Home Is Where the Art Is
I adjusted one last frame on the wall and took a step back. I looked around my living room. Twenty-three portraits lined the walls where my furniture used to be. Accent lighting cast a warm glow on each piece. The hardwood floors gleamed under large text on the wall that read:
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS AN OLD MAN. ART BY RICHARD GREIF.
I had turned my apartment into an art gallery.
In under an hour, my friends would arrive for the opening. But first, let me tell you how we got here.
What's Been Going On
The last couple of years have been the hardest of my life—but not the hardest on me, per se. I moved from Hawai‘i back to New York to help my parents navigate new health and life challenges, including my father’s ALS diagnosis. After bouncing around friends’ places, I found a place in Brooklyn last spring. But not just any place. It was the very same apartment I’d left for Hawai‘i three years earlier. When I had moved to Hawai‘i, a young couple had taken over my lease. When I returned and posted about needing housing, they’d just broken up and offered it back to me. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in!
At that point, dad was still working, but having challenges speaking clearly, eating efficiently, and being active. Over the summer, as he struggled more to eat and started losing weight, I went home about every week to help around the house. My brother Arel and I took turns experimenting with new soups that had just the right texture, as I whittled away at the endless list of ways to make the house more accessible.
Then in September, on his birthday, dad suffered respiratory arrest, and we almost lost him. I went to the hospital every day for almost two weeks as he braved intubation, pneumonia, gastrostomy, and more. When he was finally discharged, life was very different back home. We were swamped — the whole family — with a lot of new equipment and caretaking routines. It was physically, mentally, and spiritually depleting. My sister Shana (the doctor) visited often from North Carolina to teach us how to administer meds, and Arel and I moved back home for the entire fall to help our family adjust to our new reality.
I researched, hired, and trained a care aide, which brought some stability. By the middle of winter, I found a rhythm: weekends at my parents’ house, weekdays in Brooklyn. Today, I spend every weekend with the family, arriving Friday night for Shabbat and leaving Monday morning. The care aide handles weekdays 10-5, Arel (who moved back permanently) and mom handle evenings, and I handle weekends—grinding medications and mixing them with distilled water, setting up feeding tube gravity bags, cleaning ventilator masks, administering meds at scheduled intervals throughout the day, refilling juice containers, managing cough assist sessions, helping with dad's mail and paperwork, doing groceries, running errands.... The hotdog with the works.
Creating Purpose
This experience has brought my family together in ways I never expected. Mom, dad, Arel, Shana, and I have had to work as a team. Ever since those days when dad was in the hospital (while mom, believe it or not, was simultaneously struck with COVID), we’ve brought the best out of one another. As siblings, Arel and I have bonded through our caregiving partnership—trading off meds, dinner prep, and doctor calls—while Shana has been a shining light, consulting on medical care and giving us something very special to look forward to—she just had a baby! Our relationships have grown from it all, and the love and gratitude we share is palpable.
Still. Last winter… was the WORST. On top of it all, after living in Hawai‘i, I no longer knew how to brave a simple New York winter. Every day under 30˚ F was yet another blow to my spirit. And while yes, I subscribe to the belief that I have no control over the vast majority of things that happen to me in life, sometimes, all the haphazard moments add up and really do a number on you. You feel compelled to do something.
And then, on one particularly brutal January day, I received a message on the family WhatsApp. Dad had sent a picture... of a drawing he drew. It was a portrait of himself... as a child.
It wasn't planned. He just… did it. He told us that when he was young, he enjoyed drawing and painting, but gave it up in his mid 20's due to the increasing demands of medical training and then family. Now, though, he would have the time.
When he described it, he wrote: “I started with a drawing from a portrait my mother drew of me when I was a boy, with an expression full of innocence and hope. After a couple family portraits drawn from photos, I drew another one of myself, reflecting the signs of age and illness I now bore. It was cathartic for me to express my inner feelings this way.”
I personally interpret these first few drawings as an “I think, therefore I am!” moment. When you lose so much of yourself — when your very concept of reality goes askew — it helps to pause, to take a step back, to find ground with the things that are certain. For dad, that was an anchor to himself as a child. And it was the love of his family and friends. He drew dozens of portraits of all of us in just a few months — all rendered in careful graphite, each one a meditation on love and continuity.
