After Teenage Son’s Death, Mom Trusts Nashville Artist To Create A Portrait From Mementos

At first glance, Zach Sobiech’s portrait looks like a straightforward image. But on closer examination, words and objects become visible in the form. Credit: Nina Cardona/WPLN

One Nashville artist got an unusual email not long ago. It was from a woman he hadn’t seen in two decades. Her teenage son had died, it said, and she wanted to send him a box of the boy’s most precious belongings.

Wayne Brezinka says he was honored by Laura Sobiech’s request to make a portrait of her son, Zach, from his own, well-loved belongings. But Brezinka was floored, too. It’s quite a responsibility, after all. So he said a prayer and then found out from Laura all he could about the boy he’d never met.

Zach Sobiech wasn’t just any kid. He had osteosarcoma — bone cancer — all through high school. When it became clear he wasn’t going to beat the disease, Zach wrote a song about preparing for death with grace and hope that went viral. A YouTube video of Zach singing “Clouds” quickly racked up millions of hits.

The track ended up a top seller on iTunes at one point. A documentary was made about Zach’s approach to death; it went online just a few weeks before he passed away in 2013. In the year since, Zach’s song has been performed by a choir of thousands in his home state of Minnesota and sung on the stage of the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC.

The 5-foot tall portrait will hang in Ford’s Theatre lobby for one year. Image courtesy of Wayne Brezinka

The reason the Sobiech’s reached out to their old acquaintance hangs two miles away from the Kennedy Center, in Ford’s Theater. Like most of the Nashvillian’s art, Brezinka’s portrait of Abraham Lincoln is part painting, part collage, made of Civil War era tintypes and newspaper clippings.

With the Lincoln project, Brezinka was able to pick and choose which vintage items to buy and use according to how they’d look in the piece. The memorabilia was meaningful because it was from the era. In some ways, the box the Sobiechs sent Brezinka upped the ante: a tee shirt Zach and his girlfriend made, a religious medallion he always kept at hand, even the hospital bracelet from Zach’s birth. Everything was very, very personal.

Zach’s mustache socks, St. Peregrine medal and stallion tee shirt were among the items sent to Brezinka. Credit: Wayne Brezinka

As poignant as they were, the box’s contents presented a challenge: visually, they were all over the map. Laura Sobiech included an itemized list of which items were most special to the family. Now it became Brezinka’s job to incorporate them into one, cohesive image.

Detail of the guitar with football laces, the St. Peregrine medal, and various other items (click to enlarge). Credit: Nina Cardona/WPLN

He started by building up Zach’s features out of layers of cardboard. He uses cereal boxes, coated in and stiffened by glue and paint. As the near life-size image formed, it became clear where the mementos would fit. The laces of a football became the bridge of the guitar. That medal Zach used to keep in his pocket is tucked into the instrument’s soundhole.  Traces of fan letters, a favorite sock, and the tie Zach wore as a groomsman all peek through. They become part of a sleeve, the guitar or the background of clouds.

Brezinska tried to keep a light touch with the collage when it came to the face. Zach was just 18, after all. He had a baby face, very smooth and very pale. And based on conversations with Laura Sobiech, one detail needed to be completely straightforward. The mother could tell from looking at his eyes if her son was really struggling.

The photo Brezinka used as a guide is behind the portrait’s head, in process. The features are cut out of cereal boxes; foam core between the layers helps create dimension. The hair is made from frayed rope. Credit: Wayne Brezinka

So in the portrait, the eyes have no hidden objects, just carefully applied paint. They look strong and kind.

That’s what Brezinka wants people to see first. “I would hope that they would be captured by his face,” the artist says, “be welcomed by his look.”

Only after that does he want them to notice the hospital bracelet, a train ticket to Paris, or the handwritten lyrics:

“We’ll go up, up, up but I’ll fly a little higher/Fly up in the clouds because the view’s a little nicer/Up here my dear, it won’t be long now, it won’t be long now/If only I had a little bit more time with you…”

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Credit: Wayne Brezinka

Sobiech’s portrait is just one of several commissions Brezinka has received on the strength of his Lincoln collage. After Nashville journalist John Siegenthaler died, a Vanderbilt publication commissioned Brezinka to design a cover image of the legendary journalist that includes a masthead from the Tennessean and Seigenthaler’s own eyeglasses.

The tie in Siegenthaler’s portrait is his own. The photo in the sleeve is a wire service image of two women he protected during a Civil Rights protest before being hit in the head by a member of the KKK.

An exhibit of Brezinka’s work, including the Sobiech and Siegenthaler portraits, is on display all month at O’More College of Design in Franklin.