THE INTERVIEW: CONNIE DOUGLAS & SHNNOOGLE! (PART 1 OF 4)

My Special Guest: Connie Douglas

Meet Shnnoogle!

and Krudgel...
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Connie Douglas is a Scottsdale-based artist who happens to be a dear friend of mine. Her ever-present smile is a clue to her sweet soul and lovely personality. No wonder children in Phoenix Children's Hospital gravitate to her. She is a breath of fresh air with her philosophy that we must all slow down and acknowledge the positive people in our life who are all around us. Connie's passion for life is evident in a series of books she has written and illustrated with the character "Shnnoogle". This leads us to ask "What is Shnnoogle?" "In as few words as possible", says Connie, "Giving, caring, sharing, patience, perseverance, etc. “Traits”, ALL, within our power. We each are given two choices in life. We can choose to express that of 'our Shnnoogle, Love and Kindness' or it’s antithesis, 'Krudgel, our Fear and Doubt.” Through reading the series Shnnoogle Tales, children can discover the joys and hardships, based purely on whichever trait they choose to feed most. A child learns that THEIR OWN power, be it positive or negative, is capable of growing ever stronger when shared. Essential to the character of Shnnoogle is "making the world a better place, one act of kindness at a time".

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Connie was born in San Pedro, California where remained until the age of 14. She discovered her love and passion for illustrating early on as a child and delighted in what she calls "unique and whimsical creations" borne of a sensitivity for children and a healthy does of positive humor. Connie's Canadian-born father wanted to relocate their family back to a quieter environment where there was less crime and fewer negative influences in the public schools. Connie lived in Alberta, Canada for the next 20 years studying Art in high school and eventually enrolling in Grant MacEwan College where she earned a degree in Environmental and Graphic Design. Her next step was to design her own line of greeting cards called "Serendipity's by Connie", along with the popular and enduring comic strip, "Zooter" which appeared in newspapers and magazines in Alberta. Wishing to expand her repertoire as a fine art painter Connie began creating compelling Native American spiritual works that were represented by Grassland Galleries and Clear Water Publishing. Her extensive wall murals and Fresco paintings for a number of notable clients in the United States eventually led her to Phoenix, Arizona where she was inspired to create the Shnnoogle book series after witnessing a friend's child fighting a life-threatening illness. A mother of two sons, this event moved Connie after seeing the love and kindness shared between her friend's son, his family and the kindness of friends. We pick up our visit with a casual question.

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Manning: Connie, you have a fascinating journey to share that ultimately leads to working directly with children who are patients at Phoenix Children's Hospital. Tell us how this came about?

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Douglas: I went through a divorce and throughout that period of time, I couldn't paint with all of that going on. So, that's when I went back to school. My father passed away during this period where I was going to school and my mother started wintering down here (in Phoenix, Arizona) and my sister was down here going to school. I thought, 'It's so cold in Canada. I don't want to live my life in this kind of cold', so I moved to Arizona and worked a series of small jobs. My younger son wanted to come live with me and by this time I was divorced. One of my clients had a son that inspired me to create Shnnoogle. He was in remission from a cancerous brain tumor and when I worked in their home-- he was an only child, Steven was 11 years-old at the time. This kid was so full of life and was so positive and living each moment, wanting to play ball, singing the National Anthem and his parents were so cognizant of not taking any moment for granted. There was a lot of listening and hearing one another and just living every moment with their son. I was just so impressed that when I left their home, I thought 'Wow! These people really got what matters'. They didn't have a choice to think about a future. They never knew how the future was going to turn out. I thought of all of the other people an how awful it would be because I have two sons myself--to go through that experience. I wanted to do something for the hospital that helped Steven and his family and that was Phoenix Children's Hospital.

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Manning: That was really the foundation you chose to build out your dream of "making the world a better place, one act of kindness at a time" --as your materials state?

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Douglas: Yes. I approached them about doing something to cheer up their space with some artwork that would touch others. I didn't know what I was going to do. When I showed them my portfolio, they were Gun-ho on having me do something. We agreed on the hospital Radiology Waiting Room because that was the a very depressing and difficult place for kids to be--not knowing what the outcome was. That was in January of 2005. The Arizona Republic came out with an article.

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Manning: July 26, 2006.

