Artist: Kathryn Belzer
Size: 12″
Medium: Cloth over Wire Armature
Photo: Dan Abriel

Plato taught that serious things cannot be understood without laughable things.

This helps me understand why even solemn thoughts and feelings, such as those I sometimes have about aging, manifest themselves in a piece like “In-line, Mid-life Doris.”

In the spring of 1994 I was touched by a delightful scene among the in-line skaters outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art. There was a young man teaching his mom. She was tickled with her new skill, and he was proud of her courage. Clearly, they were having fun! In my imagination, this roller-blader’s biography began to develop. On one side of her locket is a photo of her late husband; on the other side is one of her granddaughter.

She’s a woman who is growing older, wiser, and satisfied. I call her, “In-line Mid-life Doris.”

Doris was chosen to represent Midlife Health by the Maritime Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health (see www.medicine.dal.ca/mcewh/) in the ‘Millennium Women’s Health Calendar PartnerShip Project’.

Now I like to think of her as ‘Ms. April of the Year 2000′.