‘Brushes with Cancer’ at The Arsht: Journeys Seen from an Artist’s Perspective

Caryn Frishman unveils her painting inspired by Ashley Smith for the Arsht Center’s Brushes with Cancer program. The art will be unveiled for a viewing and a silent public auction on Thursday, Sept. 12 at the Arsht Center. (Photo by Gregory Reed/courtesy of the Arsht Center)

All agreed the progress of the work should be kept a secret. And so, it continued all spring and summer long. The great unveiling of “Brushes with Cancer” arrives on Thursday, Sept. 12 at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.

The work was to be portraiture, but not necessarily what “portraiture” usually conjures.

Earlier this year, the Arsht sent out a call. Would cancer patients/cancer survivors/cancer caregivers be interested in talking to Miami visual artists? Would the former be interested in the artists’ visual takeaways from those conversations? Would artists be interested in opening up their practices to focus intensely on another’s story?

Interested calls did come in. Out of them, 19 pairings, most highly random, were formed: artist and “inspiration,” for that was the name given to those who had known cancer up close and personal.

Watercolor artist Rosa Henriquez was skimming through Arsht performance offerings when she first read about the “Brushes with Cancer” initiative. “I’m not sure precisely why I felt moved to join in,” says Henriquez. “I had not lost anyone terribly close to me to cancer. Maybe I was interested because so few people are comfortable talking about the illness.”

Artist Rosa Henriquez with her Brushes with Cancer inspiration Morgen Chesonis-Gonzalez. (Photo by Gregory Reed/courtesy of the Arsht Center)

Morgen Chesonis-Gonzalez, Henriquez’s Inspiration, was more than simply comfortable talking about cancer; she found herself profoundly in need of just that.

When Chesonis-Gonzalez had received her breast cancer diagnosis –  her children were just 11 and 13 – Miami was smack in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis. And so, she went to her surgery alone. Every chemo infusion alone; each radiation treatment alone; each doctor’s visit alone, albeit with her husband, seemingly a million miles away in the hospital’s parking lot, on his telephone taking notes.

The treatment was grueling: it lasted ten months. With her immune system gravely compromised, friends and family couldn’t drop by to even touch her hand. Now, four years after the initial diagnosis, Chesonis-Gonzalez remembers. “I knew I was deeply loved, still I pray I will never feel that lonely again.”

Enter Henriquez.

Once the two were partnered, even before they spoke, Henriquez sent off a barrage of questions to her Chesonis-Gonzalez – queries about favorite flowers, favorite cocktails, favorite sports’ teams and on and on.  “After all,” the artist explains, “if I had been entrusted to tell the story of this woman, I wanted to tell a whole woman’s story, not just the story of her illness.”

But soon enough the cancer stories emerged, still raw.

How to translate all this onto a canvas? Not a decision to be taken lightly. Henriquez felt honor bound to make that decision alone, as a worthy partner to her “Inspiration.”

“Brushes with Cancer” inspiration Ashley Smith, left, and artist Caryn Frishman. (Photo by Gregory Reed/courtesy of the Arsht Center)

Meanwhile, cancer survivor Ashley Smith wasn’t sure she should even apply to the program. “After all, I had never had to undergo chemo for my melanoma,” she says. “So many others had suffered more than me.”

Never mind that for a time her surgery had left a long streak of black and bloodied stiches on her face. Never mind that for months afterwards, she found herself unable to leave home for fear of the sun.

Artist Caryn Frishman, herself a breast-cancer survivor, set Smith straight. “Once anybody hears that diagnosis, they are forever changed.” And so, their collaboration, a series of conversations, began.

Like Henriquez, Frishman felt it important to carry the work alone without any direct feedback from Smith.

“I wasn’t quite sure how to start,” the artist recalls. But after a time, it became very clear.

“I concentrated on what I felt from Ashley during our conversations. I wanted to celebrate her warmth, her incredible light.”

In a very private unveiling before the Arsht’s Sept. 12 celebration, the two women wept. Frishman had painted a mandala of seemingly endless light, a bright yellow mandala, the sun now transformed.

There were tears, too, in Henriquez’s private unveiling for Chesonis-Gonzalez as well.

The work was more figurative but no less transcendent than that of Frishman’s.

“Imagine, something was made just to witness me,” says Chesonis-Gonzalez. “There on the canvas was the me I can so easily forget, especially in the day-to-day of living.  I did have fierce strength; it is here on the canvas reminding me.”

