Recently I interviewed Riva Berkovitz for my TV show, called Alivelihood: New Careers As We Age. Riva started a new "career" as a photographer 3 years ago at age 77. She discovered her love for taking pictures with a "macro" lens after gazing at a beautiful park near her house. Knowing that she couldn't draw it and do justice to the look of the early spring leaves of weeping willows, she decided to try photographing it with her digital camera. This led to her examination of minute sections of plants and flowers she bought from her florist and her experimentation with different lenses and with cropping the photos using an online program. Cropping captured her attention and she's never stopped shooting and cropping flowers, trees, and plants. She's having the time of her life.
The magazine Aging Well published an article called: "Retirement Redefined: Lessons From Aging Artists" based on a survey undertaken by Joan Jeffri, Director of the Research Center for Arts and Culture at Teachers College, Columbia University.
The author, Juliann Schaeffer, sees retirement as being a fluid process. She describes Jeffri's study of aging artists to see what accounts for their immense life satisfaction. "Artists don't retire... They see life full of possibility vs. seeing life coming to a close... They are often called 'see-ers' - people that see beyond what's there," said Gay Hanna, executive director of the National Center for Creative Aging.
Jeffri studies 146 educated professional artists and found that there was no disconnect with older age. They stay connected with their artistic community, they have a firm sense of self, the majority stated that their self esteem is good to excellent. They've adapted their life to fit their art; for example, when one woman could no longer manage working with safety pins because of her arthritis, she shifted her medium.
Hanna said, "Life's real happiness lies in finding some area of work that you can feel passionate about and then using it to stay connected with others and continue lifelong learning."
According to the researcher Jeffri, "The life of the aging artist is a microcosm of resilience and the artist's response to materials ... provides an extraordinarily special place..." See full article.
How exciting -- that one can continue to be passionate about "work" as we age. In her book "What It Is" by Lynda Barry, she says, "at the center of everything we call 'the arts' and children call 'play', is something which seems somehow alive."
Posted by: Lola | July 10, 2009 at 06:38 PM
Interesting to link the arts and play. Makes sense - artists "play" with their medium and their tools and their thoughts and feelings, much as children do. It's 1 of the ways to continue to feel "Alive" your whole life.
Posted by: Karma Kitaj | July 11, 2009 at 12:53 PM