CHICO — Jess Mercer has lived her life from behind a mask three times.
The first time, she was alone in the hospital.
The second time, she was with her community in the Camp Fire.
The third time, she is with the rest of the world in a pandemic.
With each initial don of a mask, unpleasant flashbacks befall her mind. Even so, hope has ultimately reigned over her unfortunate circumstances. A unifying element transcends her traumatic life events: art.
Art saved her in the hospital.
Art saved her in the Camp Fire.
Art is saving her amid the pandemic.
Her dark life experiences have led to a life of vibrancy. She’s sacrificed her time and energy for the sake of others’ personal growth. With an upcoming pause in her work due to health concerns, she found a way to keep her service to the community alive.
The Beginning
Mercer grew up in Sheridan, Wyoming. At 15, she estranged herself from her family. She slept in basements, on rooftops, wherever she could rest her weary head.
One day, her father said he was moving to California. She decided to go with him. With a couple of boxes worth of belongings, she hopped in a U-haul.
She did it because Paradise “sounded like the farthest place from hell,” she said.
On Aug. 1, 2001, after two days of driving, she first saw the welcome sign with the greeting, “May You Find Paradise To Be All Its Name Implies.”
She found the welcome eerie, but quickly grew fond of the people there. A nearby diner gave the teenager leftovers from its buffet late at night to tend to her hunger. Her Paradise High teachers watched over her.
Mercer recognized the impact people had on her life, and wanted to continue the cycle of aiding those in distress. At 19, she became a youth counselor. From then on, she worked with a myriad of people. Those in group homes, those in foster care, those criminalized and more. She has collaborated with over 60 agencies over the years.
Hospitalizations
On Jan. 16, 2017, Mercer started dancing in her apartment. It was for lack of control that her body swayed. She collapsed and hit her head on the way down. Next thing she knew, she was in the hospital.
Doctors still don’t know what happened to her.
In April 2017, she was hospitalized again with pneumonia. She was quarantined in her room. A mask hid her face. A suit covered her body. Her fever worsened. A month later, the situation was still grim.
“I don’t think I can help you,” the doctor told her.
“I don’t think I’m ready to die” she told him.
She was forced to say goodbye to her loved ones.
“It was horrendous,” Mercer recalled.
She was in a constant state of panic, a captive to her emotional turmoil.
She went to bed knowing that if she woke up, the person she once was would not exist.
The next morning, her eyes opened.
There was little she could do while confined to her padded hospital bed. Seizure after seizure seized control over her body.
She was given a notebook and pen. While her left arm laid limp, she used her right hand to draw. Never had she considered herself an artist. Never had she ventured to create something with her hands.
She drew one of her nurses as a walrus. It was good, so she continued drawing.
“It was the thing that kept me going, because it was the only thing I could do. It was the only thing I could do,” she said.
And so, her recovery began.
She became a new person. Before her hospitalization, she was bitter. After her hospitalization, she was a community activist. Her former roles were a foreshadowing of the person she was to become.
Camp Fire
On Nov. 8, 2018, the Camp Fire swept through Paradise.
Though living in Chico at the time, Mercer could not help but act.
Three days after the fire, she started collecting keys to construct a phoenix sculpture. Keys to homes, boats, diaries, schools, businesses, churches. Keys that once unlocked the entrance to sentiments turned to ash.
The phoenix would symbolize that, like the mythical creature, Paradise will rise out of the ashes.
In total, she collected 18,000 keys, including some belonging to those who died in the fire.
“I know they would want this here,” their loved ones said to Mercer as they handed the keys over. Those specifically were placed on the lining of the outstretched wings.
“I wanted them to be at the highest point,” Mercer said.
The artist unknowingly foretold her future in the form of ink on her skin. Before the fire, she had two phoenix tattoos etched onto her skin, one on her left shoulder and one on her right forearm.
Through literal blood sweat and tears was the golden bird constructed. Blood streaked down her hands. Sweat streaked down her forehead. Tears streaked down her cheeks.
“I’d build until I fell asleep or hurt myself,” Mercer said.
She persisted to bring her scattered community together in one place.
Each element of the 800-pound giant came together at the last second.
“I finished it. I finished it,” she sighed with relief.
It has no formal name, but she refers to it as “My Town.”
The only thing she kept from the project was a binder overflowing with letters of thanks for her efforts.
Murals
Mercer lost her art studio in the fire, so she created a mobile studio called Butte County Art On Wheels. She has used it to take therapeutic art practices all over the county. She asked ridge schools if she could offer her services.
“I want to help you. I want to support you,” she told them.
The first school to participate was her alma mater. She provided the material and moral support. Paradise High students provided their artistic hands.
The project was a reworking of the concept of a mural. While murals are generally one stationary piece, theirs had mobile parts. It was a lesson that movement is OK. Impermanence is OK.
“Murals are a journal of truth,” Mercer said.
She helped 13 ridge schools make murals, plus the Boys & Girls Club of the North Valley.
“There’s something about the kids and the schools,” she said with teary eyes. “I don’t cry much, but I can’t handle it, what my community has been through.”
