A thirst for beauty

culture@dailylobo.com
@Jyllian_R

Sometimes life’s great changes come from a small source. For confectioner, artisan and business owner Nancy Iris, her great change started with a single grape surrounded by a puddle of water in the aisle of the grocery store.

Single mom Iris was 34-years-old when she stopped on her way home from work to get a loaf of bread for her teenage son and found herself buried beneath shelving, cans and boxes. The slip and fall accident left Iris with a brain injury and enough physical damage to keep her bedridden for nearly a decade.

“The accident just annihilated my life,” Iris said. “It just destroyed everything.”

Twenty-five years later, Iris speaks about surviving the accident and the recovery plan she had to create for herself with tears in her eyes.

“Nobody could pinpoint things back then. The testing was different — all they knew was that I hurt my brain; it was nothing specific. So I had to rehabilitate myself,” she said.

The brain injury gave Iris trouble with cognitive functions and short-term memory. Her body was a battlefield from neck to knee that required a long series of surgeries.

“I’ve gotten some things back. I’ve recovered a lot, but there are some parts of me that I will never get back,” she said.

Rather than stare at the ceiling while her body recovered, Iris said she imagined food. She wrote recipes and created daring combinations — like lavender and black pepper chocolate truffles — in her mind.

“There’s a thirst for beauty when you’re going through such darkness, but there’s also a need to create something when you’re just lying there,” Iris said.

These fantasy recipes would become the delicious treats sold at her Fourth street shop, Chocolate Art Gallery.

The combination treat shop and galleria, located at 6902 Fourth St. N.W., is filled with Iris’ passions — her chocolates, of course, and her art.

Once Iris was fit enough to be out of bed, she took began to take her art hobby seriously. She signed up for classes, found mentors and experimented with mediums like silk screening, sculpture and stone carving.

Iris said rather than using pneumatic drills and other modern tools to create, she prefers to work with hammers, chisels and lathes.

“There’s just something about being an artisan that is so fulfilling and it helps you work through challenges,” she said.
While Iris said she loves both chocolate and art, she is not fond of mixing the two.

“Some people really get into the whole art of chocolate, but it’s just so fragile and perishable that you put so much time into a chocolate sculpture and that’s the end of it. I tend to keep chocolate for eating.”

Brain injury survivor and advocate Glenn Ford said that he has worked with Iris and is very proud of what she has accomplished.
“I so admire her for what she’s doing. Nancy’s very independent, she’s quite a go-getter,” Ford said.

Ford, who is also a board member of the non-profit group The Brain Injury Alliance of New Mexico, said that while many people living with a brain injury have opened small businesses, what Iris has done is unique.

“Most start extremely small. They work out of their homes or apartments. Some write, some paint, but they don’t have a business business.”

After running his own business for a number of years, Ford said he knows firsthand how hard getting much needed support can be. He sought help from the New Mexico Division of Vocational Rehabilitation, a state department that helps people with disabilities find employment, but found the caseworkers knew very little about life with a brain injury.

“It was a very long process; I had to teach them about my brain injury, my abilities and my disabilities”

In the end, success after a brain injury is hard to predict because doctors still know very little about the brain, he said.

“There are some people who have had brains injuries who have been hugely successful, others have struggled immensely to go back to work — just to have a job, it depends on the brain injury.”
For Iris though, she said she’s happy to be able to do what she loves.

“Some people are born with other gifts, but me, I’m born with the mad food and art gifts. I’m a mad creator.”