Artistry benefits Alzheimer's

Gisele Rucker

Mona Wizenberg with festival souvenir shirt

Art teacher Mona Wizenberg is quick to name all the individuals and sponsors* who are supporting the Sunday, May 25 Artventure for Alzheimer's fundraiser and auction of drawings by her students, seniors who have never drawn before. Her success as a teacher lies in the beauty of these drawings, which she lovingly unveils, one by one, with heartfelt joy, and sometimes sadness, recounting the physical or mental challenges each senior artist must overcome to draw.

“They inspire me,” she says. “They have given me so much: if they can draw, given all their physical ailments, then I can handle anything. Making art makes them forget all their pain. Art is therapeutic and they have become addicted.”

Trained as a Special Care Counsellor, Wizenberg worked for 16 years teaching anger management, problem solving and impulse control to students in schools. When she was laid off, her next vocation appeared to her while caring for her Uncle Noah, who has Alzheimer's. She befriended a woman who is paralyzed except for her left hand. Over three months, Wizenberg taught her how to draw floral arrangements. “She encouraged me to teach seniors how to draw… I fell for seniors — they give me hope and inspiration.”

Her strength is encouraging seniors to boldly take up coloured pencils and overcome their fear of not being able to draw. She tells them, “Your signature is unique and it is actually drawing.”

Persistent about including every senior in her eight week course now widely offered (for a fee) in West Island residences and privately, Wizenberg will adapt tools and techniques to assist those with disabilities. She describes how she and a resident’s occupational therapist adapted equipment to allow a woman with Huntington's chorea, a neurological disorder causing uncontrollable movement, to steady her hand and hold a heavy lead pencil by inserting it into a carpal tunnel glove sleeve around her hand. With her lower arm secured to an armrest off her chair, she could make marks on a poster board taped to a lap tray.

Wizenberg says, “Students who are blind draw too!” — she helps them use their hands as eyes. She brings in her realistic bird sculptures, over which they can run their hands before drawing. She provides magnifying glasses or sheets, aesthetic lamps, and will outline in black the initial shapes her almost blind students draw.

Whether a still life, a highly individualized version of work by the late Gazette cartoonist John Collins, or well-known masterpieces like the Mona Lisa, which appears 36 times on the Artventure souvenir T-shirt, the work of all the artists, who live in different residences of the West Island, will be together for the first time in one huge vernissage and auction fundraiser for Alzheimer's, with 70% of the proceeds going to the Alzheimer Society and 30% to the Bloomfield Centre.

CTV weather host Lori Graham will MC the event, featuring performances by harpist Véronique Couturier, flautist Mariève Lauzon, and songs led by Linda Morrison, former conductor of the Yellow Door Choir. Auctioneer is well-known West Island personality Mike Lawrence. West Island Mayors, along with Quebec’s Minister responsible for Seniors, Marguerite Blais, will also attend. Door prizes include a Robert Bateman signed limited edition print, a VIP tour of CTV and supper with Lori Graham, 8 weekend getaways, James Taylor concert tickets, health club memberships, photography studio packages, and the Arthur Murray Dance School has offered gift certificates (valued at $125) for a dance lesson package, at the door. Artventure takes place Sunday, May 25, 1:30-5:30pm at the Holiday Inn Pointe Claire. Tickets: $20. Info: 514-696-0419.

*Sponsors include Manoir Kirkland, Le Wellesley, Manoir Pierrefonds, The Bayview, Le Vivalis, Le Cambridge, the Sunrise, Masterpeice, Bureau en Gros, Les Résidences Vivendi, Horizon Home Care, Omer DeSerres and the Holiday Inn Pointe Claire.