I’ve never understood art—visual art, to be precise. I’ve always been the kind of person to walk into an art gallery, take a glance at a painting, call it pretty, and move on. The ambiguity of visual art was too much for me to comprehend. There was always some sort of feeling like there was something I was supposed to be divulging from the piece that I just… wasn’t. I felt left out. Stupid. This is exactly what I remarked to my classmate as I walked into Ann Savageau’s Guardians exhibit. It was a groggy Wednesday morning at the University of Michigan, and most of us were still rubbing the sleep from our eyes with the heels of our palms, our wonky freshman sleep schedules still not yet adjusted to these early morning classes.
For a brief moment I stood among the sculptures, encircled by what appeared to me to be slapped-together pieces of old furniture and scraps of roadside trash. There were seventeen sculptures made from random objects, painted and assembled to look vaguely like… animals? People? The exhibit called them guardians, but guardians of what, I was unsure. I didn’t really wonder. I read some of the quotes that were plastered on the walls beside the figures and did not internalize them. One said something about hope… another about grief. I took a sip of my energy drink. I thought about when I might do my laundry today—I probably wouldn’t have time. I was anxious for the class to end so I could get working on an essay for my creative writing class that was due the next morning—I hadn’t started it. If I’d known all we were going to do today was visit this exhibit, maybe I would’ve skipped and worked on that instead.
And then Ann Savageau stepped into the room. My teacher looked at the woman with pride, as if being in the presence of these sculptures’ creator was the greatest blessing on earth. Savageau pulled a piece of paper out from her pocket and unfolded it, cleared her throat, and began to read. I turned to look at her, ready to nod politely at just the right moments to show I was listening.
“The initial impetus for this series was deeply personal,” she said, then swallowed hard. “my two remaining children had died within nine months of each other, leaving my husband and I childless, after raising two beautiful sons and a daughter.”
My heart seized up inside my chest.
“These beings represent guardian spirits of protection,” Savageau went on. “They also are a metaphor for myself: broken yet strong, always hopeful, salvaging what I can from tragedy and loss to rebuild my life.”
As quickly as the words left Savageau’s lips, I watched my surroundings morph into a completely different scene. The sculptures were no longer mere sculptures, but living, breathing creatures, posing out of timidness under my gaze. I found it peculiar that they seemed so powerful, as if they held the capacity to ward off all evil, yet were too afraid to acknowledge me face-to-face. Suddenly their individual personalities became abundantly clear: the alligator was curious, the clawed beast ruthless, the motherly-figure caring. And at the same time, they shared a collective, human-like presence that radiated an air of tranquility and protection into every corner of the room. I began to feel as if I’d interrupted some sort of meeting—like if I stepped out of the room all the guardians would spring to life, caught in a discourse about the best methods to shield me from harm.
Enraptured by the novel, supernatural sense of it all, I began to look more closely at the beings I’d so quickly dismissed. It was like I was seeing it all for the very first time, through completely different eyes. I didn’t see a piece of beach trash with glued-on eyeballs anymore, but an alligator-like guardian with a long snout and contemplative eyes whose mission was to shield me from all harm. A stout creature who I’d once seen as nothing more than a conglomerate of miscellaneous garbage propped up on the legs of a deconstructed table became a childlike life form with a friendly smile. A figure whose arms had once been made from the ribs of a cow carcass now seemed warm and inviting. These creations, paired with the story Savageau had told about their construction, gave them a soul. A soul that I could feel with every ounce of my being, as tangibly as if they’d reached out and placed one of their knobby hands on my shoulder to assure me of their presence. Of their mission: to keep me safe. For the first time in my life, I finally understood art.
I was particularly drawn to a rather tall, bird-like guardian. She had the face of an old woman on one side of her head, the face of an owl on the other. Her arms were covered in feathers from the shoulders to the fingertips, and she was dressed in a metal sheet that looked to me like a long silver dress. Something an old lady with a zest for life might wear. The woman’s lips were curled upward in a slight smile, her eyes half-closed as if in peaceful meditation. The serenity in her aura sent a ripple of warm familiarity into my heart. My maternal grandmother’s presence radiated from the creature the way heat radiates from a campfire, wrapping itself around me like a warm hug. Any anxiety I’d walked into the exhibit with that day dissipated at once. Here, with her, I was safe.
My class and I spent an hour with the guardians, and still, I found myself wishing we’d been given more time. The room was filled with a sense of complete security, as if as long as I was there, my worries could be placed aside. All the pent-up Freshman Fears that had been balled-up in my throat like a sticky wad of accidentally-swallowed bubble gum were pushed to the wayside, and I became too enraptured by the exhibit to think about them. Although I tried to give my attention equally to all the pieces in the room, my gaze continuously returned to the bird-woman, who I could swear was just my grandmother in a silver dress and golden mask. Savageau continued to talk as I surveyed the scene, explaining that the pieces of each guardian had “come to her,” by pure chance. It was enthralling to me that somehow, out of all the bits of driftwood in the ocean and all the sheets of metal and all the mechanical detritus on the planet, Savageau had been brought little pieces of the world that fit together just-right to become my Grandma Trish. Just by chance. Gazing up at the bird-woman, it seemed impossible. I wanted to hold the creature’s hand. To wrap my arms around her shoulders. To ask her if she’d like to walk around campus with me, see my dorm; grab a cup of coffee. But she didn’t. Her lack of movement was a harsh reminder that my grandmother—or, at least her physical form—was back in Ohio, not standing in front of me at the University of Michigan. I could almost feel her arms wrapped around my neck now, the pressure from her touch miraculously returning all these weeks after she’d hugged me goodbye on move-in day. It took all I had in me to tear myself away from the room and follow the rest of my peers back to class. It felt like saying farewell all over again.
