Seated in a padded metal chair, the woman on the videotape strums downward on a white electric guitar, slowly, on every beat, eliciting a sound that echoes around the room. Another seated woman joins in tentatively with her guitar, playing a similarly odd chord. Both concentrate on a fragile, rudimentary rhythm, which only seconds later collapses. Then, with some encouraging words from a youthful voice off-camera, they begin again. Ching. Ching. Ching.
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Physically, the half dozen seated players holding an assortment of guitars vaguely resemble something Glenn Branca might have thought up, but Sheppard’s project has another, less visible layer–at least a few ensemble regulars have Alzheimer’s. “I was interested,” explains Sheppard, “in inserting older people with memory problems into a situation where that person has agency.”
At Hampshire College, where Sheppard studied film, video, and installation art, her thesis was a piece that incorporated audio and video footage of three elderly women in a nursing home. For another project she worked with Hilda Gorenstein–aka “Hilgos”–a painter and 1923 School of the Art Institute graduate then in her 90s and in a nursing home suffering from extreme memory loss. Sheppard visited and worked with the painter, ultimately mounting Hilgos-related shows featuring her own work together with Gorenstein’s drawings and paintings at nursing homes and senior centers in Chicago, at SAIC, and at a New York gallery.
Only one of the players is an experienced musician: Eleanor, 88, was trained on piano and violin, and was once the organist at a suburban temple. And except for some valiant attempts by Eleanor–a naturally charismatic leader–to organize the ladies around her clapped-out tempo, the ensemble plays like thorough novices. Meeting three of the guitarists after a session, as they view their portraits for the first time, it’s clear that they have their own theories about the project. “I don’t play the guitar,” says Minna upon being told she’s been doing just that twice a week for several months. But the subject of music elicits vivid memories: Lodelin recounts decades of singing “sacred music” with her husband; Minna wishes her eldest son–“an expert in stringed instruments”–were around; Eleanor authoritatively announces that she’s always preferred classical guitar.