To thank her for the care she showed the community during the year following the disaster, the town of Paradise offered her money. She didn’t take it. So, instead, the mayor awarded her with the key to the city, a nod to the key sculpture. The award did not exist until Mercer’s work was deemed worthy of such an honor. It was made for her.
In front of 6,000 people, the award was presented. Shock coursed through her veins. She grasped her knees for support. When she gained her bearings, she accepted the key and punched it triumphantly over her head, showing its gleam to the cheering audience. It was the best day of her life.
Wendy Marsters had her as a student. She is not surprised by the person her then pupil has become.
“She’s a phenomenal asset to any community. Even in high school, she was an asset to kids in need, kids being picked on,” Marsters said.
Mercer wasn’t afraid to tell her peers to treat others with respect.
“She wasn’t necessarily an easy fit for the fabric of Paradise. She had to find her people. But she was always sticking up for people,” Marsters continued. “She was fearless.”
The phoenix sculpture resides in the Building Resiliency Center. Mercer hopes for it to go in the Gold Nugget Museum one day.
Recovery
The creator is currently working on her second sculpture titled “Pilldemic.”
The piece will be made up of 400 pill bottles she’s kept over the past three years. It will be in the shape of the world.
Since her first hospitalization, Mercer has had over 50 tests, including MRIs, spinal taps and nerve testing. She has been on a combination of over a dozen different medications to deal with seizures, pain, muscle control and more. She’s tried physical therapy, exercise, massage therapy, chiropractic care and more.
The pain led her to become an “extreme pill addict.” She’s been in rehab. She’s been in counseling. What really motivated her to quit was her unfinished work.
She fought for sobriety so she can have the freedom to serve others.
“We are always able to help each other,” she said. “It’s what’s gotten me clean.”
Physical pain is not the only kind Mercer knows.
When she was a teenager, she watched as her older brother entered a mental institution. That experience gave her a deep respect for mental illness.
“Growing up with an individual with schizophrenia, your sibling, can make you a puppet of their distortion,” she said. “I was a tool to somebody else’s release.”
Though her brother is confined to the walls of an institution, memories of times past still take a toll on her.
“When I go to sleep and draw, the truth comes out,” she said.
Her artwork is dark in nature. Bold, black ink sweeps across the canvas. There is still healing to be had.
“PTSD is a real thing,” she said.
The Future
During her year of hospitalizations, she had one more.
In July 2017, during a followup appointment, doctors found endometriosis. She had no option but a hysterectomy. She was 31 at the time and “very much wanting kids,” she said.
Of all the bad news doctors told her that year, that hit her the hardest.
“I really wanted kids, and now, I don’t even have the option to see the little replica of creativity that would probably blossom from my DNA,” she said. “I would have worshipped my kid.”
Though the option to have kids of her own has been stripped from her, she is helping hundreds of parents raise their kids at the Boys & Girls Club. Her sterilization compels her to do so.
The kids she raises are not necessarily a replacement of her own, but rather, a reflection of the kid she was growing up — a kid in need of support.
“It does take a village. I believe in that. I believe that the village saved me when I was a teen, and the least I can do is the same,” she said.
Today, she is losing her ability to use her left arm. X-rays show that the bones in her neck and left shoulder are thinning, disintegrating.
“Sometimes, the pain is so severe, I just can’t move,” Mercer said.
On Monday she will undergo surgery. The knife will unnervingly, poetically cut right through the phoenix on her shoulder.
She will have to spend months away from her work recovering. For that reason, she put together a fundraiser called Project Nest Birdhouse to prepare the Boys & Girls Club for her temporary departure.
She asked local artists if they’d be interested in decorating birdhouses made by Paradise Ridge Elementary students. A total of 75 responded. Earlier this month, the community was invited to bid on the embellished birdhouses. Mercer raised nearly $9,000 for summer art programs.
“She’s a survivor in so many ways,” Rashell Brobst, chief executive officer of the Boys & Girls Club said. “She’s a beautiful soul.”
On the first day of the fundraiser, Mercer revealed the real version of what’s been floating in her dreams.
For months, she had been working out of a borrowed van. In it, she created 1,500 art kits for kids to play with during the shelter-in-place order.
“Art can be created anywhere,” Mercer said.
When a stimulus check came her way, she used it to purchase a van of her own. Out of it, she plans to continue serving the community after her left arm heals. The van, her new mobile studio, stood at the center of the Boys & Girls Club campus in Chico.
Mercer’s aspiration is to become an official art therapist. She is by practice, but not by certification.
“I’ve realized one thing: being creative is the only thing that makes me feel better,” she said. “It wasn’t that I went in with the approach to try and save the world. It’s that I invited people into that approach, and they said ‘yes.’”
"artist" - Google News
June 21, 2020 at 05:30PM
https://ift.tt/3hQswB8
A life of turmoil turns Jess Mercer into artist, community activist - Chico Enterprise-Record
"artist" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2FwLdIu
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "A life of turmoil turns Jess Mercer into artist, community activist - Chico Enterprise-Record"
Post a Comment