THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, November 23, 1995 TAG: 9511180347
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 20 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOAN C. STANUS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines
Alone with her dying husband for hours on end, unable to see or hear much of anything, Lillian Cooper began to feel as though she were going out of her mind.
Desperately lonely and bored, she decided she had to do something.
So Cooper began covering the dozens of empty cigar boxes her husband had accumulated over the years with dried flowers, squashed paper medicine cups and cutouts of photographs and wrapping paper. To give her creations some added color, she applied splashes of red, green, blue and yellow with colored markers to create a vivid montage of floral images and textures.
When she ran out of cigar boxes to decorate, Cooper flattened gift boxes and used them as surfaces for artistic creations.
Creating those collages became the elderly woman's solace, a way to preserve her sanity as she kept her vigil at the bedside of her husband of 70 years.
It didn't matter that she couldn't see a thing she was doing.
``I do everything with my fingers,'' explained the 90-year-old Norfolk artist, who is partially deaf and almost completely blind. ``I feel the edges and the surfaces of the flowers, . . . and I twist and maneuver things so they won't be flat. I manipulate them to shape. Then I build them up with glue to give them height. I don't know the colors, but in flowers it doesn't matter what they look like or where they are. They all go together. And if you can feel the edges to flatten the material down, then you get a sense of balance.''
Cooper's husband died almost two years ago, but today she still creates her collages as vigorously as when she started.
``I'll go by her room late at night, and she's still working,'' said Kay France, administrator of Leigh Hall Retirement Residence. ``The really interesting thing to me is that, even though she can't see, she knows when something is lovely and when it's not. She just keeps working until she gets it right.''
A collection of more than a dozen of Cooper's collages and covered cigar boxes will be on display beginning Friday, Dec. 1, at the Poplar Hall Drive residence as part of a special showing featuring six senior artists. The other artists, all living at Leigh Hall, will exhibit their needlework, paintings, sketches, pottery and metal-work. The public opening is from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m.
Cooper's work, because it is so extensive and unusual, will be the exhibit's main feature.
A New York City native, Cooper has no formal art training. In fact, before she began working on her collages, the only artistic project she remembers doing was covering the back of a mirror when she was 16.
``The boy next door gave this mirror to me, and I didn't like the red velvet backing, so I cut out a picture of the Madonna and pasted it on the back,'' she recalled.
A homemaker for most of her life, Cooper said she was too busy being a wife and mother to undertake artistic pursuits.
But now, ``Everything I can get my hands on I turn into a collage.'' Her current projects have even included pieces of carrots and potatoes.
``I get so involved in this now. Now that my husband is dead, it keeps me from getting depressed. And everyone seems to really like them. I give a lot away to friends as gifts. I won't be able to leave them money, but I can leave a remembrance of myself in this way after I'm gone.
``I guess it's part of my legacy.'' ILLUSTRATION: Staff photos by RICHARD L. DUNSTON
Lillian Cooper, 90, will exhibit her artwork on Dec. 1 in the atrium
of Leigh Hall Retirement Residence.
An example of Lillian Cooper's artwork on display.
TO SEE HER WORK
Lillian Cooper's art and that of five other senior artists will be
exhibited from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Friday, Dec. 1, in the atrium of
Leigh Hall Retirement Residence, located at 890 Poplar Hall Drive.
The public is invited. For more information, call 461-5956.
by CNB