A 21-breast salute for cancer

"I was like, 'What can I do other than walking around feeling sorry for myself?' It just popped in my head that I wanted to salute my mother.

"Oh, a 21-breast salute!"

Melita's studio at the d'Art Center in downtown Norfolk is packed with examples of her ceramic sculpture. Much of it deals with portions of the human figure, such as partial torsos and stacked heads.

So she came up with a plan to make plaster casts of 21 women's breasts and to make glazed ceramic versions using those molds. Each woman was either a breast cancer survivor or close to someone who was. The works were to be mounted on a black board as a single work of art.

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Once she was inspired, it took her months to figure out how to use the project to raise money to assist her mother's cause. Susan Bernard, d'Art's director, helped her think it through.

She concocted privacy rooms at d'Art where Melita, 43, could cast strangers' bosoms behind curtained doors. Occasionally, women read the notice in her studio window and popped in, ready to be plastered.

When "21 Breast Salute" is unveiled Friday in her d'Art studio in Selden Arcade, a sheet will be set out to record bids for a silent auction. That sheet will follow the piece around for two months, from Sentara Obici Hospital in Suffolk to the Komen Tidewater Race for the Cure in Virginia Beach. On Oct. 31, the top bid wins.

All money raised will go to Susan G. Komen for the Cure, a national organization that funds breast cancer research. "I'd like to raise enough for them to find a cure, but any amount of money we can get would be great," Melita said.

"This is the first piece I've done that I feel has a real purpose. If I do not make anything else after this piece, I will consider my career successful, because it has just affected so many people."

Last week, D'Arcy Weiss, public relations and marketing director for the d'Art Center, checked out Melita's studio, where nine breast molds sat atop a clay work table.

Seven ceramic bosoms rested atop a cabinet. They were glazed in mottled shades of olive/forest, teal/brown and pink/beige. The shapes varied: saggy, flattened, perky.

"They're as diverse as the women who participated," said Weiss, who took part on behalf of her great-grandmother. "Gives me chills every time I think about it."

Lauren Decker Twine, a Chesapeake photographer, learned about the project through the Komen organization. She was diagnosed five years ago and had both breasts removed. Twine, 49, had Melita cast one of her reconstructed bosoms.

"I'm four years cancer-free," she said. Having cancer "changes your life, your perspective. I've met women who won't even talk about it. I just don't feel that way, if I can help one person avoid going through what I did."

But Twine didn't know how to get her story out to more people, so she jumped at the chance to take part in Melita's artwork.

"Lisa was very kind and gentle, easy to talk to. And she shared about her mother."

Melita's mom is Barbara Cipra, 65, of Edenton, N.C., a fun-loving, energetic woman who wears a pink helmet to ride on the back of her husband's Harley to chemotherapy.

"She went through chemo, lost her hair, was sick for days after each treatment," Melita said. "It took a woman who could jog five miles a day and changed her.

"It hurts me that she can't kayak every day and jog every day. I grew up with a superwoman who could outrun me. And now she's sick.

"But, hopefully, not for long."

Reached by phone, Cipra said that when she first heard about Melita's idea, "I thought it was really bizarre. I was willing to do it, but I just couldn't imagine other people would do it.

"But I think it's great. She does mold your... we call 'em boobies. Mine wasn't the littlest, but it was next to it."

Cipra said she was done with chemo and last week counted 13 more radiation treatments to go. "I used to run. Now I walk. I find the more I do, the better I feel."

Elizabeth Warson, a Norfolk artist, took part in the "Salute" on behalf of her friend, a nurse who works for the Mayo Clinic Cancer Center and developed breast cancer herself.

"Artists are some of our best advocates," said Warson, assistant professor in the graduate art therapy program at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk. "And that is what Lisa is doing through this piece. She's bringing attention through her art to breast cancer.

"Even Lisa said, 'This is beyond the sculpture itself.' "

"No more pity party for me," Melita said. "There are a lot of people who have gone through the same thing, if not worse. Each of the women has stories.

"One woman, her husband was active-duty military, and so was her son, as she went through a lumpectomy and chemo.

"The fact that they were able to go through this, and they made it through fine, gave me hope that my mom will be OK."

Teresa Annas, (757) 446-2485, teresa.annas@pilotonline.com