Collegiate Times

Meeker makes small indentations in a copper panel. She said of her art, "Almost everything you make, you make to move you forward to where you can really do transcendent things."

Darcy Meeker worked as a journalist until she was 44 and she decided she needed a change.

"I started feeling like my hands were hungry," Meeker said. "I knew I needed to be making art or some part of me would shrivel up and die."

The then 44-year-old Meeker traded her pen for a potter's wheel. She took a sabbatical from her job at the University of Florida and spent a month creating art in Tennessee. Meeker said after that, she was sure she wanted to do nothing but art for the rest of her life.

Then, in 1992, Meeker was diagnosed with muscular dystrophy, a hereditary disease that weakens the muscles of the body. Despite her illness, she has spent the last 18 years of her life as an artist and said her work keeps her going.

DEALING WITH MUSCULAR DYSTROPHY

Meeker attributed her sudden passion for art in part to the diagnosis.

"That was probably part of the feelings I was having ... of my vitality going away. But so long as I keep making art, things keep being good. I'm not as strong as I was, but I still have a pretty good imagination. ... I'm surrounded by love and help and kindness. Everywhere I go. It's just magic. It's wonderful. It's just a gift from the universe," Meeker said.

Meeker's choice of media allows her to create art. She began creating clay masks because clay is malleable. When she stone carves, she'll use alabaster because alabaster is soft stone, and she also works with copper because it's easy to tool.

Her husband Jim Pease, professor of agriculture and applied economics at Tech, described himself as her biggest fan and said she uses the gifts she has.

"She works with what she's got, and she is sometimes very, very frustrated. She can't hold an envelope in her fingers. She doesn't have enough grip in her left hand to even grasp an envelope. She picks herself up, and she does what she can. She's learning how to ask for help and finding that people enjoy helping her. In her art, she finds ways around things," Pease said.

He said Meeker is inspired by the French painter Henri Matisse, who became ill in his later years and created paper cut outs, which are now displayed in galleries.

"That's particularly poignant for her because you make art with what you've got and how you can do it. Not only when times are perfect and you're perfect. You do it with what you've got," he said.

CARVING OUT THE ARTIST

Meeker's first medium was not the one she ultimately stuck with.

"The first thing I did to make my hands feel more satisfied was to turn things in clay," she said. "But it was kind of boring. All you get is these perfectly symmetrical things"

After seeing quilted figures with clay faces at an art show, Meeker challenged herself to create clay masks. She put the first one she created in her garage and said the experience of seeing it was awe-inspiring.

"It was breathtaking. It was as if this figure was floating, and you couldn't see the rest of the figure, but only the face. ... It was like it was a real presence. I could experience the presence and it took my breath away. While I was making her I'm saying, You know if I can still do this when I'm 84, I'm not going to care if nobody wants to make love to me; it felt that good. That was the amount of energy I felt rushing through me. It was like I had been a fire house my whole life and I finally found a hydrant."

The first floor of Meeker's Blacksburg home is a gallery. Her masks cover most of the upper panels of the walls. Various sculptures are on display in the corners of her dining room, living room and den, and her copper pieces fill the walls.

Pease said only the upper floor of their home is untouched by Meeker's art and this doesn't bother him in the slightest.

"I love living around pretty things," Pease said. While he doesn't consider himself an artist, he has developed a deep respect for art.

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