A place for artists

BURBANK — When Gene Schklair was told he had a year to live, he and his wife, Glorya, closed up his dental practice in the western suburb of Chicago, sold the home they had built for themselves and set out on a backpacking trip around the world.

"My wife had this brilliant idea: 'Why would we sit to wait for you to die? Let's do something,'" he said. "So we talked to the kids and decided to do a trip around the world and spend a year traveling. And more than likely sometime during that year, I would die and when we'd come back, she'd bring me back to the family in a box."

That was 1984, and his decision to take an extended trip saved his life. It turned out that Gene Schklair's problems were related to environmental factors at his dental office. As soon as he left his profession, his health problems cleared up.

Today, Gene, 76, and Glorya, 75, live in Burbank at the Senior Artists' Colony — a senior citizen community that is changing the way society looks at aging. And at Tuesday's City Council meeting, Mayor Todd Campbell recognized the men behind the project, Tim Carpenter, founder and executive director of More Than Shelter for Seniors and John Huskey, president of Meta Housing, who developed the site.

"When I walked into senior housing, there wasn't a lot going on," Carpenter said. "The obligation was to give them walls and windows and not much more and the height of excitement for the week was bingo and doughnuts. For me it seemed like a great blank palate, like you could do anything and be a genius in this industry — which was my kind of job."

Carpenter created a place where seniors could use their retirement as a time to express themselves, through art, writing, film and drama programs, among other mediums.

For Gene Schklair, that meant turning to sculpture, something that was a hobby during his years as a dental surgeon, into a career in his retirement. And the skills he developed as a surgeon have carried over into his work as an artist.

"When you work through that small, little whole in someone's face, you can't see everything," he said. "So my fingers were my eyes and they got very, very sensitive. Almost as a blind person, I could see my way around get this mental image, much like what a computer does when they do a three-dimensional picture of the body: I get an image in my head from my fingers."

Since taking up residence at the colony, Gene Schklair has made, and sold, numerous sculptures, among them "The Visitor," which is on display at the Senior Artists Colony.