The style reminded me of his speaking voice: strong but very calm, with lines that are so beautifully articulated.
“While each drawing did require effort, focus, erasing and redrawing,” he wrote, “I also experienced a feeling of mindful detachment and peace that came with it, an escape from the ever present demands of my illness, and the sense of satisfaction and completeness that creativity and purpose can bring.”
Creating Space
A few of dad’s friends caught wind of his art, and produced an exhibit to showcase it. It opened on April 19 at Bet Am Shalom Synagogue, and included an opening ceremony with speeches from family, friends, two rabbis — and even dad himself using a text-to-speech app running a clone of his voice from old recordings. It was a deeply moving and inspiring event. A testament to the magic we can make with whatever means we have.
Like many who attended the show, I found dad’s example inspiring. I found myself feeling more capable than I ever had before.
Turning my apartment into an art gallery was my own small version of asserting control in circumstances that felt largely beyond it. I could use my design and production background to bring dad’s art show on the road — and to one of the biggest art capitals of the world — Brooklyn. I remember the afternoon I feverishly sketched a new floor plan of my apartment, but as an art gallery. I measured every wall, invoked dark mathematic forces, and harnessed the power of The Computer to conjure this image below.
I wouldn’t be surprised if my dad, friends, and therapist were starting to think I was crazy when I showed them this sketch. Or when I devised an efficient system for moving all of my living room belongings into a tightly packed brick in my bedroom/OFFICE. Or when I bought two dozen picture frames and four gallery benches. Or when I created a guest list from a newly made database sourcing all my contacts across my Gmail and iPhone — filtered by friendship type and geographical location. Or when I test-purchased three models of wireless spotlights with varying lumens and Kelvin values and installed seven of those units across my ceiling triggered by three remote controls. Or when I put a “Staff Only” label over my washer/dryer closet.
Yes, all of these things were under my control. And while dad wouldn’t be able to attend this exhibit in person, it would still be an opportunity to share and celebrate his work with my community. Soon enough, the date was set, the invites were sent, people RSVP’ed, and the catalogs were printed. It was time.
The Opening
Last Friday evening on June 6, friends filled my transformed apartment. My partner Becky helped me set up lights, hang captions, prep food, and make homemade salabat — a healing Filipino tea — for guests. Friends brought food and drinks and their lovely spirits. Even my high school sculpture teacher who I hadn’t seen in 20 years came. Many had been to my apartment before as a living room, but now they moved through it differently — pausing before each portrait, reading wall text, discussing the work. It was a pleasure to watch my dad’s voice — strong but calm, with lines so beautifully articulated— not just heard, but also seen.
The warmth and love of so many friends gathering made me realize how lucky I am for their support. They found it moving that dad was creating this work. There’s something powerful about witnessing continued creativity in the face of profound challenge.
I realized something else, too. Turning my apartment into a gallery to show my dad’s work was about something more than asserting control where I could. It was also a way for me to turn so much of this challenging past year into my own outlet for creative growth. I'd spent my past exploring growth through travel. I might not be able to relocate as easily now, but I can still transform the nature and pace of my immediate surroundings. It is a different kind of travel. Dare I say, a magical one.
The apartment that pulled me back in has become something I never expected — a place not just to live, but to transform. Maybe that is what “home” really means. More than an unchanged point you return to, but a space you can reimagine over and over again based on what is and has always been most important.
Sometimes what pulls you back is exactly what you need to move forward.
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🖼️ Visit the exhibit. The show will be running through July on weekdays by appointment. Email me to schedule a visit! dylan@dylangreif.com.
💬 Message me. I’m always delighted when you reply with reactions and stories of your own. I am grateful for our conversations. So don’t be shy, message me. dylan@dylangreif.com.
💪 A note about how dad is doing. Dad is strongest of the strong. He manages to be stable on a week-to-week basis. Breathing is more and more challenging off the ventilator, and walking around the house requires more effort. Thankfully, the disease’s progression has not been rapid. If anything, he’s kept it moving slower than average. These days, he is trying to conserve his energy to make the most of these meaningful moments we share.