workshops and retreats focused on art and spirituality. I have begun to speak in public. These are all things that I would have been afraid to do before the accident.
One thing that has increasingly bothered me about being on home PN is the amount of waste generated by the discards from the supplies used for my medical procedures. I started to think that using the discarded waste from my medical supplies to make artwork would combine my philosophy and practice of found object art with my concerns about the environment and the ways that I contribute to landfills through my medical procedures and life-support dependancy. As a result of this, I started on a mixed media piece that is a self-portrait composed of the medical discards.
Not long ago, I gave a small mixed media found object piece to a blind friend, and he talked about the value in the experience of being able to feel the art. I have been thinking about a couple of things in relation to that. First, how a person who is “sight deficient”may experience art more deeply through touch than sighted individuals do through sight.
Secondly, I was thinking that my “disability” led me to express myself through art—particularly to wanting to use the discards as a form of expression; that a “disability” led to a hyper-ability, just as blindness can lead to hyper-hearing or hyper-smell.
My friend’s “disability” led to his hyper-touch. My “disability” led to my hyper-ability of artistic expression. It wasn’t until after my injuries and the permanent effect of them on my life had settled in that I was called to express myself as an artist.
Putting all this together, I was inspired to do a mixed media portrait of my friend out of medical discards. The only things used in this piece that are not discards from medical procedures are the board it is on, the adhesives—Gorilla glue and hot glue—the paint in the tubing for the dreads, and the ink for my signature.
Portrait of Mica's friend, made of medical discards
I think of this piece as a joining of our hyper-abilities—my artwork and his appreciation of it through touch. It is a collaborative piece; my creation of it can only be completed by his feeling of it. The success of this first piece has inspired me to construct other artwork out of my medical procedure discards. Using these helps me find a higher purpose in having to do the procedures that can become so monotonous. Now, I feel challenged to look at the medical materials and discards in a new way. I look for connections and ideas of how I could use them. This felt like making lemonade out of lemons. I am creating things of meaning and beauty out of what has often felt like a burden.
I first felt that my accident and dependence on home PN meant only loss. Now I feel that I have gained so much.
Here are the supplies used in the portrait of my friend: Beanie: Rubber tips from syringe plungers Dreads: Spiral IV tubing Dread ends: Catheter and syringe caps Face, nose, neck, torso: IV vitamin vials Sunglasses: IV tubing filters and piece from peripheral IV kit Mustache and beard: Rubber from clamps used to separate IV fluids Lips: Tips from povidone iodine swabsticks
Mica Coffin is a spiritual director, minister, artist, and the author of Light for the Journey.
