Artists rally to raise funds for one of their own

Almost every professional artist has an artist’s statement – that paragraph or two that explains who they are, what and why they create, and what they hope the viewer will experience.

On the surface, that’s just hope. Hoping you have the right words to describe something there may be no words for. Hoping you can create the kind of piece that moves someone, somehow. Hoping this passion you’ve poured your life into means what you hope it will.

Angie Gillespie is no different. The longtime Sioux Falls artist works in encaustic painting – a technique where pigments are mixed with hot wax, it’s burned into the surface, and then the artist adds and scrapes away layers to create the work.

It requires patience and presence.

“Wax has its own tempo you must abide to,” Gillespie’s statement reads. “In liquid form, you pick up the pace before it hardens. When it’s cool, you learn to have patience and slow down.”

Right now, Gillespie is living her statement. Diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer earlier this year, she has been forced to slow down and peel back the layers of what life and love and art mean to her. She has been forced to live in the present, to really feel each moment as it happens, before the cancer hardens around it.

And on Friday, the arts community will come out to help her do that. Rehfeld’s Art & Framing in downtown Sioux Falls is hosting a silent auction to benefit Gillespie, who is one of their artists. So far, nearly 30 artists have donated work to the auction, and several local businesses are offering packages to bid on.

Erin Castle, general manager and designer at Rehfeld’s, said there was no hesitation when the gallery began asking for donations.

“She’s been a gallery artist with us for a long time, and she’s been an active artist in the community for a long time,” Castle said. “She’s not a cliche – her whole motto has been ‘I don’t have time for this. I have art to make.’”

Gillespie is creating a new piece for the auction and also will offer one from an earlier exhibit.

The artists are donating 100 percent of their proceeds to Gillespie’s family. The pieces are various sizes and medium, and bidding will start at 40 percent of the work’s value, Castle said. That means anywhere from $50 to $3,000. This is the first personal fundraiser Castle has put on, and the first in the newly renovated basement space at Rehfeld’s. But she said supporting Gillespie was a natural fit, noting the family has been through a lot. “They have been endlessly optimistic even in the face of some hard and heavy stuff,” Castle said.

Gillespie would tell you that if you scrape away a bit of that outside persona, you’ll see the grief beneath.

“People say, ‘You’re so positive,’ and I think: ‘That’s what you see. That’s what I’m portraying now,’” Gillespie said. “It’s just a mental battle to stay positive, to have motivation when you don’t feel good.”

To say it has been a rough few years for her family – a husband, daughter and teenage son – would be an understatement.

“My daughter had cancer two years ago,” Gillespie said. She was having bone pain in her right foot, and it wasn’t getting better. “We finally got an X-ray, and by the time we got home, they called and said, ‘She needs an MRI,’ and I didn’t think anything of it.” The MRI showed what looked like bone cancer, and the family was sent to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Her daughter, who was graduating from high school, eventually had to have her foot amputated, but Gillespie said she’s doing great.

“We got that behind us, and last summer was a fabulous summer, and we took a family vacation. And then poof, I started getting sick that winter,” Gillespie said.

“I had a stomachache and thought ‘oh, maybe it’s a food allergy.’ You never think it’s going to be cancer.”

But it was, and it was stage 4 colon cancer.

“They told me on the table they found a mass, and I wake up and I’m telling my husband, ‘I have cancer,’ and you look back and think, did that really happen,” she said. Then, her first week of chemotherapy, she got COVID-19.

Gillespie has had several complications, and she’s on her ninth round of chemotherapy. “The doctor says the cancer isn’t smart enough to go into my major organs yet, and hopefully it never is,” she said. “When they opened me up, there were like 50 (tumors). And when they opened me up again, there were closer to 100. It’s just a bad situation.”

Gillespie isn’t working full time anymore and struggles to stand for more than a few minutes at a time. She continues to look for clinical trials and other referrals and specialists. “I just don’t want to sit around and wait,” she said. “Sometimes I think I am feeling better, and sometimes I think I’m not.”

The event also will include prints of Gillespie’s work. Jesse Christen will be playing music as well. The event is 5 to 8 p.m. at Rehfeld’s, with bidding ending at 7 p.m. Payment is cash, check or Venmo only. Or you can donate directly to the Gillespie family through a Go Fund Me account or the event page. There is no online option for the auction. Also, Rehfeld’s is not taking a commission on any of the work sold.

Gillespie doesn’t know all the works that will be in the auction – she purposely wants to be surprised. Though she knows that means she’ll be “a ball of mush” at the event. “I want good surprises in my life,” she said.

“Everybody talks about how they love the arts and SculptureWalk and the Levitt,” Castle said. “That’s amazing, and this is a time when we really need people to show up.”

There’s always an opportunity to educate others, and Gillespie encourages people to take their health seriously.

“If anything seems out of the ordinary and you say to yourself, ‘I don’t want to make a big deal out of it,’ get it checked out. That’s a red flag if you’re saying that to yourself,” she said. “Everyone is worried about racking up bills or being busy, but I could have gone in six months earlier, and maybe it wouldn’t have spread. Maybe it would just be in my colon. Maybe it wouldn’t be stage 4.”

Since she found out, Gillespie hasn’t painted much. “There’s cobwebs in my studio,” she said. “Art takes inspiration, and I need to be in the right mindset, and I just wasn’t.”

She bought some acrylics and canvases, but she waited until school began again and the house was quiet to pick up her brushes. She said her style or art hasn’t changed, but what she thinks about has. Usually, she would think of the past and present and future and all of it while working. Now? “I try not to think of the future. I don’t know where I’ll be in a year. I don’t want to know statistics,” she said. “Cancer makes you live in the present.”

She said her friends came together to decide on this fundraiser. She gave her blessing, and it just took off. And that’s when she begins to get emotional. She begins to talk about her life they way she talks about her art, how people know her echoing how they view her work.

Her statement reads, “When people look at my work, I want them to let their eyes wander, and follow the lines and details that form patterns, to see all the little things they can’t see from afar.”

From afar, you can’t see the meaning in every relationship. You can’t see how they build toward a life. You can’t see how your life affects someone else, how we all touch one another. But when you zoom in, narrow your focus just a bit and truly look at yourself and one another, it becomes clear.

Gillespie feels it. She feels it even when people try to build her up, telling her she’s going to beat this. “I’m like, it’s stage 4. I have the bad guy of cancer. It has teeth. It’s not a nice cancer.”

She admits to days she wishes it were all over, and then she thinks of her husband and children and tells herself: “How dare you say that. They need me.” Still, she’s taken the past few months to zoom in, to watch people walk their dogs past her house. To connect with her friends. To be with her family.

“If I were to die tomorrow, I would feel like I did something right in life,” Gillespie said. “I have so many people who care about me. What it comes down to in life is to love and be loved. I love so many people, and so many people love me. I’m overcome.”

The arts community is behind her, Castle said.

“This is people putting their heart and soul into the work,” Castle said. “And yet there was no hesitation for any of them when they knew it was Angie. They knew she would do that in a heartbeat for any one of them.”