Judy Milligan has filled her garden with artwork and repurposed objects from her travels. (Photo: Cortney Kintzer)
By Jann Freed
Think of someone you love being around — someone who makes time stand still simply because you’re learning from them by listening.
These people tend to be rare, but for me, one of them is Judy Milligan. She has 90 years of life experience, and I am fascinated by all of it.
She taught art at several schools over the course of her career, including many years at Roosevelt High School, but her influence extends far beyond the classroom. She’s displayed her sculptures at the Polk County Heritage Gallery and her jewelry art at the Des Moines Art Center, where she is an honorary trustee. She’s served on the boards of Trees Forever as well as local and national garden clubs, and her own garden was once honored by the Smithsonian. Her creativity and curiosity are apparent in everything she does.
“Creativity makes aging easier,” she told me.
Several years ago, I heard her give a program about journaling, a practice she started as a student at Drake University. Her journals are filled with notes, quotes, drawings, news clippings and more, an she has about 20 so far. “These books keep my ramblings in order,” she said. “I try to revisit some of the journals in January. This is one way I process my life experience. I discover new things, find pleasure and seek design solutions.”
Creative travel
Milligan traveled worldwide with her family — her husband and son, both named George, and daughter Lisa — and led tours with high school students for seven summers while she was teaching.
“Traveling gets you away from your norm,” she said. “You come home with a new awareness. You come back with new possibilities, ideas, designs and an appreciation of architecture. The world is wonderfully beyond what we live with daily at home, but we’re always eager to get back home.”
These days, she added, “I truly love to be home.”
Creative home and garden
If you ever visit Milligan at her South of Grand home, you’ll see she’s the opposite of a minimalist. She describes her style as “happily eclectic,” with a home filled with artwork and artifacts from her travels through Maine, Barcelona, Santorini and Monet’s gardens at Giverny, to name just a few of her favorite destinations. She also displays ceramics she made during local workshops with David Dahlquist, and some of her artwork overflows into the garden, where she’s designed several themed alcoves.
Everything tells a story, even the most ordinary objects, which she transforms into something poetically sculptural. “I don’t like throwing things away. I prefer finding them a new purpose,” she said. “I love to see the possibilities in everything.”
In her garden, a pair of antique church doors from Round Top, Texas, opens to a path of sculptures. There are also several “treasure trees” she made by trimming old Christmas trees back to their skeleton branches and then decorating them with fruit, bones, Champagne corks and other odds and ends.
She named her garden the “Raven Haven” after two nesting ravens she occasionally treats with bits of hot dog. A flock of finches lives there, too, and often catch the attention of her two dogs, Bunch and Blossom. As she put it, “Gardens, pets and birds are all valuable assets to any mature soul’s life experience.”
She maintains her garden with help from Melissa Deering, one of the many former students she’s befriended over the years. Milligan said those intergenerational friendships have helped her stay engaged and curious.
Creative aging
Milligan almost always has fresh flowers in her home. “They make me smile and I place them where I can see them when I look in the mirror,” she said. “The flowers help me look in the mirror at this age.”
Our society tends to treat aging as something negative, something to postpone. But aging gracefully is about embracing our whole being. By reflecting on our lives, we can process our experience into wisdom that we can pass along to people who matter to us.
Creativity and curiosity help us think beyond ourselves and divert our attention away from our own inevitable pains and losses. Milligan doesn’t complain.
“Age has given me the freedom to eliminate what I don’t want to do,” she said. “I would rather be in the garden than at any meeting. The challenge is not having the energy as I did when I was younger, but I am comfortable being mellow.”
At the end of my visit, I realized her zest for life goes beyond creativity and curiosity. She approaches life with intention — curating her spaces with intention and allowing them to evolve with the seasons. The life she’s built is inspiring, energizing and thought-provoking because she truly sees possibility in everything.
As I headed out, she showed me a large, handwritten board that hangs in her art studio, which reminds her daily how she wants to live her life:
Think natural
Loosen up
Pare down
Color in (not inside the lines)
Friends deserve time
Savor the earth
Garden with soul
Live artfully
Love friends and family
Balance solitude with fun
Find joy in the unexpected
Enjoy your nest!
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