Living in senior homes, UWM students create art and friendships

Alice Humphrey announced the title of her piece – “Who Knew?” – from the head of a conference table at Luther Manor, a senior living facility in Wauwatosa. 

Six other residents and Thorin Ketelsen, the youngest one by decades, surrounded Humphrey as she read aloud, recalling how she was set up with her late husband because he needed a short date to a fraternity dance.

Ketelsen convenes the story group nearly every Sunday. But Ketelsen, a theater major at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, isn't just volunteering at Luther Manor. He lives there.

Ketelsen is the senior living community’s student artist in residence. In exchange for room and board, he leads arts programming for residents. He is one of three UWM students embedded in local senior living communities as part of a student artist in residence program designed by Anne Basting, a UWM theater professor who won a MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant to support her work.

In her light blue cardigan, Humphrey peered through her bifocals.

“The dance was OK, nothing special. I danced with a few of the brothers but didn’t see Bill except for a couple of dances. He was busy being the life of the party – lampshade and all. He worked the room like a politician running for office.”

The group laughed and clapped.

“Bill and I dated on and off a few times and eventually went steady. We graduated, married and were together 63 years. Now for the first time in my life, I’m learning to live alone. Wish I had a dog,” she quipped to end the piece.

“That was a great story,” said Ketelsen.

Each week residents share something they wrote or writing they like. Some just come to listen. Occasionally group members share notes about how to improve writing, but mostly they talk.

Bonding through stories

Ketelsen didn’t intend to start a writing group when he was selected as Luther Manor's resident artist. He had hoped to lead a light movement warm-up like he does before stage performances. But Luther Manor administrators wanted him to do something more intellectual. The facility already had exercise classes.

At the end of each story session, Ketelsen gives a writing prompt for the next meeting. “As always feel free to disregard everything and do what you want,” he tells them. And they do.

The regulars have become friends. What bonds them is not just sharing the stories but the discussion that follows. Ketelsen remembers one week after Rusty Tym shared a story about his first television set. The rest of the residents chimed in with stories of their own first TVs. The sentiment was familiar to Ketelsen – it was just like when he first got a computer.

“When you write about something that happened maybe years ago it really brings you back to that time and place when it actually happened and then to share that with other people is a pretty magical thing,” Ketelsen said.

The program is run through the UWM Peck School of the Arts with Basting's nonprofit alliance The Creative Trust, and funding from Bader Philanthropies. Ian McGibbon, studying art education, lives in Eastcastle Place; Erin Whitney, who studies community art, is embedded at Ovation Chai Point. Two additional students work in facilities but don't reside there.

Student artists in residence act as bridges between the senior care facilities and the greater community. The students spend an academic year learning about a community and helping it through art making. Community mentors guide the students to identify goals for the year and create workshops to achieve them.

Bringing his world inside

Outside of a few high school volunteer moments, Ketelsen hadn’t spent time in senior living facilities homes before moving into Luther Manor in August. None of his relatives have lived in a place like it.

At first, returning to Luther Manor around midnight after long days of school, work and theater rehearsals to chat with a 101-year-old neighbor felt odd. But Ketelsen has found a home at Luther Manor. His neighbors, all fifty or more years older, look upon Ketelsen as an honorary grandchild.

There’s Joyce, whom he describes as a poet. Olga, who was born in Germany and retains a strong accent. And Jean. She can’t see well so Ketelsen waits to say hi until he's a couple feet away so she will recognize him.

Ketelsen accompanies residents on field trips as a friend and an informal chaperone. In the fall, a group of about 20 enjoyed fall colors on a drive to Holy Hill in Hubertus and then a visit to a pumpkin patch. In March, he joined his elders on a visit to the Milwaukee Art Museum.

When stage space for a Voices Found Repertory performance of “Richard III” with Ketelsen in the cast fell through, he invited the group to perform at Luther Manor. The actors brought their talents to the seniors for a Friday night show.

“We enjoy the younger people too,” Humphrey said. “There’s a certain amount of confinement. You’re not out in the real world. In this age group, we’re kind of out of the loop.”

For the last two decades, Ketelsen's mentor Anne Basting has studied and led creative efforts to counteract social isolation and cognitive impairment among the aging. Basting describes aging care facilities as alien spaceships that land and exist in their own world.

"Really no one wants to go in and no one ever comes out," she said. "So how can they be seen as permeable, productive members of their communities that maybe people want to go in and visit?"

Basting's public art project "Islands of Milwaukee" connected seniors to the world through meal delivery drivers who gave seniors cards with questions like "If you could go anywhere in Milwaukee right now, where would you go?" Building on those insights – seniors wanted to be out of the house more – she designed the street performance "The Crossings" to draw attention to intersections so challenging they discourage the aging from walking outside.

