Broken: Alzheimer's Through the Eyes of Teenage Artists

Artist Ruth Blackford, whose work is featured on makingsenseofalzheimers.org, teaches young artists in the United Kingdom at St Dominic’s Sixth Form College, Harrow-on-the-Hill, near London. Ruth has encouraged her students to explore Alzheimer’s within their work. Two of these young artists – Kathleen Gorman and Mubaraka Shansuddin – are featured here.

Kathleen Gorman

"Kate" - Kathleen chose Memory as her art course work theme. She started exploring the theme from a variety of angles, but quickly decided to focus on her grandmother, Kate and look at how her memory was deteriorating with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. Working from old photographs, Kathleen used a variety of media and techniques to create body of work that tenderly remembers her grandmother, with and without Alzheimer’s. She produced three portraits of her grandmother at different stages in her life and used her drawing and painting tools to create a range of marks that represented the deterioration of Kate’s mind as the disease progressed. The first portrait was created with charcoal, with much detail to represent an intact character and mind. The second portrait was built up with ink applied in slightly dispersed dots to symbolise a subtle ‘breaking up’ of memory. The third portrait, which represents Kate as she is now, was also produced with ink and dots, but fewer to create the ‘fading’ effect that Kathleen felt her grandmother’s memory and character were suffering from.

"Fragile" 1 - Kathleen considered how objects can hold memories, and to a certain extent, represent people. She studied some fragile ceramics that belonged to Kate, taking photographs and using them in the mixed media works.

"Broken" - Having started to work with the idea of ceramics and how they can be used to convey identity and fragility in a person, Kathleen then went on to paint portraits directly on to china. To symbolize how Alzheimer’s was effecting Kate’s memory and personality, Kathleen, having finished the paintings, then smashed them in to pieces before roughly gluing them back together, leaving gaps and some pieces missing – another visual analogy for the state of Kate’s mind and character as the Alzheimer’s took hold.

"Tea Towel" -- Kathleen also wished to look at Kate’s life and remember the person she had been before the illness. She looked at letters and notes her grandmother had written and old photographs, and thought about things that reminded her of Kate, such as flowers and phrases. All these things were brought together in a textiles piece that incorporated heat transfer techniques and stitching, carefully applied to a tea towel.

Mubaraka Shamsuddin

Mubaraka chose ‘Growth and Evolution’ for her art coursework theme. She focused on both the medical and emotional aspects of Alzheimer’s disease, studying how it evolved and affected the sufferer’s brain and also their emotions. She started with the emotional aspect and portrayed the frustration suffered by memory loss.

Mubaraka then made a series of drawings in her sketchbook.

"Fading" - Mubaraka folowed with a collograph printing block (cardboard that has been scored and scratched in to, and textures applied) and took a series of prints from it. She inked up the printing block only once, and ran it through the press repeatedly on different pieces of paper, so the image became fainter and fainter – a visual analogy for fading memories.

This was followed with a series of loose stitched brain images, each one containing fewer stitches titled "Undone"

"Newspaper" Further work was developed on paper. Mubaraka wanted to represent the confusion and difficulty of making sense of the world that someone with Alzheimer’s experiences, so with paint, she blocked out sections of text and images on a newspaper page, making it confusing and almost nonsensical.

The use of multiple copies of the newspaper represent the repetition of an Alzheimer’s sufferer’s routines and dialogue, and the constant struggle to recollect memories.

"Bench" - an installation piece. Mubaraka designed a memorial plaque for a bench, based on a fictitious person, Raj Prathamesh, and laid out supposed photos of that person at different stages of their life, on the bench. She also laid out objects that might have significant meanings to the person, such as baby toys, trophies, and certificates. At one end of the bench she piled up a heap of newspapers, all from the same date, and treated them as before, blocking out sections, but this time with plain paper.

About The Artists

Kathleen Gorman

I am currently studying for my A Levels at St Dominic’s Sixth Form College near London. For one of my recent art projects I chose the theme of “Memory.” I thought this would be a good opportunity to learn about and create work based on my grandmother Kate, who is currently living with us, as she has dementia. Although my work is entirely made up of photographs/portraits/objects belonging to my grandmother, I attempted to reflect my experience of living with her and seeing the huge changes that occur due to Alzheimer’s disease, and the effects it has had on my family. On completing my A Levels, I hope to study some form of art and design at degree level.

Mubaraka Shamsuddin

I live in London with my family of four others and I am a sixth form student, looking to go to University later this year. I am studying both the arts and the sciences, and I love to combine the two so that I am able to work expressively and learn about the functions of the body at the same time. Studying about how the body uses nerves and impulses to create memories in A level Biology this year inspired me to translate textbook words into drawings, which essentially carried me on to illustrate the repetition of an Alzheimer’s sufferers’ routines and their constant struggle to recollect memories. My current art project theme is ‘Vistas’ and, as an aspiring architect, I am enjoying exploring how one can view buildings from different perspectives, not just physically, but also mentally. This current work continues to feed my interest of mental health issues.