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by Richard Francis Harteis (Author), Frankel Nancy (Contribution by)
Several years after William Meredith sustained a major stroke, well-meaning friends and therapists suggested that art therapy might be helpful to develop motor skills for the affected hand. We'd heard of a legendary teacher from Montgomery College and approached her about taking William on as a student. That interaction grew into a lifetime friendship which brings us to the present exhibition sponsored by the William Meredith Foundation.
It turned out that motor coordination was not the problem to be dealt with. William's aphasia made understanding intellectual concepts difficult - negative space, anatomical accuracy, and all the technical requirements of sculpture were difficult to grasp for him. Nancy had a remarkable talent for reaching him, trapped under ice, as it were, and they did the dance teacher and student engage in when learning happens at its best. And characteristically, William moved on to other challenges with language once he had completed several rather remarkable portrait sculptures. Their friendship abided, however and resulted in years of travel to Bulgaria, Florida, New England, and Europe. Nancy had become family.
Friends love her for her modesty, intellectual honesty, and spiritual authority. She really is something of a "wise woman," and lends her opinion at bible study at the crack of dawn each Thursday morning before returning home to teach. She plans to be "roomates" with her friend Lizzy at the Columbarium at St. Columba Episcopal Church and despite the friends who have dropped off the planet lately, she remains committed to life's pleasures. Again, as Meredith writes in "His Plans for Old Age,"
He is founding a sect for the radical old,
freaks you may call them but you're wrong,
who persist in being at home in the world,
who just naturally feel it's a good bind to be in,
let the young feel as uncanny as they like.
And another poet comes to mind when I consider the realistic, accepting and balanced view of where she stands at this point in her life. At the end of her poem, "When Death Comes," Mary Oliver writes:
When it's over, I want to say: all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it's over, I don't want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.
I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.
I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.
Nancy doesn't have to worry in this regard. She has more than made of her life "something particular and real." The sculptures remain a testament to her sterling intelligence and unique view of reality and the world. Everyone who loves her is so grateful that this charming girl turned into the woman we all admire. As Meredith says of Simone de Beauvoir in her "civilized Gallic gloom: " "may she be loved and beautiful without wrinkles until it takes carbon dating to determine her age." And may she continue to entertain us with her beautiful work for years to come.
