Trust- and the tragedy

There are some things in life that you just can’t prepare for and the birth of Luotta, whose name means trust, was one of them. 

Previous part of the story here.

I got back to Montreal in full gear to start the portrait commission for S&S that I has been prepared for. As I came into town I got my first picture of the new sparkly baby girl. I was so thrilled about their new daughter. I texted back my congratulations and heard… nothing. Assuming that the new parents were just dealing with their first stressful days of tending to a new being, I didn’t worry too much. I went about printing the cartoon for the piece and prepping my studio for the glasswork that was to come. 

Four days later I got a text. “The photo I sent you was sent out about 30 minutes before my darling little girl started having seizures,” it read. “She was quickly transferred to the children’s neonatal intensive care unit, and the nightmare began. She was having seizures from Saturday around noon until Sunday at 7, quite steadily, despite multiple different meds. It’s a bit of a blur now, but I remember those endless hours being a sort of horror story, and just wishing I would wake up to a different reality.” The text went on to say that the seizures had eventually stopped with medication, but that they weren’t sure as to the cause, as to if they would continue, or if little Luotta had suffered any permanent brain damage.

I was horrified. Sitting in my studio surrounded by images of the excited and pregnant S&S, the idea that they might lose the baby was more than I could comprehend. Everything about their journey had lead up to this point, what if they lost her?

That was the day I made my first trip to the glass store. I had planned for that to be the day I did it, and I didn’t have another time for it. Suddenly an emotional wreak, I was standing in a store where I had to buy the material that would make a piece talking about Luotta’s birth. And all I could think was, what if it ends up being a piece about her death?

Surrounded by countless choices, a partner was there with me helping me find the glass that would make up the piece. As I was standing in the middle of the store he walked up to me with this sheet of glass that immediately brought tears to my eyes. 

Blood read and dripping with pigment, the sheet of glass looked like someone had cut their veins open into the hot glass. He brought more to me, sheets that looked like muscle, tissue, body. Standing in the store and trying not to openly sob, I was hit with what it means to be a physical human. To have these fragile bodies of ours be the only thing that keeps us on this earthly plain. If just one small part of us fails, the whole body is incapable of carrying on. That spirit that S&S did so much work to bring onto this earthly realm may have come into a body that might not allow her to carry on.

I bought every visceral body like piece of glass that made me cry. I walked them all home, and I sobbed the whole way. I just wasn’t sure what to do. If I had a child who died, would I want an art piece that reminded me of that process every single day? Should I stop? Should I not cut anything until I knew that baby Luotta was okay?

As I walked into my studio I decided that I would carry on. That baby Luotta deserved to be forever engraved on an artwork, no matter how long her stay on earth may be. Wether or not S&S wanted the piece at the end of it was irrelevant. I would make it because it needed to be made. 

On the desk of my studio was sitting this beautiful crystal I had found weeks before anything had began. Pink and womb-like, it would be the centrepiece for the entire object. I placed the pieces of blood glass on the desk beside it, and began to draw. 

For weeks I would draw and then throw things out and then draw some more. And when I wasn’t drawing I was staring into space wishing I knew what to draw. The whole process felt like coughing up a hairball, trying to pull something out of my insides that just wouldn’t budge. The only thing I could think of was that if the baby didn’t make it, this would be the piece that would remember her forever. It was the most terrifying feeling I have every felt in my whole life. To try to represent a child who may not live more than a couple weeks, to try to represent the whole process that brought her into the world, the whole idea of it was just horrible. 

As the weeks went on, more information trickled in from S&S about the state of their child. “Luotta is such a miraculous and precious little creature. So sweet and soft. So strong and brave. She's not fussy. She communicates pretty clearly when she's uncomfortable, and responds to our efforts to figure out her distress. She makes delightful little grunts and squeaks. We have been able to start holding her again since a couple of nights (previously, we had to suffice with just touching her while she lay in the "Isolette", a kind of incubator). We are catching up on missed cuddle time, smothering her with hugs and kisses, squishing her little face…”

…”Luotta keeps exceeding our expectations in every way. She keeps improving, ahead of schedule. They will tell us to expect a certain change to happen in the next 2-3 days, and she does it in one. She's such a strong and resilient little creature. It helps that she's getting the mother load of love, prayers, and support from around the planet. Love heals. Believe it…”

…”We have been through more than I thought I could bear, yet I'm feeling quite strong, hopeful, and full of love. Our little Luotta has reminded me of my purpose, and the truth of who I am, who we all are, at our core... Love. She has become my lighthouse. She has helped me to find my way home…”

And as the weeks went on, more things got made. More glass got cut in, more ideas discarded and fixed. 

The image changed, again and again. I wanted to represent the main portion of the body as being the energetic flow that brought the life into the world. An image coalesced and started to take form. Everything was a struggle, nothing flowed easily. But as the baby began to get stronger, the piece began to take shape.

The stain glass portion took longer than I ever thought that it would. Something I had scheduled a couple weeks for was taking a couple months. And a piece I had planned to be no bigger than 20 inches tall, was now almost 50”. Nothing about the piece was what I had planned for it to feel like, but nothing about this birth was what any of us had planned for. 

The piece grew as Luotta grew. The art of it became more stable as she did. She became healthier and healthier every day. Although still on medication, she seemed out of the woods as each new week revealed something more encouraging. 

I have never in my life experienced the intensity of what it meant to be making this piece at the same time as the incident was happening. To be creating artwork out of immediate tragedy was one of the most difficult practices I have ever encountered. To process something as it was occurring and put it into a permanent artwork was harder than I have words to convey. Every day I just had to trust that there was something outside of myself that would channel through me to help me with the process.

Soon it would be time to meet the baby. And soon it would be time to meet up with S&S to hear their process of what had just happened. 

More to come…

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