Senior Overcomes Adversity Through Artwork

Senior Stacy Tevis sits in her algebra class. Her hands shake. She’s pissed.

“Slut,” the boy who sits next to her says.

“Say it to me again,” Stacy threatens.

She thinks of all the ways she could make him hurt, all the ways she could force him to take it back. She knows she’s capable; the holes in her walls at home prove it.

She’s angry. She’s always angry.

Stacy takes to her algebra assignment; above the linear equations she scrawls “help me” thirty times over in shaking handwriting. She prays that if she gets the words onto paper, she will feel some relief.

And eventually she does.

Stacy says her anger defines her. Struggling with her father’s death for seven years, Stacy has tried everything to turn her sadness and anger into something she can deal with: BMX biking, cage fighting, fixing up cars.

Nothing ever satisfies the anger. The only thing that comes close is her art, specifically the tattoo designs she draws for people. The emotions she releases into her illustrations take the edge off the rage for a little while, easing her back from the addicting place she wants to escape from.

That day, she used her algebra homework. Normally, those words and art find a home in the thick sketchbook that never leaves her side.

Worn, wrinkled and battered over time, the black book is her most precious possession. The book is a product of three years of drawings and writing. It contains sketches for the tattoos she draws, and the poetry she writes for herself.

The inside cover bears a simple dedication in cursive handwriting. “This book is dedicated to a very special person in my life: Edward Tevis — my loving father who I love and miss so much”.

“My dad was my favorite person in the world,” Stacy said. “He passed away when I was 10. It drove me crazy. It drove me pretty much to the edge for a while. I started drawing stuff for him, but I also started cage fighting, doing BMX and skateboarding. Anything to get me out of the house.”

* * *

Stacy picks up her sketchbook. She flips through the pages until she finds the tattoo she designed for herself. When she turns 18, she will get her father’s name inked over her heart, commemorating him forever. Drawing it gave a temporary relief, but she hopes getting the tattoo will make the feeling more permanent.

It’s an ambigram, a word that appears the same both right side up and upside down. To Stacy, it embodies the idea that her father is always there for her. No matter what way you look at it.

Drawing it helped. It relieved. It made her feel whole for a little while as she recalled the years before his death.

She was a daddy’s girl. He would pick her up from school and take her for McDonald’s Happy Meals. On Thursdays, they would watch bikers congregate in groups and repair their bikes together next to the Papa Kenos.

“He wasn’t the type of person to tell you he loved you,” Stacy said. “He was the kind of person to show you. He pretty much got me whatever I wanted, like those battery powered plastic cars you sit in and go around in. I had a Barbie jeep, a corvette and a motorcycle. It makes me want to cry thinking about how he went from this strong-willed person to this incapacitated vessel.”

When Stacy was nine, her father was diagnosed with lung cancer. In just a few months the disease would take his life. It took over his body. It spread to his brain and everywhere else. In his final days, his hospital bed sat in the room next to Stacy’s. He was always tired, almost unconscious. Stacy says watching him deteriorate drove her to the edge.

“Think of it this way,” Stacy said. “It’s like I had a field of flowers in my body, and every day one of those flowers just kind of died out from watching [him] shrivel and go from who [he] used to be to who [he] was in those last days.”

The day he died was also the day he was the most alive. For one of the first times, he told her he loved her. He told her she was talented, that her future was full and promising.

The next morning, her father’s bed was gone and the room was empty. A black car was parked outside. Stacy assumed her dad was at the hospital for another round of chemo.

It took her two days to realize he was dead.

Following his death, Stacy internalized her sadness. She showed grief by using her fists. She picked fights for years with anyone who was willing. Entering high school, she began cage fighting, channeling her anger and desire to fight into the sport.

But after a severe knee injury that kept her from competing junior year, Stacy was lost. She felt trapped in her life, unable to let out aggression. Her grades dropped. She fell out of shape. She was in constant pain from crippling migraines. Her hair fell out in clumps.

“When [she got injured] she let it effect her health and her schoolwork; everything just tumbled on top of each other and she expressed it as anger,” Stacy’s best friend, senior Tiffany Frey said. “She says like ‘I give up at everything’ — but you can tell if you know her that she doesnt really want to give up.”

Stacy began to draw daily. During class, at home, all night. With no other outlet to express herself, she filled almost a whole book with sketches and words — more than any other time in her life.

Her friends saw her talent, peeking at the sketchbook when she labored over it in class. One friend, senior Cody Dugan, asked her to draw him a design for the tattoo he wanted to get. Stacy, desperate to find some way to occupy herself, agreed.

“I saw Stacy’s drawing of the tattoo — this wolf that’s clawing through the skin — and it was really good,” Dugan said. “Stacy was the first friend I made at East, so I knew I really wanted her to be the one that drew it, especially because she’s so talented.”

When she saw the image she drew displayed on Dugan’s forearm, Stacy danced. Jumping into a lunge position, she pumped her fists into the air. Her father’s dogtags from his time in the Marine Corps bounced against her chest on their silver chain. She smiled.

“It makes me feel proud,” Stacy said. “It makes me feel like I’m actually worth somebody’s time, and worth somebody’s money. It’s awesome; they’re going to have this [tattoo] forever and they are coming to me to [draw] it.”

After posting pictures of her tattoo designs on Facebook, the requests flowed in. Stacy started a log of all the requests she received on a piece of paper folded into the seam of her sketchbook. The log contains 13 people she’s drawn for, who have, or will have, her artwork inked onto their bodies permanently.

Even with the therapeutic outlet her art provides, she constantly struggles to suppress her anger. She fears snapping. She fears hurting somebody she loves. Sometimes she can barely control it. The anger and the sadness come and go, but never really leave her alone.

“It’s like an ocean [wave],” Stacy said. “It’s lapping up on you, it’s choking you and its just destryoing the crap out of you. But in time eventually it will just be lapping at your feet. It’s still always there — but it gets a little better.”