Artist shares inner struggle from breast cancer battle with hope of helping others

Artist: Born in Philadelphia and raised in New Jersey, Janette Maley and her husband Arthur Hand have lived in Geneva 10 years. Maley teaches art full time at Kishwaukee Community College; Hand teaches photography full time at McHenry Community College.

Medium: As Maley and her husband struggled to deal with her diagnosis of breast cancer in November 1998, they began a journey to come to grips with the unknown end of the path.

“The family is going through the disease as much as the patient is,” Maley says. “What it taught me is to think about: What am I doing right now? Itıs really helping me to accept the difficulties that life gives us and appreciate the pleasures.”

Today, as Maley enjoys being cancer-free, she and her husband continue together and have each created separate, yet related, bodies of artwork.

Maley has made stacks of collages to attempt to deal with her feelings; Hand made countless photographs of his wife through the ordeal -- each as if it was his last one. “Through these images, we hope to show what life is like for a woman facing this catastrophic illness,” writes Hand. “Through this exhibition, we hope to share Janette’s journey, and give voice to countless women.”,

Background: Some of this work is now a traveling exhibit scheduled for viewing at various galleries and museums around the country.

None of the work is for sale -- the show isn’t about making a profit. Maley and Hand come and talk about their experience and artwork to help spread the word on the desperate need to develop a cure for cancer as well as for more expression of sensitivity to the needs and feelings of patients and their families.

Maley attended Temple University and transferred to the University of Maine where she earned her bachelor of fine arts degree in ceramics and drawing. During her undergraduate studies, Maley created ceramic works incorporating cast clay masks.

Later, Maley was awarded her master of fine arts at Indiana University. During this time and continuing afterward, she layered oil paintings by making marks on the canvas, then let images slowly appear as if from her subconscious. Maley recounts her brother telling her, “You’re painting my dreams.” and this, she says, is exactly what she meant to do.

Although Maley and Hand had been together for about 26 years when the crisis occurred, Hand had only a few photographs of his wife. Like a last request, Maley asked him to photograph her before her surgery, triggering his series.

Hand usually photographs gardens just after a frost, a parallel with his wife’s condition. “I didn’t know if I was going to live and this was my way of giving,” Maley says. “It was as intimate as love making. I knew I may never experience this again.”

Maley has an unselfish motive for showing these very private photographs.

“I’m showing this because I want people to know how horrible this is so we find a cure,” she says. “That’s why I’m willing to let the disturbing views of illness show.”

On her work: Maley’s cancer treatment was finished in November of 1999. Unable to sleep, she began to go into her studio at home to consider working.

Maley says she asked herself, “What did it feel like inside?”

Once begun, Maley made 35 collages in three weeks, a phenomenal output by any standards. The whole series centers on one central woman figure, Maley says, and is meant to depict to whole gamut of reactions from total horror to a stoic “I’m going to beat this.” The woman is warrior, hero, and martyr, Maley says.

She says she created the collages as “studies for paintings” not intended for anyone else to see. Only after close colleagues gave her strong encouragement to share them did she consider showing the work. “I kept thinking, ‘I don’t want to be a breast cancer artist,’” says Maley, her soft gray eyes glistening. “‘I’m not going to do that.’”

Maley says she was ever mindful of the aesthetics of her work, particularly color harmony and alignment and kinship of shape. For example, in her work ³Every Woman is a Goddess,² Maley placed legs with lace panties next to the image of intricate patterning of an Asian goddess figure. Over the face Maley used a doll-like mask, one she found to represent not only herself, but all women. In other pieces this mask is altered, cut or disfigured for emotive impact. Over the woman’s right breast lays an ominous black hole encircled with colorful braiding, pointing to the place where the cancerous tissue racked pillage. The background is a 19th Century gilt frame. Throughout is a delicate, ornate patterning and central focus like the Italian icons Maley admired during a trip to Europe while in graduate school.

Still, after two and a half years, Maley says she is just now getting over the nagging fatigue that has lingered after the treatment. She continues to consume vitamins and restrict her diet in an effort to prevent the cancer from returning.

Meanwhile, Maley has begun a new series: “Beastiaries” -- animals of all sorts, which Maley says the symbolic meanings, researched afterward, reveals her inner feelings once more.

³I let my subconscious talk to me and thatıs how I’ve always worked,² Maley explains. On exhibit: Three of Maleyıs new works are on display in the Fox Valley Arts Council Members Invitational through Dec. 1 at The Aurora Public Art Commission, 20 E. Downer Place in downtown Aurora. For information, call the gallery at (630) 906-0654.

Maley and Hand’s two-person show “A Journey: Two Viewpoints” is on display through Sept. 28 at SoFAGallery, Indiana University, Fine Arts 123, Bloomington, Ind. For information, call the gallery at (812) 855-8490, inquire through e-mail at sofa@indiana.edu or visit the gallery Web site at http:// sofa.fa.indiana.edu.,

What’s ahead: Maley and Hand’s artwork will travel to a gallery in Virginia next month and one in Pennsylvania in the spring among others. The collection will then be on display next August at the International Museum of Surgical Science, 1516 N. Lake Shore Drive, Chicago.

-- Carol Hegarty