“If we don’t have any eyes to match, we can do that later,” Lois says. “Could anybody use glasses?”

Lois is an accomplished artist who holds a master’s degree in art education. She is also a resident at St. André. 

The facility, which offers rehabilitation therapies, memory care, and long-term skilled nursing care, follows the Montessori model for aging. It’s an approach focused on respect for each individual and continued engagement and learning.

 “At St. André, our mission and values are grounded in the healing ministry of Jesus, but we try to incorporate Montessori values. That means the approaches and practices that we offer are grounded in the philosophy of Maria Montessori, seeking to empower residents to be agents of their own pursuits,” says Anne Theriault, M.Div., director of Mission and Spiritual Care. “For someone like Lois, who is an artist, it’s exciting to see her feeling empowered to lead others in teaching art lessons because she is using her God-given talent to help other people.”

At age 98, Lois has a breadth of experience to share. During her life, she has used her talent to benefit schoolchildren, servicemen, and now fellow seniors.

“I thought, as long as I have this, I will use it everyplace I go. I’ll try to put it to use in every situation I am in,” she says.

Lois’s love for art goes back to her school days in Cincinnati, Ohio. 

“The Cincinnati public schools had a wonderful program. They would have the schools select from the third and fourth grade all their best artists in the class and offer them a chance to spend every Saturday at the art museum studying with artists who were art instructors,” says Lois. “You were allowed to continue with the program as long as you kept improving, which was amazing. I was thrilled to be there, and I went from the time I was in fourth grade to the eighth grade.”

 Lois later majored in art, specializing in ceramics and pottery.

“I knew everything there was to know about working in pottery and clay, firing kilns, making glazes. It was just an amazing amount of knowledge I gathered there,” says Lois.

Her first job was not in an art-related field. She worked at a hospital that served people with mental illness. However, after the Second World War, she joined the U.S. Army Special Services, which sought to improve morale among servicemen by providing recreational and cultural activities.

“I was sent to work in Germany, in Bavaria, in service clubs that served the young fellows who were drafted into the Army,” she says. “The idea around this was that there should be no reason for any American soldier to leave the base to go into town.”

 Lois first facilitated programs in Wertheim, then became crafts director in Aschaffenburg, and later was promoted to director of the service club in Hammelburg.

“They had everything available at the service club for the servicemen to take part in — arts, crafts, everything,” she says. “As a service club director, I could hire musicians that were in the USO and traveling around, have them come in and play for us.”

 Lois met her future husband, Jacques, a fellow artist, while in Europe and the two settled in New York City, where she worked in the Riverdale Neighborhood House, which offered community-based programs.

“I hired professional artists to work with community artists who wanted to study art, so I was in a supervisory capacity,” she says.

Lois and Jacques started a family, but once their four children were school aged, she began teaching art at the Catholic school her children attended. She also did substitute teaching in New York public schools, while earning her master’s degree in art education from the College of New Rochelle.

Lois’s many experiences have included working in a foundry with sculptors who were having their work cast in bronze or other metals, studying jewelry making, and even doing Colonial-era weaving, spinning, and candle dipping while working at a historic house in New York.

In 1987, Lois and Jacques moved to Maine, a place where they used to vacation, for their retirement years. Lois then became active in the RCIA program at Holy Cross Church in South Portland.

The couple later moved to 75 State Street, an independent and assisted living facility in Portland. It was there that Lois began teaching fellow seniors.   

“I would really go right back to the beginning of art because people would come in and they’d say, ‘Oh, we can’t do that. We never learned how to draw or do anything like that in school.’ I said, ‘Well, if you will trust me, I will teach you how to do it,’” she says.

The program was so successful that the facility held art shows that were open to the public.

“The city of Portland had to become familiar with the fact that they had seniors within their population, and the seniors were talented and knowledgeable and should not be closed away but had something to contribute,” she says. 

When Lois moved to St. André Health Care about a year ago, she brought her passion for art with her, along with her desire to share it.

“The more I’ve studied the effect of art on the aging brain, the more convinced I am that it will help you retain your basic memory function for a longer period of time because you’re opening up new channels that have not been used before,” she says. “If you’re painting a picture and you have to mix the colors, make them move from light to dark, compose a picture, every one of these steps is forming new channels in the brain.”

“It’s exciting to see her feeling empowered to lead others in teaching art lessons because she is using her God-given talent to help other people.” —Anne Theriault

To get residents involved, Lois started with Christmas cards, downloading free images on her iPad and having them printed for the residents to color.

“I thought, Christmas cards. That rings a bell with everybody,” she says. 

The residents made 30 cards, which were given to members of the kitchen staff.

“They were so appreciative of it. It was such a simple thing that I was amazed that it had that big of an effect,” says Lois.

Trying to think of what to do next, Lois sought input from her daughter-in-law Kristen, who works in hospice care. The result has been a series of collages that have included a bowl of fruit, the seashore, and a storm at sea.

“You had the ocean and the waves and then a big strike of lightning running through it all,” says Lois. “That was the first one that really showed some good imagination.”

For the collages, Lois spent hours cutting out hundreds of pieces that could be glued together. For instance, for the current self-portraits, with support from her daughter Nicole, she created eyes in different colors, noses, lips, rosy cheeks, glasses, and mustaches. She even made a headband, knowing one of the participating residents always wore one. 

“I was trying to think of everybody as I was cutting all this out,” she says.

Those who attend the classes say they appreciate Lois’s efforts.

“I always have fun in the class,” says Lottie.

“It’s wonderful. I’ve always loved to work with that since I can remember, as a kid,” says Mary. 

“I think she brings out the best in them no matter what the project,” says Julie Cortright, Saint André Health Care’s director of life enrichment.

Whether related to art or her faith, Lois is always thinking of new ideas to lift those around her. To celebrate the Jubilee of Hope, she was the inspiration for the showing of the film The Two Popes and for a presentation by the Good Shepherd Sisters of Quebec. Having studied St. Martin de Porres, who was a Dominican lay brother, she has suggested having Father Joseph Osunde, OP, parochial vicar of Good Shepherd Parish, come to speak about him on his November feast day. She also plans to paint a picture depicting the well-known story of St. Martin and the mice.