Unexpectedly, though, the sense of security I’d gained from standing in the presence of the guardians followed me back to my classroom, where Savageau continued to discuss the Guardians exhibit. “Art is the highest form of hope,” she said, quoting the artist Gerhard Richter. I didn’t know who Richter was, but his words fit inside my heart like a puzzle piece. Art and hope. It made sense. Art made sense. Before, even as I’d dedicated hours upon hours to my own forms of art, I’d never been able to see the value in its creation. It was a pointless task, but I enjoyed it, so I kept creating it. I wasn’t changing the world with my literature, and I wasn’t saving lives with my books; it was purely for my own entertainment. But then I understood. I wasn’t just creating art to create art. I was creating art because I had hope. Savageau recounted stories of how inmates generate hope from pieces of art they’d created in prison, and I lingered on her every word. Yes, I know, I wanted to blurt out. I’ve felt this before. I know. I know.
The past four years of my life began to play out before me like an old movie tape, discovered in a dusty old box in the basement of my brain. Frame by frame, I watched, my classmates oblivious to the flashbacks flickering across my memory.
I’d been sick.
I’d been hospitalized.
I’d been bored. Hopelessly bored.
I began to write.
I couldn’t stop writing.
I could’ve died.
I could still die.
I could die at any moment.
But not before I finish this book.
Art is the highest form of hope. Savageau created guardians from the wreckage of the world because she hoped they might protect her. I wrote my books, because I hoped I’d be alive to see the final product.
My grandma always said that if she were to be reincarnated, she’d like to come back as a bird. I’ve never thought about it. I don’t like thinking about dying.
“I pray for you every day,” she said to me one day over the phone. Staring out the hospital window, I could hear my little cousins shrieking joyfully at each other in the background, and it made me smile. I imagined them playing in the park I could see down below, and imagined myself pushing them on the swingset. Higher and higher, their little legs pumping, letting out those raucous cries of joy. I picked at the plastic bandage that held my IV in place. Whenever I typed, the vein ached. I typed two thousand words a day.
“You don’t need to pray for me,” I’d reply. “I’m going to be fine.”
“I’m going to pray for you anyway.”
“I’m gonna be fine.”
I had to be, because nobody knew how to finish my book but me. They could try, but I knew for a fact they’d never get it just right. My hand ached from the needle inside it and my brain was perpetually foggy from the sickness, my eyes were always blurry from the lack of variety they consumed and my mind was constantly screaming at me to just give up and go to sleep, but I continued to write. To stop writing was to stop hoping. To stop writing was to stop living.
I do not believe in God, but I believe in my grandmother. Her prayers were answered by someone, because I did eventually get better. I left the hospital with a completed novel, and enough hope inside me to last a lifetime.
As I type this essay, I sit within the eyeline of the bird-woman, who continues to watch me with her tranquil smile and inviting arms. I feel my grandmother through her—her unconditional love, her unwavering support, her endless need to protect me from all harm. I feel her prayers and protection through her. The fact that the bird-woman was ever just a “pretty” work of art to me seems unfathomable now, because it’s never been so clear that these guardians are so much more than that. They represent the deepest valleys of grief and the highest summits of hope, countless hours of tears and endless lines of prayer. They are not sculptures, they are creations of love and melancholy and protection and peace. For the first time in my life I feel as though I understand art, and my life has multiplied in beauty because of it.
Ann Savageau allowed me to experience the blessing of seeing my grandmother, my guardian and protector, every time I walk downstairs. In a school of 30,000 students I feel as though I am truly seen. The exhibit makes me wonder what else I’ve denounced, devalued, or overlooked simply because I was unable to understand it at a first glance. Since the day I first walked through Savageau’s exhibit I’ve seen art more similarly to a math problem than a decoration or simple mode of entertainment. Art is something to unpack and discover. There are hidden meanings and different interpretations and nuances and complexities that can’t always be solved by giving it a quick glance. Classic literature, which I’ve always detested for its impossibly difficult language, has now become something I look at with curiosity. What is the meaning? What did I miss? Works of visual art have become puzzles to me. How does this connect to my life? What is the artist trying to say? I don’t dare overlook a single piece.
In just one hour, my life has changed. The world is so expansive, and the idea that more experiences of discovery await me is exhilarating. What Savageau has done to me through her art is exactly what I hope to do with my own. I seek to change lives with my writing, and I will continue to write until I cannot write anymore, because art is the highest form of hope. I will never stop hoping.
Writer To Writer Literary Journal 