At Arlington rehabilitation center, resident Eddie Loose brightens walls with his art
Eddie Loose’s drawings—bright explosions of color depicting angels, birds and celebrities—are stacked in his room at Cherrydale Health & Rehabilitation Center in Arlington. They cover a wall on the floor where he lives at the center, across from the nurse’s station, and spill down the hallway. His motifs include flowers and birds, Bob Marley and Robin Williams.
“I like bright colors,” said Loose, 55. “I like something that pops off the paper.”
He shows a visitor around his room, where more than 500 felt-tip pens stand upright in plastic bins, clustered on his window shelf and table. His canvases are the white sides of cardboard boxes.
When he first came to Cherrydale two years ago, he said, he hadn’t drawn in 20 years. He started sketching on brown cargo boxes with markers provided by the center. Eventually, Loose asked the staff to bring him discarded square white cardboard boxes.
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“I just cut them up,” he said. “I can make two big ones and four little ones from one of these [boxes]. You’ve got to work with what you’ve got.”
Cheryl McGlenn, who met Loose last fall while visiting her sister at the center, was so impressed by his drawings that she gave two to friends.
“These drawings are amazing, and he’s completely unschooled,” McGlenn said. “I took the first [one] he showed me, one of a dinosaur coming out of an egg, and one of a bird with a rose, and I gave them to the parents of two children who were going to have them framed for the bedrooms. They’re beautiful.”
Loose said he creates two to three small drawings a day — larger drawings take about 16 to 18 hours.
Growing up in and around the District, Loose attended Arlington’s Tuckahoe Elementary School and Langley High School in McLean. He started working construction on the weekends through his teens during the city’s 1970s construction boom.
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For 30 years, he worked as a laborer in construction, mainly as a plasterer, Loose said. Various ailments landed him at Cherrydale about two years ago, where he has been strengthening his health and working on walking — he primarily uses a wheelchair to get around.
Loose said he didn’t have any formal art training, and he gravitated to his own idiosyncratic style early on.
“When I was in school as a kid, they used to tell us to go home, do a drawing of your closet,” he said. “Do a drawing of a bowl of fruit. I just said no. Finally, my mother said, ‘Look, just let him do his own drawings and judge him on that.’ When they finally let me do my own drawings, I brought [one] to school, and [the art teacher] freaked out. He said, ‘I don’t know where this drawing is coming from or how you’re coming up with this stuff, but it’s beautiful.’”
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Loose considered attending art school but he stayed with construction as a solid way to make a living. On the side, he occasionally made drawings for tattoo artists.
“I made little portfolio books with all my drawings,” he said. “I’d bring them to tattoo artists to use. One time I was in Ocean City, a guy had a back piece and I told him, ‘Hey, that’s mine. That’s one I did.’ It was neat to see that on him.”
Nowadays, Loose takes pleasure in creating artwork for other residents, particularly on holidays for residents who don’t see many visitors.
“Some people are deserted; their [families] drop them off, don’t ever come back,” he said. “They just abandon them here. Sometimes, I kind of think maybe that’s a reason I’m here, to do this. To try to make people happy.”
Lanyi is a freelance writer.
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