Joan Jeffri, who directed the study for the Research Center for Arts and Culture, says for these creative people being an artist transcends every other identity — race, education, gender.
"They don't ever think of giving up being artists," Jeffri says. "If they have arthritis, they change their art form. They don't retire."
Jeffri believes these artists have wisdom to impart about living and aging. In a sense, she says, they are role models.
Pat Dillard, who creates wood block art and illustrations, is 81 and lives in a third-floor walk-up that costs about $700 a month. Her outlook is simple.
"You don't stop," she says. "There is no depression if you don't stop."
Dillard supplements her monthly Social Security check by charging $10 an hour to care for people's pets. She says her total income is $29,000 a year.
She has all kinds of advice for living cheaply, but still living well: Buy things at the 99 cent store. Make chili for the week. If you order pizza, pick it up yourself so you don't have to tip. And, she says, don't associate with people who bring you down.
"The first thing I do when I go out of my building," she says, "I look at the sky, white clouds and a blue sky, my heart goes pitter-pat."
There is something miraculous, Virgona says, about seeing the way the light falls and then perhaps getting a part of that light into a piece of work. When that happens, he says, you feel that you are part of what it really means, "that you are part of the light."
Wow. These people are not in any danger of not having enough to do, or feeling alienated from life.
Ha