DrawBridge: Appreciating Joan Boxall's book

A BOOK APPRECIATION   by Margo Lamont

DRAWBRIDGE: 

Drawing Alongside My Brother’s Schizophrenia 

Caitlin Press, 2019
by Joan Boxall

What an interesting book about a poignant journey which also acts as a memorial to a once long-lost sibling.

Joan Boxall documents her quest to connect with her brother, painter Stephen Corcoran, from whom she and her several siblings have been pretty much estranged for many years due to a combination of mental health issues, family dynamics, time, space, circumstances, times of life, and all the things that converge and roil to create this sort of breakage amongst family. 

I related to this book because of efforts I made to connect with my brother through his blindness and severe developmental disabilities. Only time did I ever feel it happened, that we really connected—once when I was playing my djembé for him. Joan in this book documents how she tried and tried and tried to connect to her brother and his art, to enhance her brother’s life—and sometimes succeeds. "I learn and imitate from other artists, but mostly from Steve, who is one of only a few using pastel sticks. It takes me back to hop-scotch patterns drawn on sidewaks..."

It’s not easy.

"Schizophrenia had already done its worst, confounding Steve with voices, hallucinations and delusions.   

At fifty-five, Steve was in a burn-out phase of schizophrenia with a hunger for creativity. Joan's efforts to connect with him through art soon become the vehicle of change."   

-- Caitlin Press writeup.

DrawBridge is a daisychain of word associations as Joan brings in skeins of Steve’s history, art history, and the ups & downs of the bonding journey they went on together, she ever hopeful.  

One of Stephen Corcoran's paintings

Coming to terms with a sibling’s mental health issues and with their death—with so many unanswered questions, with being stuck in the land of suppositions and goodwill—is not without its times of grief. In Joan’s quest, while Steve was alive, she tries to translate Steve’s world into hers.

Joan, kayaking

Joan’s is a world of physical movement, of the intellect and curiosity (she is a retired teacher). Steve seems to view the world, and perhaps to try and explain his to us—through paint, through colour and collage, through the intensity of his brush meeting that canvass.

Joan with cycling friends

 Joan makes a valiant attempt to bring Steve into her mainstream and it may not be unfair to say he resists her quite a lot of the way. But at some point they find their way as siblings who want to love each other, on their own and each other’s terms. They play bocce together: "The bending of rules evolves in how we relax ourselves and the rules as we go" and that also seems to apply, over time and to a degree, to the rules between them. 

"I don't like people," he says one day afer the art session ends. 

I've heard him say this before. I am hoping the reason he tells me is that I am becoming the exception. (from DrawBridge) 

Joan Boxall

Especially for those people who are dealing with this kind of situation—trying to develop bridges as Joan does—this will be a rewarding read. DrawBridge also has pictures of  some of the paintings Steve did, some of which a writing group Joan and I belonged to, wrote to, using Steve’s paintings as writing prompts.

This book has so much heart, and hope, and soul in it. Many of you will recognize the journey.

______________

Transparency: Thanks to Joan for the mention of The Grind Writers Group and of me in the book and in the Acknowledgements.