Devin Bearden
By Emma Castleberry
In February of 2018, Theresa Clower was thrown into a tailspin when her son Devin died of an accidental drug overdose at just 32 years old. In an effort to hedge her mother’s grief, Clower’s daughter suggested that she draw a portrait of Devin. “I had never done a portrait before Devin,” Clower says. “I was visiting with Devin during that period of drawing him, internalizing every nuance of his face, living with him in those hours. Once I was finished, I put the drawing away, then I pulled it out a few days later and signed it. It was a dambreak of emotion.” This final goodbye was both an end and a beginning for Clower. “I moved from grief, which is really immobilizing and poignant and stagnant, into mourning,” she says. “I just kept drawing portraits. I couldn’t stop.”
This was the catalyst for Clower’s ambitious and moving art project, INTO LIGHT. “I wanted to be able to use my love of graphite portrait work in a way that might give that solace or meaning to someone else, especially someone else who has lost a loved one like I did,” she says. Clower put out a call for submissions through two acquaintances in the grief and addiction community. “Unfortunately, it’s not difficult to find subjects,” she says. “It was a leap of faith for everyone. I just told people about it and asked if they would be interested in sharing an image, and I started getting these amazing stories.”
Kelly Gill was among the first to contact Clower. “We had an instant connection,” Gill says. “I chose a picture of my son when his own inner light was shining very brightly. It was during a period of sobriety. He was the best man at a dear friend’s wedding and a far cry from the man who became ravaged by a fast-moving addiction to crack cocaine.”
Gill was deeply moved by the finished product. “When I first saw the portrait of my son, Randy, at the exhibit, it struck me how he was connected to all the other portraits on the wall: in death,” she says. “That may sound morbid, but Theresa’s work made it feel more like a collection of beautiful souls. The cause of their death is so tragic and they suffered in their addiction. But INTO LIGHT has literally transported them into the light. It is a reminder that our loved ones were more than addicts.”
This concept—that the individuals in the portraits were much more complex than the tragedy of their addiction—is integral to the mission of INTO LIGHT. It’s also part of why Clower uses graphite as her medium. “It’s very much a metaphor for how I feel about each individual that I know through this drawing process,” she says. “They are real faces, they are real people, they have light and darkness and every shade of gray in between. We are all made that way, of our dark side and light side.”
Beth Sprague
On October 28, 2018, the first INTO LIGHT exhibition opened at the Gormley Gallery on the Notre Dame of Maryland University campus. It featured 41 graphite portraits of Maryland’s “loved and lost.” The room was full to bursting for the exhibition’s opening, filled with a pulsating energy of love and memory and grief. “Let’s face it,” says Clower, “addiction is a reclusive, secretive period in a family’s life. You often don’t share the hardships you’re going through. You’re dealing with all this in isolation, often because of fear of judgment and misunderstanding. To have a portrait of your loved one—a son, a daughter, a husband—in this series, beautifully displayed, not only documented but celebrated as a person? For the families, it was like nothing they had experienced.”
The connected community that appeared in that room, and continued to develop throughout the exhibition, is something Clower wants to recreate all over the country. “We don’t get enough of that in today’s world,” she says. “I want to bring people together to share and support one another.” Clower plans to create an INTO LIGHT exhibition for every state, with each featuring 41 portraits of the loved and lost. Clower is currently taking submissions for portraits for the North Carolina exhibition, which will be held at AB-Tech in October. The only criteria is that whomever is submitted needs to have died from drug addiction while in North Carolina.
INTO LIGHT has been a major part of the healing process for Clower, and she hopes it will do the same for others. “INTO LIGHT has given me the opportunity to take profound grief and turn it into something positive,” she says. “I am so immensely grateful. I truly see this as a gift from Devin.”
INTO LIGHT will be on display at AB-Tech from October 19 through November 20. For more information, visit IntoLightProject.org.
