Each year a local artist creates a custom design for the event t-shirts for Women Swimmin’ for Hospicare. We are incredibly pleased with the amazing work that Lisa Cowden did for the 2021 event. The design is a paper cut out and really captures the spirit of our Go the Distance event. Read more about her background and connection to hospice below.
An Artist Perspective By Lisa Cowden
The Finger Lakes region has been my home for more than 40 years, and if there has been a constant while I’ve lived here it is the enduring beauty of the landscape graced by the transformation of the seasons. I live in the woods, and my studio overlooks an old meander of a creek that goes over Taughannock Falls, and is visited every spring by optimistic wood ducks and the occasional stern heron; it’s a meditative space and suits me well.
No matter how often and how far I ventured out to find work as an illustrator and designer whether it happened to be for Cornell, Corning, or the New York Times, or I was creating my own body of work for an exhibition, the fulfilling and inspiring solitude of nature has always been right outside my window and this room has seen many an ebb and flow of all kinds of projects.
I went to Berkeley. I traveled. I became a certified Montessori teacher, raised goats, children, eventually got an MFA from Syracuse University in surface pattern design, and wrote and illustrated two cookbooks.
Much, if not all of that, is behind me; but I’m still ruining fancy scissors by using them to cut paper and I keep making stuff because it turns out artists don’t retire.
And if I look outside now, I can see that the skunk cabbage is in its glory and the maple leaves are just beginning to unfurl.
I am so happy to have been asked to make the artwork for Women Swimmin’ for Hospicare 2021. When my mother was dying and my brother and I were desperate for support and guidance, we could not have navigated the situation as well as we did without help. It was a long time ago, and in California, but I still remember someone from hospice calling me a year after my mother passed away to see how I was doing. I’m still grateful for that.