Although Mary could not walk, she still had good aim her last snowball fight. This is just one of Juan de Santa Anna's photographs on display at Interim Healthcare in Missoula through the end of the month.
MISSOULA - Seeley Lake artist Juan de Santa Anna has a month-long gallery show at Interim Healthcare in Missoula. The show opened at June's First Friday event and is based on the experiences of de Santa Anna and his wife Randi as they cared for her mother Mary who had dementia.
Interim Healthcare provides in-home care for seniors, respite care, dementia and hospice care, which influenced Juan's choices about what to display when the business first asked him to do a show.
"One of the directors at Interim Healthcare saw my artwork and asked if I'd be interested in doing a month long show there," he said. "Once I found out what the business was, I decided to do the show about Randi's mom instead of my scenics."
The experience of taking care of his wife's mother, as well as the many other experiences Juan has had as a caretaker made the show even more significant for him.
"We were caretakers at Big Sky Lake, took care of Randi's mom and my dad, and I worked 20 years caretaking severely abused young boys, so it was kind of cosmic that this place came up," he said.
The couple didn't have much time to put the show together. Juan said they were approached about 10 days before the First Friday event.
The show consists of both photos and some of Randi's journaling. This gave the couple the jump-start they needed to start collecting the pieces, which they hope to someday publish as a book.
The show includes some special memories the couple has of Randi's mother's time at their home before she passed away at age 87.
"A month before [she passed away] we took her out for a little stroll on the driveway. In one of the pictures, she's covered in snow because while I was walking I fired a snowball at her and she just couldn't believe it. But before [I knew] it she was throwing them back at me," Juan said.
The show, which is titled "The Puzzle of Life: My Best Friend's Mother," also confronts themes of death and loss. Juan said the title reflects a metaphor for dementia, as a person gets older, sometimes they start to lose their pieces.
"We were really fortunate to have her basically lose all her faculties but feel safe and feel loved," he said. "She passed away right there in our house and it was a hard thing but a beautiful thing."
The show is on display at Interim Healthcare at 113 Broadway St. in Missoula through the end of the month.
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