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 Zelda
Carrico doesn't see dead people, she paints them. She paints
her deceased relatives, and then they keep her company.
"By painting mostly people who are dead, you have a captive
audience. I knew if I painted my own family, no one can criticize
me," says Zelda, lounging in an inflatable Zion's Bank chair
in her studio. She brought many paintings from home to display,
but not for long. Once they are back at her house, she rotates
the position of the paintings, not only so she can critique her
work, but to give her the sense that she is at a family party
of sorts. Nearly every time she looks in the mirror, a portrait
of someone she loves looks back at her - over her shoulder and
straight into her eyes.
"I would never do anything wrong while they're watching,"
she says.
And sure enough, they are all paintings of her relatives that
are watching Zelda. Her small studio is filled with framed portraits
of family, living and dead, smiling and serious. There's a Civil
War soldier - her grandfather. There's a smart-looking man with
round glasses and a brown coat - her father. There are several
of a woman with black hair and a long black dress -that's her
great-grandmother. The only paintings of the living are her son
Leonard and her beloved poodle Lulu.
"All my favorite people in the family were gone," she
says as her plump poodle Lulu scrambles into her lap. The poodle
was a gift from her son, Leonard, who is currently attending
Lewis-Clark State College and living with his girlfriend, Roberta,
whom he met while chatting on the Internet.
Lulu belonged to a blind woman, where the
dog learned to cuddle, before Zelda owned her.
"She was used as a hot water bottle," says Zelda, ruffling
the plump but energetic Lulu's ears. She walks the dog every
day, but says Lulu usually walks her.
Though not as bouncy as her poodle, Zelda's energy defies her
age, 69.5. Her brownish-gray hair falls just below her shoulders,
and she is wearing hot pink pants and black leather boots.
While she dresses and acts the part of
a much younger person, her youthfulness truly emerges when she
speaks. Zelda has a full range of modern slang, as well as modern
profanity. She's the real thing, as far as college students go,
despite her age.
Zelda is completely comfortable in the college setting, perhaps
because she's been a part of it for so long. Over the span of
30 years she has slowly plugged away at her schooling, between
vacations and visits to friends and family. Come December, she
will graduate with a Bachelor's Degree in Art. And then, she
will become a professional painter of the deceased, but more
specifically, a family history researcher and family portrait
painter.
Zelda plans to make a business of drawing family portraits. She
will draw her customers a huge family portrait, "as big
as their house can handle." She will also do as much genealogy,
or family history research, for her customers' families as she
can find on the Internet, all for the cost of approximately $1,000.
And she'll even draw the portrait from photos so it's not too
time consuming for her customers. "That way nobody has to
sit and pose and fall asleep," she says.
Portrait painting has become Zelda's signature. "People
never get sick of looking at portraits," she says. And especially
when the people in the paintings are familiar faces. Her professors
have told her that she has her own style, and that style is naivete,
she says. In her art, she opts for a simple perspective. "That's
why I have the innocent look," she says.
But don't let her fool you there. Zelda says she has always been
"party ready." She was a self-proclaimed wild child,
drinking and partying in college towns of the South. Among her
many stories, she speaks of a bar that would serve 10-cent pints
from 3-7 p.m. every day. "Oh man, we'd slam 'em down,"
she says. Zelda is not ashamed of anything in her life, and can
spin story after story of bar dancing, boyfriend loaning and
even name changing. Zelda, in fact, is not her real name, but
was part of a role playing game for one of her boyfriends. She
would take on a different name and personality everyday for fun,
and to keep him on his toes, and when she reached the name "Zelda,"
her friends urged her to keep it, and she did. Her given name,
"Peggy," was no more, and Zelda was here to stay.
Zelda has also been married. Twice. "I married two men,"
she says, "Each twice to make sure it wasn't me who was
the jerk."
With her wild days are behind her, Zelda, for the last 12 years,
has taken a turn for the healthy.
She no longer drinks or smokes (anything),
but still occasionally ogles over a good-looking guy.
"I still have eyes!" she says.
At the UI, instead of partying with other students, Zelda has
tried to help them with advice and caring. "I tried to be
their mama," she says.
While helping others and keeping a close eye on Lulu, Zelda is
still a full-time student with a 3.36 GPA, working on more family
paintings, and also her senior thesis. She doesn't think her
GPA is so hot, she says, but it'll do. "I wanted a 4.0,
but somebody always held back an 'A'," she says.
Zelda's aspirations weren't always so high. She went to school
in the late '70s and earned four F's. She sought help through
tutors and her fellow students. With help, and the fresh start
program, which allows students to rid their transcript of flunks,
the lowest thing on Zelda's transcript now is a couple of C's,
she says. "Someone told me, 'It's your university, Zelda,
it's up to you to have it your way," she says. Soon enough,
things were going her way, and this summer she authored a brochure
titled, "How to go to the UI and get A's: The University
of Great Diversity."
After completing her CORE classes, Zelda got into the really
fun stuff: drawing. Her favorite class of all was Drawing 6 where
she switched from drawing to painting.
"Paint flows," she said. "Pencils are slow - you've
got to move everywhere they do."
Another of her favorite parts of being a student? Computers.
Zelda found as a student she was automatically set up with a
computer account on campus, and she was thrilled. She researches,
she surfs, she e-mails, and recently she has started to chat
online. "Wow, the Internet is super!" she says. Her
Internet name is Nolazee, which stands for "New Orleans
Z," a symbol of her past.
Zelda has gotten very involved in campus life, and plans to keep
it up even after she graduates in December. She wants to continue
taking classes, and she will continue to give advice to her fellow
students. She may even try nude modeling for UI art classes,
as she did once before. Not surprisingly, it didn't bother her
one bit to be naked in front of a room full of students. "I
thought they were very terrible artists. And hey, nobody sees
me. I'm in here," she says, pointing to her heart.
As her graduation looms, Zelda has had a chance to reflect on
what going back to school has meant to her, and on the family
trees of portraits left to paint, both for herself, and others.
"It makes me feel just about 2 inches taller," she
says.
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