Friends tease each other

Theater was a way for Ketelsen to immerse himself into life at Luther Manor. When he arrived, Ketelsen met Tym, 78, who was producing “More Witty, More Wise, Still Weathered,” a sequel to the facility’s radio-style 2013 show “The Witty, The Wise, The Weathered,” about the humorous side of living at Luther Manor. Ketelsen took a part in the show and helped Tym direct.

"He impressed me immediately," said Tym, who wrote a role for Ketelsen as a teacher who was supposed to instruct residents how to play sheepshead.

In turn, Tym joined the weekly writing group.

"We became really good friends," Tym said. "We couldn’t have had a better person to be the initial artist in residence." He plans to keep in touch after Ketelsen moves out of Luther Manor at the end of the school year.

When Ketelsen turned 30, Tym, Joyce Heinrich and a few other residents took him to Luther Manor’s dining room for a birthday meal.

"Thorin is a marvel," Heinrich said.

Still, residents occasionally give him a hard time, as friends do. On Mary Ann Abrahamson’s first visit to the story group, she told Ketelsen, who had his hair pulled back into a bun, “that’s not a very great ponytail.”

At first Ketelsen worried about how his new roommates would respond to the way he dresses or his long blonde hair. During the first few weeks, he combed back his shoulder-length hair.

Then one week as he shared a story he wrote long ago, Ketelsen realized it was more PG-13 than he remembered. Embarrassed, he stopped and asked if the story was still interesting to the group. They said it was. Then he confessed, "it’s a little racy." Heinrich, 87, interjected, assuring Ketelsen “everyone in the room is old enough” to hear what he wrote.

After that, Ketelsen realized he could just be himself.

“The problem with places like this is the world gets smaller,” Ketelsen said. “One of the things I try (to) do here is not fit myself into this world but bring whatever my world is here.”

Board games, shirt swaps

It's McGibbon's second year in the program. Last academic year he spent one semester at Eastcastle and another at Chai Point.

He's brought his life outside Eastcastle to residents, taking them to see his mural in Black Cat Alley, a street art project between Prospect and Farwell avenues. McGibbon invites friends to Eastcastle. Last year McGibbon hosted a cross-generational T-shirt exchange through which his friends and the residents swapped shirts. Another time, his friends and residents played board games together.

His experience has helped McGibbon understand that working with the aging could become a career path for him. He leads residents in art workshops like teaching them to make coil pots. 

McGibbon said he benefits from hearing stories told by his elders. One night at dinner, a woman he just met shared how she hiked the entire 1,200-mile Ice Age Trail and saved a piece of prairie land near Chicago.

His mentor Basting views the arts as a powerful tool to improve the quality of life for elders and connect them with their communities to fight social isolation.  

"They think this world is moving so fast now and I don't even know how to step into the river anymore," Basting said. "Ian can walk with me into the river."

Basting said a sense of mutual exchange like that is vital to the success of the program. It's not just about improving the quality of life for elderly. Basting wants students in the arts to realize that they have skills that can be used outside a studio or theater. "They can be a meaningful part of social change with their skill set and a valuable part of social change," Basting said. "That also means thinking about educating people beyond the age of 18."

Translating his experience

Since childhood, Ketelsen has wanted to become an actor. But the influence of a high school history teacher, the best storyteller he has ever heard, and his own pragmatic nature turned him toward education. “He made me think I wanted to be a history teacher,” Ketelsen said. “But what I really loved was telling stories."

After high school he studied history at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. But persistent chronic pain from a back and neck injury led to him dropping out of college.

“I said as soon as I get out of pain I need to go back to school ... for what I really wanted to do,” he said. “So that’s what I did.” He’ll graduate from UWM in May with a degree in theater.

For Ketelsen, he said living and learning from the residents gives him perspective. “What can I do when I’m young that I can only do when I’m young?” he asks himself. After graduation one idea is to road-trip across the U.S. to national and state parks while learning the parts to Shakespeare's longest play, "Hamlet."

"Underneath it all, the assumption is that it is not normal to do this," Basting said. "It's normal. It's not weird. It is OK to learn to speak to people 60, 70 years older than you and in fact, you can enrich each other's lives."

In mid-January, as Ketelsen prepared for his final semester as a student and a resident artist, he met with Basting and the other student artists in residence.

Basting directed the students to start thinking about translating their experiences to the public. “Identify a moment that you could tell a story about that kind of encapsulates your experience as a student artist in residence,” she instructed.

Ketelsen wrote a spontaneous verse:

A poem about a tree
Liked and read by me
Listening eyes begin to recite
The simple poem that just might
Connect us greater than we could know

Sarah Hauer can be reached at shauer@journalsentinel.com, twitter.com/SarahHauer or instagram.com/hauersarah.