No progress post therapy, crushed hand, no progress + wire cube 15.12.09

There is an expectation that vision, practice and concentrated effort will yield results.  No one at hospital had said, “We’re aiming to get your fingers as fully functioning as possible”. The medics did say the road to recovery would be long and painful, two years and a lot of work. But even at this early stage, with full concentration and effort, there was no change.  The fingers remained motionless.  The therapist’s gage registered no change in degrees of movement passive or active.

Bad news no good news Drawing no movement Don't panic or despair 15.12.09

On the cultural island in Northern Michigan, the Vision Committee was thinking about change and the way forward. A year after its first meeting The Committee reconvened the group to tell them the results of their investigations and to hear the group’s response.  The Committee was writing a mission statement for the cultural island, a vision for the future, a future not of days, but of decades and beyond. They had said they would take their time to get it right, that the path to the vision would be long and would require careful work. The Committee and the group were musicians, dancers, actors, composers, writers, film-makers, artists. They understood the importance of vision, patient practice and concentrated effort.

The Committee gathered much information from many sources and now had the results. The Committee said they had not anticipated how important nature and the setting in the woods, between the lakes was to the group on the cultural island. The members of the group talked of the beauty of the place, of culture and the arts nurtured by nature, the trees, the lakes.

No one mentioned how nature made its presence felt in other ways, in the form of tent caterpillars and May flies, of mosquitoes surrounding the woodland cabins or the snake inhabiting the photography studio, the one the assistant had tried to remove in a recycling box but that had escaped and found refuge in one of the student’s sculptures in the corridor, there for the exhibition that night.

The brief had been challenging for the students. They were to envision, design and make a chair out of cardboard that could hold the weight of the sculpture assistant. Providing a refuge or habitat for a snake was not part of the brief. But the triangulated chair with the wild, woven cross-pieces successfully met the requirements set by the brief and by nature on the move.

Willing the damaged fingers to move and seeing no result was disappointing and frustrating. The underlying fear that they might remain static was un-nerving. The drawings made immediately following therapy are gestural and erratic, the lines fast and free and frightened. It was difficult to remember the medics had said recovery would be long, two years and a lot of painful work.