In remembering, in storytelling, we lift the heavy weight of loss. We return ourselves, and those we have lost, to life.
I never met Aila Salo Wartell. But during her last years, I knew something of her. After her death, I was gifted with a glimpse of what made her. Aila loved the world. She made that love manifest in her art.
Aila was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease in her seventies. By that time, I had known her son, Zach, for a couple of years. Zach is a colleague of mine at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and a member of my havurah.
I learned mostly the kind of data that detailed, increasingly, what Aila could no longer do. Zach would return from his visits and tell me which everyday-tasks and skills were fading and disappearing. Aila could no longer go out in public. She could not even take a few steps outside. She couldn’t…
I focused my attention on how the slow and painful loss of his mother was affecting him. I knew that Aila had been an educated and highly intelligent human being. I knew she had been a teacher. I knew that she was loved and that she was being cared for by her husband, Roger, with extraordinary devotion.
What I did not know, could not know, was the extraordinary depth of the impending loss.
After Aila’s funeral, I asked Zach if he wanted to take an hour to tell our community something about his mother.
None of us were prepared for what happened.
Zach and Aila’s husband, Roger, showed us one extraordinary piece of artwork after the other. Ethereal landscapes that were filled with quiet and peace. Abstract designs that featured both precision and humor. Portraits, including a recreation of the Mona Lisa, but with her daughter Arlena’s face smiling gently out of the frame.
Digital print, mixed media, acrylic. Collage, pen and ink, monotype, oil. It was an incredible display of talent. Aila’s work was colorful, evocative, and wide-ranging.
It was breathtaking.
We learned a few stories behind the art. When Aila was producing mixed media: she was known to pick up anything lying around the house. Her family would later find it in one of her works of art. Zach, who had hardly seemed to smile, let alone laugh, in the years up to his mother’s death, did both, and repeatedly, during that hour.
Aila observed with the deepest attention to detail. Every piece was intriguing; every piece made us wish we had known her. Every piece spoke a truth.
Aila’s life as an artist cannot be captured. One would have to spend days surrounded by her work to understand all its nuance and brilliance. This, we knew, though, after just that hour.
One thing seemed clear about the life she had lived: Aila had loved this world, and she gave that love to anyone who was lucky enough to see her art.
May her memory be for a blessing. Her art, and thus her own soul, certainly will be.
The Atlanta Collage Society is currently exhibiting Aila Salo Wartell’s work as part of an exhibit entitled “Cutting Loose: The Art of Collage.” You can find more details here:
