Introducing Nuance through Artistic and Creative Means
How do you often hear people speak about older adults? Are social or media portrayals kind? Multi-dimensional? Complex?
Political discourses tend to frame later life in terms of economic vulnerability, medical insurance coverage, and programming needs. The biomedicalization of aging emphasizes later life as a period of physiological decline and frailty, aiming to extend life expectancy, prompting us to distinguish between the relative benefits of long lives versus high-quality later lives. Social norms tend to produce ageist stigmas and stereotypes, framing older adults as out of touch or incapable.
While attending to the challenges of aging plays a significant role in promoting advocacy around key needs, accessible care, and affordable services for older citizens, this can also become the only story of old age. And the danger of any story becoming the only story is that it limits our imaginations, expectations, and actions we take in shaping our own lives.
This is where creative and artistic representations might diversify our storytelling. Creative representations illustrate aging as a nuanced experience, full of variation in color, texture, style, and affect. Creative essays, photography, portraiture, poetry, fashion and more become vehicles for expression. They might be created from the perspective of an older person, an avenue to share a vivid lived experience in a way that evokes an affective response and increased empathy. They might also be created through intergenerational processes, engaging older and younger individuals in collaboration and mutual understanding.
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The Delicate Art of Growing Old, 1959
Call Number: D381
In this issue of Harper’s Magazine appears excerpts from a letter, penned by author Sean O’Casey in response to a request for public comment from a politician wanting to understand how to best improve the lives of older citizens. This publication, still in circulation after 175 years of distribution, reflects general topics of interest within “national conversation” in the medium of long-form journalism. At the time of O’Casey’s writing, older adults represented a growing proportion of the American population. The Social Security system had been in operation for multiple decades and yet older Americans faced stark challenges in terms of accessing medical care and social services in their own communities. Within the next several years, Medicare and Medicaid systems would be established along with the enactment of the Older Americans Act, which would provide federal funding for within community services, such as accessible transportation, nutrition programs, and in-home care options.
Rather than arguing for specific outcomes, programming, or needs, O’Casey details the quiet shifts and continuities of his own aging experience and of those known to him. He describes a continued joy in writing and learning, a wish to have ample time to pursue all of life’s curiosities. However, he also recognizes the challenges put to older individuals, the necessary realizations of loss and change, the importance of recognizing that one’s “life is behind them” and that they must “leave the world to the young.” His reflections demonstrate psychological shifts that might accompany aging, as one’s perception of time and history shifts, and as one might adopt a new orientation toward their own social position and value.
Simply, this creative piece argues for a pension, a room of one’s own, and ample independence to pursue one’s own interests as we age – and with greater complexity, it argues for a depth of educational engagement and opportunity to fully appreciate the “colors, thoughts, and sounds” of the world in a new era of life.
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Images of Aging, 1982
Call Number: CK54
This intergenerational collaborative project was produced and distributed by the Lawrence Arts Center, supported by the Kansas Arts Commission and federal funding from the National Endowment of Arts. The publication, of which there were multiple iterations, includes portraits, poems, narratives, and sketches of 42 older adults living in "retirement centers" in various cities in Kansas. Project Director and contributing photographer, S. Kay Stewart, described focusing on older adults in retirement centers in particular due to their experiences of severe social isolation.
In a local news story, contributing artist Erleen Christensen stated of the project, "There are many things I saw and heard from these people that are fermenting in my creative imagination. The richness of human experience...it helps you living your own life to get a sense of how others lived theirs." Contributing writer Denise Low stated: "These are forgotten people for the most part, and I feel good about being about to share something with them. I don't think we necessarily appreciate the contributions of old people."
Such quotes illustrate the felt growth in empathy, imagination, and understanding that artists gained from the experience, while the richness of the included drawn and photographed portraits, poems, and life summaries illustrate the complexity of the interviewee’s life from their own perspectives.
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Prairie Taproot, 1986
Call Number: RH D7893
The Kansas Arts Commission describes their work as being “dedicated to promoting, supporting, and expanding Kansas’ creative industries and enriching communities through arts and culture.” Another of their supported local projects includes this issue of Prairie Taproot, a publication which shared the creative works of the Douglas County on Aging’s Creative Writing Group. Inclusive of 11 older writers, this issue presents short- and long-form poetry, creative essays, and informal reflections of its contributors, tackling such topics as social change and advocacy, the process and utility of other creative endeavors, philosophical reflections, and viewpoints on aging.
When older writers creatively engage with the challenges and complexities of aging, how does this compare to political discourses and other media portrayals? What depth do we witness in their thoughts and reflections? What notions do their reflections inspire? What actions might they motivate?
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"Debra Rapoport, 70" Advanced Style: Older & Wiser. Cohen, Ari Seth. 2016.
Call Number: TR679 .C643 2012 (from the Art & Architecture Library)
Fashion as a style of self-expression in later life has also grown in popularity within contemporary society. Using the body as one's own canvas, fashion might allow each of us the opportunity to revisit or reinvent relationships with our bodies and beauty over time as an expression of personality and creativity. This book includes portraits capturing multiple older adults' fashion choices, the evolution of their style throughout their lives, and their meaning-making through personal fashion in later life.
As one example, Debra Rapoport describes finding healing energy in crafting and reinventing her style. She describes fashion as an avenue to discovering who she is and to make meaning out of different parts of her body – their capacities and development.
How has your own sense of style and self-representation evolved as you have aged? What potentialities might this form of expression hold yet for you?