Utahn's works reflect struggle with disease
Salt Lake Tribune
Monday April 10, 2000, page A1
by Norma Wagner
Artist Gay Nickle Lauritzen's body is betraying her.
Her hands have drawn into claw like grips. She can no longer hold her head up, and her vocal chords have deteriorated to the point where she can only whisper.
Yet the art she continues to create illustrates the story of her plight, and the strength of her spirit.
The lifelong artist from Mount Pleasant suffers from a debilitating form of muscular dystrophy called motor neuron disease, which is akin to Lou Gehrig's disease.
Trapped inside a body that won't work right, she expresses herself through such pieces as "It's Not Like Before," her color, computerized drawing of a woman with her neck bent in an awkwardly angular direction. Lauritzen's work is being exhibited through Friday at the Art Access Gallery on Pierpont Street in downtown Salt Lake City.
"That one was [created] when my neck muscles started to go last year and I couldn't hold my head up anymore," said Lauritzen, 42, who worked as a film industry artist and set decorator for 12 years. "So, I had drawn that face and then I just took it and bent her neck. It's not a self-portrait of me. It doesn't look like me, but it is about my neck going."
Other pieces in her show "Through Thick and Thin" reflect the sundry struggles she has had with the disease, such as "Ridiculous Body Blues," the sketch of a woman crying, and "Hand and Face," the portrait of a woman with her mouth open staring at a disjointed hand. She calls it "a kind of hand in crisis," a symptom of the disease that makes it continually harder for her to work the mouse on her computer.
Her husband, Kent Appleberry, said that since his wife is using a computer instead of the traditional tools she was accustomed to -- a brush, pencil or pen -- it "shows that being an artist is really in the head, it's not in the hands."
"She really doesn't have great control over her hand anymore. She has to move her whole shoulder around," said Appleberry, also 42. "She can't move the mouse without moving her entire upper body, so it's not that great of control. But she gets such fine results because she has such a good eye."
The portraits and drawings are so intimate and personal, and sometimes give off such an aura of starkness and intensity, the observer might wonder is she is getting back at her disease by expressing her anger.
But Lauritzen said that's not what her work is about.
"It's true that sometimes I feel angry about having this disease, but I don't think that it's affected my art more than, you know, the anger I feel about anything in particular, or the sadness, or the pleasure, or the interest in life," she said.
"It's harder to be disabled, but there is another range going on. You still have your whole life happen, from the pleasures to the frustrations in everyday life. I'm not saying I'm not angry about it, but I don't think that's the main emotion in my life. I would not want to classify myself that way."
Lauritzen's work was chosen from among dozens submitted for exhibits held several times a year at Art Access Gallery for artists with special needs. The exhibits are a program of VSA Arts of Utah, the nonprofit statewide agency that caters to established artists as well as emerging ones.
"What has impressed me so much is that, almost in direct proportion to her body not cooperating with her, is that she has this immense desire to create art," said Ruth Lubbers, the gallery's executive director. "Her body is doing one thing and her spirit is saying 'I've got to do it, I need to do it.' You see this immense desire to create art."
The gallery, created in 1991, has slowly increased shows for the disabled, as well as well-abled artists.
But the ones like Lauritzen's are among Lubbers' favorites.
"Probably the most wonderful thing about this job is being able to consider each person as a valuable individual," Lubbers said. "Art Access looks at each person's abilities regardless of what their disabilities are."
"When people walk in the door, they don't necessarily know what our goal and mission are. They are given the opportunity to first admire the art and talents of the artists whom we show and not get hung up on the idea of the disability," Lubbers said.
"You'll see the work here of a well-known, established artist as well as an emerging artist. You'll see the work here of artists with disabilities and without disabilities, and artists who represent underserved communities, the elderly, the homeless, youth at risk, ethnic minorities.
"We hope the ideas presented in the gallery are ideas worth considering by the whole community...to expose them to things they haven't had a chance to consider."
Lauritzen said she will continue working as long as she can.
"There is a kind of enjoyment ... that pleasure that comes from being focused and, what do you call it, it's like gardening or athletics or any kind of experience where you're totally involved, in the sense that once you are in that state, you're working but your work is not strained," she said.
"It saves me from not doing anything. I just sit down and things start to happen."
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