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Douglas: Yes, it was 2005 when I approached the hospital. I didn't know what I was going to do. I was going on a trip to Europe and so I told the hospital that when I returned, work would always be slow for me in the summer and that I would like to paint some murals for them. My first night in Switzerland, a girlfriend had suggested that I take along a pen and a pad of paper. She said, "I have a feeling some things are going to come to you". I said, I said, 'No. I don't want to think about work, I don't want to write anything'. And that night, I woke up seeing these pictures (shows me her book), seeing this Bunny on the back of this Tortoise and you know, getting the whole story and I'm thinking, 'This is it! This is it, isn't it? This is what I'm supposed to do for the (Phoenix Children's) Hospital'. And I started sketching.

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Manning: And that was the beginning for you. You had the Phoenix Children's Hospital on your mind while in Switzerland?

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Douglas: (laughing) I did! I felt like, 'Oh, I have to go to sleep, but no. I've got to do this'. And so, I started sketching right away. Then when I returned home, I started working on drawings. It was interesting because I started doing all water colored paintings to show the hospital what I would be doing. Instead of doing just sketches, I found myself doing these detailed sketches and I was working for hours. My husband asked me 'Why are you doing this?' I said 'I don't know, it's just something that I feel that I need to do'. I came up with ten paintings. I was actually going to paint these murals on the walls of the hospital . That was the idea--mural work. Ken Lewis was the guy I was working with at the hospital at the time and he looked at my work and said, 'Oh, my God. You can't do these on the walls because they're always remodeling and tearing things apart. They're just going to get rolled over, or somethings going to happen to them. We need to put these on canvas'.

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Manning: Oh! That sounds expensive.

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Douglas: Well, you know that's true. It is! I said, 'I can't afford to put them on canvas', you know? Because to take them and then to print onto canvas and then I would over-paint them would cost around fifteen-hundred-dollars to do. I found a printer in Pennsylvania and the hospital said, 'No. We'll cover this cost for you'.

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Manning: That's when it's nice to catch a break.

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Douglas: Yeah! I had it printed on a canvas, but them I wanted to over-paint the prints because I wanted them to feel like originals. So, I had them all lined up in my kitchen and dining room to paint and I got so inundated with mural work, that I would just go home and found myself working night and day--long days and climbing ladders. And as I was doing this--this would be August of 2005, I just kept thinking 'I don't want to be here. I don't want to be doing this'. I just wanted to do the stuff for the hospital and I felt like I was never going to be able to do this because I'm so busy with work.

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Manning: You were so in-demand with the mural painting.

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Douglas: Yes. It was demanding. We had a guy working for us and I was bringing in all this work to keep him employed so he could take care of his family of five kids. I had torn feelings that I had to bring in all this work and take care of his family, and wanting to work with the hospital. Then I started to lose my balance on the ladder, and almost fell off a scaffold, started to lose control of my right hand, I couldn't hold a straight line anymore with a paintbrush--I didn't know what was going on. I thought that maybe I've got a nerve pinched in my neck because I was doing a lot of ceiling work. I went to see a doctor and had X-Rays taken along with an MRI and meanwhile, I was getting progressively worse. I'd have to catch the wall walking down the hallway. So, I knew something was not right and I was getting real weak. The test results came back and I learned that I had MS (Multiple Sclerosis). That was, of course upsetting, and my doctor didn't know how bad it was or how bad it was going to get. He set me up for a spinal tap to confirm it and the results came back positive. Meanwhile, I couldn't work anymore. I just couldn't do my wall work, but fortunately there was enough work to carry my crews through at that time. And I just stayed at home and I painted. I just focused on these painting. As I was losing control of my right hand and trying to train my left hand to paint, I was losing my ability to speak. It was difficult for me; I couldn't enunciate words and say what my thoughts were. I had a lot going on in my head but I couldn't express it. At that point I thought, 'I might not get better'. Some people get MS and they're like, one year of two years, they're dead. So, I thought, the most important thing to me is that I've got to do something in this life that can touch others and that I needed to get this done and I wanted to get this story (Shnnoogle children's story) out there to make a difference. I thought my life would feel almost wasted if I couldn't do that. Then I started working on the canvases, and originally as the Shnnoogle story came to me, the little girl (in the story) was a little blond girl. She was fair-skinned and she didn't wear glasses, and she didn't have a brace on her leg. I started to understand what these kids must feel like at the hospital, sort of the fear of not knowing what the future is and how long their time might be.

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Manning: You could definitely empathize with them.

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Douglas: Yes! I felt like, 'I'm talking to kids who weren't perfect', and nobody's perfect! We all have things that we're stumbling over in life. So, I painted a little brace on her leg, and I put glasses on her.

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Manning: This is the character in the Shnnoogle book?

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Douglas: This is the character named Angie.

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Connie and I resume our visit tomorrow!