Friday, June 25, 2004

Artist becomes accidental historian

Out of need, art work helps others to heal

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By DANA DUGAN
Express Staff Writer

Once she was a ranked tennis player in Florida. She ran marathons. Today, Lisa Tanner, of Bellevue, struggles each day with severe kidney disease.

Main Street of Hailey during the annual 4th of July parade. By Lisa Tanner

After 32 operations she keeps her fingers crossed, takes her medication and hopes that the kidney she received in a transplant three years ago will not be rejected by her own body.

Tanner is also an artist. And she is putting those two vitally important aspects of her life into one basket in order to help others in the valley like herself.

Her charming paintings depicting historical buildings from in and around the Wood River Valley are sold in a couple places. She also had a booth at the Hailey Springfest over Memorial Day weekend.

"It was like a museum. People kept telling me stories of this or that building I had painted," she said.

Her proceeds from her sales that day went to help a fellow valley resident, Rachel Poe, 28, with expenses as she drives to Twin Falls for kidney dialysis three times a week. Poe also had a transplant seven years ago but is on a waiting list for another.

Tanner will have a booth with her paintings at a special Fourth of July party at the Sun Valley Brewery in Hailey. The Brewery, is one of the historical buildings she has painted.

"We invited mostly local artists—about six—to put up booths," Brewery co-owner and head brew master Sean Flynn said. Live music will be supplied by Kevin Flynn—Sean’s jazz and blues playing brother from Salt Lake City.

"The stipulation with Lisa is that we had to have a painting of the Brewery," he added. "It’s been around since the early 1900s. We found receipts from the car dealership in the attic from the 1920s."

Again, Tanner plans to donate a portion of her proceeds to help other patients awaiting transplants or on dialysis such as Andrea Gratteau and John Stansberry.

"I don’t think people realize the expense, maintaining your health, the cost of immune suppressive drugs for life, which you have to take every day or the kidney goes into rejection.

"My goal would be to get other artists involved, do it for local people. I’m just one person doing my thing on my own."

Tanner was born with three kidneys—an extremely rare and unexplainable condition—but none of them fully functioned. By 12 after a major operation in Boston she was living with just half a kidney.

"I’m in medical books and stuff," she said. "A lot of things I went through had never been done before."

Tanner, her husband George and Tristan, 14, moved to the valley 10 years ago from Florida. Her kidney failed in the late 1990s and she went to her family doctor, Dr. Don Levin in Hailey.

"We were all pretty much in shock at the diagnosis. He’s saved my life at least twice," she said with obvious gratitude. The years kind of run together when you’re on dialysis

St. Charles Catholic Church held a large fundraiser in 2000 and for awhile her father looked like a likely donor until he also became sick. Finally, a virtual stranger but also a St. Charles parishioner, Vicki Smith of Hailey, donated a kidney to Tanner on Jan. 2, 2001. "It was unbelievable, the support we got from the whole community."

"A transplant is not a cure, it’s just another form of treatment. There are so many on-going costs," Tanner said. "The best thing I can do is turn around and help people that are here and need help."

Except for a serious and life threatening bout of the flu last fall, from which she is still recovering, Tanner has spent the past few years painting. Her work is sold at Signatures of Sun Valley and Silver Creek Outfitters in Ketchum.

"I’ve been racing around trying to get pictures of places before they’re torn down, while they’re all still in existence."

She has watercolors now of every imaginable remaining historical building from Glenn’s Groceries in Bellevue (soon to be a sport bar), Bellevue’s City Hall to the Hailey Hotel (once a fancy dining establishment called the Rialto and a reputed brothel), Christopher & Co. (a bank and then a doctor’s office), Ketchum Kamp (now the Casino), North & Co (once the Hailey Jail) to Sun Beam in Stanley, Redfish Lake Lodge and Smiley Creek.

In turn, she has become an accidental historian.

"I thought about it a long time and decided that I could put my art work to something really good. I thought the buildings would be of interest and it would help people," Tanner said. "It’s fun. I accidentally come across interesting facts about all these old buildings."

For instance, the Blaine County Historical Museum used to an old adobe hut that the Freidman family owned. They deeded it to the city with the stipulation that it only be used as a museum.

Anther of her pet projects has not yet come to fruition. "We tried hard to get a dialysis machine for St. Luke’s up here so people wouldn’t have to make the drive to Twin Falls."

"I know so well what these people are going through. You just get overwhelmed."

Still overwhelmed and still living a life, Tanner is a penultimate example of perseverance at work.

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.