Heather Blumenfeld remembers how her late brother, Teddy Dalton, always made everyone laugh. So, when an artist was drawing his portrait, she asked them to redo it a few times.
“You just want to be able to look at it and see, like, that little glimmer in their eye,” Blumenfeld said.
The artist was patient, she said, asking questions about her brother’s life in an effort to get to know him as best as they could.
The hand drawn graphite portrait of Blumenfeld’s brother is now part of the Into Light Project, a national initiative that features graphite portraits of people who died in some relation to substance use disorder.
New Hampshire’s exhibition opens on Monday, Aug. 25 at Plymouth State University, and will feature 33 portraits of Granite Staters.
The program connects participating families and friends with artists who draw sketches of their loved ones based on images they provide and on conversations about the person. Each portrait in the exhibition is accompanied by a narrative of the subject’s life, including their experiences with addiction, but also their hobbies, their likes, their personalities.
The project began when founder Theresa Clower drew a portrait of her son, Devin, who died in 2018.
“Each pencil line seemed like a visit with Devin…,” she wrote on the project’s website. “I was saying goodbye to my son.”
Clower wanted to offer the same experience to others.
Blumenfeld says she and her brother were always close in a big family. Dalton played football and hockey when he was younger, and she says he became addicted to prescription Percocet after an injury, and eventually, began using heroin. At one point, Dalton lived with Blumenfeld, her husband, Alex, and her four children, which she said brought them even closer.
While his death in 2014 was devastating, Blumenfeld said the process of creating his portrait has been cathartic.
“My brother was a beautiful, beautiful person, and there's so much more to what his life was other than drugs,” she said. “This just sort of takes all of that shame away. It takes the stigma away and brings all of these people together in a way to sort of celebrate their loved one.”
Alex Blumenfeld’s older brother Pete was part of an Into Light Project show at a Massachusetts gallery last year. He said losing his brother in 2004 had made him turn inward, but being part of the project connected him to other family members who could relate to his experience, which helped him face what happened after a decade of grieving.
“It just turns into kind of a really special thing to see that picture, you know?” Alex Blumenfeld said. “‘Yeah, that looks like my brother and that looks like Peter.’ And also to read, like, a beautiful narrative because you feel like someone else is seeing your person for what they are.”
Joanne Gillespie is the New Hampshire ambassador for the Into the Light Project and vice president of the organization's board. She lives in Delaware, where a portrait of her son Eric Gillespie, who died in 2022, was recently featured in that state’s exhibition. Gillespie raised her son in New Hampshire, and wanted to bring the project to what she still considers their home state.
She says the power of the project is in the details. Through art and storytelling, visitors to the portrait gallery can see that people affected by addiction also have dreams, gifts, and talents – that there was more to their lives than just their experiences with addiction. Each exhibit also includes information about destigmatizing language people can use to continue talking about substance use disorder.
Gillespie says for the families who participate, talking openly about their loved ones can help process their grief.
“It's a tough thing. We are trying to get families to be in these exhibits, and we're fighting the stigma because many of the families, they're not comfortable doing it,” she said. “Even I was uncomfortable mentioning in his obituary that he died from addiction, from an overdose. Today, if I were to do it, I would definitely write that in there, because I think it's important for people to know.”
Jodi Newell can relate.
“I remember back in the day when this happened with Kory and we were still at the phase of our acceptance of the overdose crisis, that we were putting in every obituary ‘died unexpectedly.’ That's what you would see. And guess what? All of us knew,” she said. “But there was a distinct shift when people were like, ‘Nope, lost a hard fought battle to addiction.’”
Newell says the portrait of her fiancé, Kory Ambler, is perfect. The artist captured both his strength and his softer, big brother side – and his dark, scruffy beard.
Newell remembers Ambler as an Italian man with a certain air, the oldest of “a million cousins.” A teddy bear with a goofy side. A loving advocate for others.
Ambler became addicted to heroin and was eventually arrested for drug trafficking and possession in Massachusetts, Newell said. While staring down a potentially long prison sentence, she said Ambler went to 12-step meetings, tried rehabs and detoxes. According to Newell, Ambler relapsed, and their second child was born three weeks after his death in 2008.
Newell, who is now a state representative from Keene, has become an advocate for addiction treatment and other services, and is on a mission to diminish the stigma surrounding the issue. Joining the Into Light Project is another step on that journey, she said. She sees the exhibition as an opportunity for people to not lose focus on the opioid epidemic as it flows in and out of the public eye.
For Christopher and Dawn Bump, whose son Michael died in March, being part of the project has also been an emotional experience.
They described their son as open and kind, a person who juggled many passion projects. Michael Bump served in the U.S. Navy. When he left the military, he hiked the Appalachian Trail. He had settled in Manchester, where his parents said he worked as a welder and was beloved by his crew members.
Sharing these things with the artist was difficult, given Michael’s death was only five months ago, though they said seeing his completed portrait brought them joy.
“Michael, he has his baseball cap on backwards, which typically he didn't do, but it's just a just a beautiful rendition of him,” Christopher Bump said.
The artist “captured the essence of Michael,” his father said. For him, like Heather Blumenfeld, it was all in the eyes.
“To be able to see someone, you must be able to see their eyes, and in the drawing, it was perfect.”
