Carol Morris dips a brush in the shiny dollop of bright blue paint and tentatively swabs it onto the sheet of clear plastic in front of her.
Her eyes narrow as she carefully sets the brush along the outline of the candy cane that has been traced onto the plastic, and paints a swath of blue.
It is obvious — even to the casual observer — that Morris is not greatly pleased with what she sees. But she loads her brush with more blue paint and applies another patch of color.
"Maybe you should use a different color for that section," said Sharon Goforth, indicating the small paper-plate palette that has circles of red, white, green and yellow paint, as well as blue.
Morris starts to dip her blue-saturated brush into the glob of green, but Goforth suggests that red would be a better choice.
"That way, you'd have purple," she said.
True enough, but this change still doesn't sit well with Morris. Finally, she pushes her half-completed painting aside.
"I don't want to do this today," Morris said. She looks down at the image of the candy cane, and said, "This looks like a snake to me. And I don't like snakes."
So Morris watches, closely, as Goforth helps finish the painting. And when Goforth holds up the painting, so that the light from the window streams through it, as if it were made of stained glass, Morris acknowledges the effort and the results with a small smile and a satisfied nod.
Morris is one of nine people, each of them living with some degree of Alzheimer's disease, who are taking part this Tuesday morning in a program offered through the Oklahoma chapter of the Alzheimer's Association in cooperation with local arts organizations.
"It's inspired by a program called Drawing on Memories, that the Museum of Modern Art in New York started years ago," said Ronda Roberts, programs manager for the Alzheimer's Association in Tulsa. "We try to provide them with a complete artistic experience, from learning about a specific piece of art to creating something of their own."
The program provides a number of potential benefits, Roberts said.
"It can give those who might not be able to communicate verbally a way to connect with others," she said. "It can really elevate some people's mood, to be in a friendly environment, to be able to focus on making something.
"And it often can help spark a memory of good times in that individual's past," Roberts said.
The program is offered the second Tuesday of the month at Gilcrease Museum, though the snowstorm in early December forced that session to be canceled.
But the third Tuesday of the month, which is when the program is presented at Philbrook, was clear, if still a bit chilly.
"Most of the people attending today are from Inverness Village," Roberts said. "But we have people from other centers take part, as well as people who are on their own. They all come with their caretakers or family members, all of whom can take part in the art-making process.
"In fact," she said, laughing, "my staff members love coming on these events because we get to make things, too."
The Philbrook program is led by teaching artist Andrea Wamble, who for this session begins with a brief talk about one of the works in the museum's current exhibit, "Collective Future."
It's a painting titled "The Blizzard" by Barbara Lathem, which portrays a woman in a shawl, looking out a window. Wamble talks about the medium Lathem used, egg tempura, which allows the artist to create thin, almost transparent layers of color.
All that leads to this week's project, done in the museum's lower-level art studios — making a "stained glass" painting of a holiday image, by tracing the image onto a sheet of clear plastic, then painting over it.
When Wamble holds up a prototype image to the window, Dorothy Swearingen exclaims, "Oh, that's pretty!"
When it comes time to make her own painting, Swearingen tries to follow Wamble's example closely — even if she has a bit of trouble at first with putting down random dots of white to simulate snowflakes.
When one of the caretakers demonstrates, Swearingen beams. "Oh, yes, that's VERY pretty!" And soon, snowflakes begin to fill the area around the large star at the center of her painting.
"This is my favorite thing I do here," said Wamble, who has been guiding these sessions for about three years. "I look forward to it every month. We have a lot of people who come back each month. Dorothy has been coming for about a year, for example, and she's just a treat to work with. In a way, this group is getting to be a little like a family to me."
Louise Higgs, the teaching artist who leads the program at Gilcrease Museum, follows a similar formula — using an image from the collection as the starting point for the hands-on project that will follow.
"It's really so much fun to be a part of this, because the people who take part are some of the most receptive people I've ever worked with," she said. "Even if they have trouble communicating, they understand a great deal about what is going on around them."
The art projects the participants do vary from different types of painting to creating rudimentary sculptures. Still, Higgs and Wamble agree, it is important to have a starting point.
"Just to give them a blank page can be intimidating — and not just for those dealing with Alzheimer's," Higgs said. "So I always try to have projects where the first step is already done. That gives them a goal to reach in the time we have."
Higgs said she can tell that some of the people who take part in these activities have a natural ability to paint or draw or sculpt.
"That's what's interesting to me," she said. "It's as if they are accessing a different part of their brain to do this, a part that hasn't been affected by the disease. You can see their personality really come through in the way they make this little work of art."
James D. Watts Jr. 918-581-8478
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