Big Bend Hospice Sponsored Artist Event at Mary Brogan
by Tammie Barfield
 “When I Am An Old Woman, I Shall Wear Purple,” is a familiar anthology containing writings and photographs evoking the beauty, humor, and courage of women in their rich and diverse worlds of midlife and beyond. Its fascinating and unique cover was actually created and designed originally in fabric and thread by acclaimed artist, Deidre Scherer. Big Bend Hospice is very pleased to introduce Deidre Scherer to the big bend area through an exhibit entitled Surrounded by Family and Friends at the Mary Brogan Museum in Tallahassee, February 15th through March 15th. The exhibit opens Friday, February 15th at 6:00 p.m., and on Saturday, February 16th at 1:00 p.m., the artist will present a slide lecture featuring a one-hour question and answer session.
In the 70’s while raising her three daughters, Deidre Scherer developed her distinctive narrative approach in the medium of fabric and thread, using scissors and sewing machine as drawing tools. Surrounded by Family and Friends focuses on the development of Scherer’s fabric and thread technique and the inspirations for her works that look unflinchingly at the final days of six people and their families caring for them. Supported by a grant from the Open Society Institute’s Project on Death in America, Scherer’s series of six life-size panels challenges the notions of aging and dying while showing death as a natural part of life. Of this series, Deidre Scherer says, “While alleviating the invisibility and painful silence that surround the issues of aging and mortality, my images show death as a natural process of life. These tableaus provoke a dialogue that is essential to our times.”
(sidebar id=1}Scherer’s work has been shown in over 150 solo and group shows nationally and internationally at venues such as the Brockton Art Museum in Brockton, MA; the Museum of Fine Arts in Springfield, MA; the Renwick in Washington, DC; the Dennis Woodman Gallery in Kew, England; and the Museum of the American Quilter’s Society in Paducah, KY with their retrospective, Deidre Scherer: Layered Visions. In 1998, she was honored with a solo, Deidre Scherer: The Threaded Image, at the Baltimore Museum of Art in Maryland.
Big Bend Hospice brings Deidre Scherer and Surrounded by Family and Friends to our area to open the dialogue of aging and mortality, and to raise awareness that there are choices available for those facing the end of life. At the center of hospice care lies the belief that individuals have the right to die pain-free and with dignity, and that their loved ones will receive the necessary support to allow them to do so. With focus on pain and symptom control in addition to the emotional, social and spiritual support, Big Bend Hospice enables patients and their families to make the most of life every moment, even to the last moment of life.
Please call 850-926-9308 in Crawfordville for information on Big Bend Hospice and the many services that are available to anyone facing a life-limiting illness or having experienced the death of a loved one. For more information about Surrounded by Family and Friends, please call Laurie Ward at 850-878-5310.
This article originally published on January 28, 2008.
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