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Wanted, Chosen, Planned Nominated for a Yeggie
It is with much excitement that I announce that my blog, Wanted, Chosen, Planned, has been nominated for a Yeggie, Edmonton’s New Media Award.
The Yeggies honors local content creators and social media mavens in our city. We have an abundance of talent in Edmonton and I am thrilled to be counted amongst many greats! Wanted, Chosen, Planned is a blog where I write about “Life After the Loss of a Child” and strive to encourage those whose baby is taken too soon. Through heartfelt posts from my personal experience I reach out to those suffering from loss due to miscarriage, stillbirth, SIDS and early infant loss. My son Zachary died in 2010 from a cardiac tumor and since then I have been experimenting with this strange thing called “grief” and it’s associate, “healing.”
Wanted, Chosen, Planned is one of six blogs in the “Best in Family or Parenting” category.
The awards will be given out at a happening event on May 4, 2013 at the Shaw Conference Centre, Salon 11/12 (7:30pm), hosted by Trent Wilkie. Buy tickets online!
Drawing Hearts for my Son – The Art of Struggle
Artwork: “Wanted, Chosen, Planned” Mixed Media, September 2010 © Alexis Marie Chute
I was well over halfway to my due date when doctors discovered that my unborn child had a large tumor around his heart. This news began a month and a half of daily testing to determine if there was anything that could be done. There wasn’t and my son Zachary passed away shortly after he was born.
During the month and a half before Zachary’s birthday and death day, I made art. I made art based on the news we were given and the new world of medical technology and imaging that was opened up to me. I was so overwhelmed on a daily basis that art became my therapy. It was a means for me to think about our situation in an effort to make sense of it all. I now know I will never understand the “why” of this tragedy but that creating art in that time was a helpful means to cope.
As the main issue with my son’s condition was the tumor around his heart, I began to draw anatomical hearts using black pen. I made three copies of my favorite drawing using a laser printer and painted three backdrops in flowing reds and blues, two colours associated with blood flow that I watched in real time on the monitor during many fetal echocardiograms of my son’s heart.
I did gel transfers to apply the hearts to the paintings, the abstracted reds and blues of the painted backgrounds showing through the images. I applied a sheer aqua fabric to the areas surrounding the hearts, sewing it on with red thread which I let hang loosely in certain places. The blue, water like effect, references the fact that a heart that is not beating properly, as in the case of my son, causes fluid to build up in a person’s body.
Black bars along the bottom of the compositions anchor the three pieces together and reveal the words that constantly ran through my brain as I struggled in the helplessness of trying to save my son. Wanted. Chosen. Planned. These three concepts became my mantra, my prayer during that dark time.
Have you used art to help work through a struggle? Please share your experience.
