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Sarasota veteran overcomes brain injury to become digital artist

The Herald-Tribune - 8/5/2019

Aug. 5--Diana de Avila has been a soldier and a nun. A school psychologist and a computer engineer. An executive and an entrepreneur.

A motorcycle crash almost killed her and she's struggled with a traumatic brain injury and the effects of multiple sclerosis. When de Avila suffered a relapse two years ago, she lost sight in one eye, temporarily, and then the other one. Afterward, she discovered something even more extraordinary.

Her brain had changed. She experienced colors and shapes in a different way. Pictures came to mind and she wanted to create them.

"The gift of art," she calls it. "When one part of the brain loses something, another part wakes up. That was the beginning of the artistic ability."

De Avila, 54, started out doing cat cartoons on her computer. One of her first abstract works was called "Boomerangs and Blobs." Later, she did a geometric design in a Modernist style.

"My brother was like, 'That looks like a Mondrian,'" she recalls, laughing. "I was like, 'Who's Mondrian?'"

For the last two years, De Avila has continued to create digital contemporary art. For awhile, she included a colorful trademark in her work and called herself "The Red Dot Artist." Now she's moved on from that.

Later this year, several of her pieces will be featured in an art exhibit for veterans at the Virginia War Memorial. In Florida, her work is for sale at Art Center Sarasota's new online site artsarasota.org/artsite.

Danielle Dygert, Art Center exhibitions and marketing coordinator, remembers when de Avila first visited the North Tamiami Trail gallery. Lots of newcomers do that. Now, one of her pieces has been selected for a juried show.

"She's just starting to figure things out, just starting to develop her voice," Dygert says. "It's pretty great. Her style comes out of the way she creates her art. I can tell the hand of the artist there."

For de Avila, all of this is new.

She continues to experiment with everything from flower images to science-fiction styles. She created a slick web page for her work -- computer design is her forte -- but isn't sure about her next step. She jokes about figuring things out as she goes along.

"I feel like I've dropped into the art world," she says. "I want to get out there, but I don't know how to be. I'm an emerging artist. That's what I've learned. But who's like me? I don't know who that would be."

Drummer, soldier, nun

De Avila grew up in Maryland. She graduated from Rockville High School in 1983. She was the only female drummer in the marching band.

After high school, she joined the Army.

There's a black-and-white action photo of an 18-year-old de Avila going through Basic Training in Fort McClellan, Alabama. She looks impossibly young beneath her helmet. Last year, she manipulated a digital image of that photograph to create a piece called "My Invisible War."

It hangs on the wall of her home office.

"I see a kid, but a woman," she says. "She doesn't know what's ahead of her, but she wonders."

De Avila trained to become a combat MP -- the Military Police -- but her brief Army career ended with a horrific motorcycle crash.

She was 19. She spent nine months in the hospital with brain injuries and post-traumatic amnesia. She had knee surgeries and developed life-threatening blood clots.

When it looked like her leg might have to be amputated, she prayed and promised God that she would serve him if her limb was saved.

In 1988, De Avila became a nun with the Daughters of St. Paul.

"I found an order that looked cool," she says. "They did communications and had a recording studio. I was playing my guitar and doing a lot of things."

Life changes

After seven years as a nun, De Avila left her order and became a full-time student. She went to college and graduate school, earning a master's degree and becoming a school psychologist.

She also came out as a lesbian and met the woman who became her wife. Cecilia -- she'd rather not share her last name -- is a schoolteacher in Sarasota. They will celebrate their 15th anniversary in August.

Cecilia's joke is that she knew de Avila long before she became an artist.

"She couldn't draw a stick figure -- she still can't draw a stick figure -- but the computer has always been part of her," she says. "That sparks her creative output."

The two are baseball fans. One roots for the Yankees, the other for the Red Sox. They love to travel and get a kick out of Las Vegas.

Roman Catholic doctrine on homosexuality has been painful for de Avila, but she thinks attitudes are changing. She's rejoined the church. She goes to Mass on Sunday.

"I feel at peace with where I'm at now," she says. "For years, it kept me from participating."

Medical history

De Avila lives in a golf course community east of Interstate 75 in Sarasota.

She answers the door in a plaid shirt, blue jeans and Converse sneakers. She looks fit, but has to sit down after a few minutes. She's lost 65 pounds in the last year. Her feet are weak, her hands shake, and she wears thick glasses with prisms to correct her double vision.

De Avila travels with a wheelchair that she loads in and out of her Lexus SUV.

Her mobility is also limited by a paralyzed bowel and bladder. Instead of a colostomy bag -- "I'm not ready for that," she says -- de Avila uses a catheter and a device called a Peristeen to control her bowels.

With a tortured medical history, along with decades of medical care and physical therapy, de Avila says she's long past the point of squeamishness or embarrassment. She does what she can. At Veterans Administration hospitals, she's talked with young paralyzed veterans.

Declining health did force her to stop working. The stress was bad for her well being and quality of life. She needed and found something that stimulated her, challenged her, but wasn't so demanding.

Art.

From G.E. to home art

When de Avila lived in upstate New York, she worked with a state version of the National Guard. She never stopped wanting to serve her country.

"I loved the uniform," she says. "I loved the camaraderie. I loved the systematic way of doing things."

After working in web design, de Avila began a career with General Electric Global Research. This was during the glory days of G.E. and Chairman Jack Welch. De Avila thrived in a rigorous corporate environment of "Six Sigma" training for process improvement.

She comes from a family of entrepreneurs and always had side businesses, too. For awhile, she and Cecilia were exporting designer jeans. For several years, she's been a top reviewer of products for Amazon.com.

The shelves next to the computer in her office include books on birding, computers and handwriting analysis. Also "Boom: Mad Money, Mega Dealers and the Rise of Contemporary Art."

In the last few years, she has gotten a couple of tattoos. There's a Red Sox logo near her left collarbone. On her right forearm is the image of a Catholic medal.

"The blessed mother," De Avila says. "She watches over me."

At home, she has a cat named Hank. Her muse. Her "meows," Cecilia jokes.

On the computer, using a stylus, and on a tablet, using her finger, de Avila employs design programs and fractals to create a range of images and styles. She stays up late at night. She listens to Christian music while she works.

Art gives her purpose. Art keeps her going. Art makes her look forward.

"I really want to get into photography," she says. "That's the next thing I want to do."

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