And then there is the curious synchronicity of a certain tattoo.

Hairless during the height of her chemotherapy, Morgen Chesonis-Gonzalez used henna to tattoo her head with a Nordic talisman. (Photo courtesy of Gerardo Gonzalez-Quevedo)

Hairless during the height of her chemo, the woman had turned to her familial background. Using henna, she had tattooed her head with a Nordic talisman, one said to offer protection and also serve as a navigational tool. There are several such talismans in Nordic lore, but one seemed to speak most loudly to her.

Amazingly, Henriquez never saw that talisman but there it was in her painting.

According to both artists, theirs was not a gift to the cancer survivors but rather the trust and vulnerability of the cancer survivors was the gift to them.

So how was it that the Arsht, a performing arts center, decided to take on what was essentially a visual arts project?

Philadelphia native Jenna Benn Shersher is the founder of nonprofit the “Twist out Cancer.” (Photo courtesy of Eileen O’Hare)

An Arsht board member had done some work with the non-profit “Twist out Cancer,” an organization that sees the arts as a vital therapeutic tool in support of cancer patients. When he spoke of his experience, the Arsht Center wanted to learn more.

That meant discovering the work of cancer survivor Jeena Ben Shersher whose advocacy for cancer patients can only be described as extraordinary. Her work began by accident. A Philadelphia native, Ben Shersher was just 29 then and deeply isolated due to immune suppressants after difficult treatment for a rare form of blood cancer.

“Looking in the mirror, I couldn’t recognize my body, or even my face,” she remembers. Before her illness, Ben Shersher was always dancing. Trying to find herself again, one morning she set out to dance but could manage nothing more difficult than the Twist. Still, she was enough proud even of that to post her video on YouTube. There was a torrent of response. Not long afterward, she stood twisting on a stage in front of 7,000 people in Chicago’s Grant Park.

“Everyone everywhere was twisting,” she recalls. ‘Even folks in wheelchairs . . . The phrase ‘Twist out Cancer’ had become a battle cry.” With that Ben Shersher’s direction became clear and her non-profit was born.

“There is a shame that can come with a cancer diagnosis,” she admits. “People don’t talk about what is hard.  My hope is to make a space for people to talk, to lessen not only the anguish but the terrible isolation.”

Not long after establishing “Twist,” Ben Shersher noticed a call out by another young woman in the throes of same treatment for the same rare blood cancer as she had been diagnosed with gray zone lymphoma or GZL. “The woman had described a world gone gray. Everywhere everything she saw was gray. ‘Was there an artist anywhere that would paint something for me using no grays at all?’ the woman had asked.”

And so, “Twist out Cancer” found itself expanding, taking on a new project, christening it as “Brush with Cancer,” which now 12 years later has both a national and international presence in nearly a dozen cities.

“We are learning how important it is not only for people to tell their story, but to also see it through someone else’s eyes,” according to Benn Shersher.

Artist Rosa Henriquez and Morgen Chesonis-Gonzalez with the painting by Henriquez. (Photo by Gregory Reed/courtesy of the Arsht Center)

What has perhaps touched her the most about “Brush with Cancer” is the depth of the relationships that so often develop between partners.

Both Arsht “Brush with Cancer” partners agree, now calling themselves sisters.

Indeed, Frishman refers to the exchange as nearly sacramental, “one of the core memories of my life.”

The work of the 19 artists who participated in the Arsht pairing will be available for viewing, curated by Rosie Gordon-Wallace, founder of Miami’s Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts.

The “inspirations” will be there as well.

At the Thursday, Sept. 12 unveiling, the works will be available to purchase through a silent public auction. The art will be on display through mid-October inside the Arsht Center’s Knight Concert Hall lobby. Free guided tours of the Arsht Center are held at noon every Monday and Saturday and the art will be part of the tour. An online gallery at arshtcenter.org has also been set up for anyone to view the works. Remaining works that have not been sold will be available for purchase online. Proceeds will support the next “Brushes with Cancer” program.

WHAT: “Brushes with Cancer” art viewing and silent auction

WHERE: The Adrienne Arsht Center, 1300 Biscayne Boulevard, Miami.

WHEN:  7 p.m., Thursday, Sept. 12. Also, on view through mid-October inside the Arsht Center’s Knight Concert Hall lobby.

COST:  Free reception. RSVP at arshtcenter.org/brusheswithcancer.

INFORMATION: 305-949-6722 and arshtcenter.org

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