Patti Wisniewski won’t let being born with nine rare physical disorders slow her down. She focuses her attention not on her body and its pain but her thriving two-year-old Westside business, Accents Gallery.
“I’m used it,” says Wisniewski. “My doctors say, ‘How do you stay so upbeat with all that pain?’ and I reply, ‘People don’t hang around with you when you cry.’ ”
Patti’s disorders include maladies most people can’t even pronounce: Klippel Feil syndrome, Sprengel’s Deformity, Angioedema Delayed Pressure Urticaria, hidden spina bifida, scoliosis.
Wisniewski’s career moves have been largely dictated by the challenges and hurdles of these ailments. After high school she worked in a factory making Bibles. One day, while pushing a lift cart full of books, the cart spun around sideways and she permanently injured a vertebrae. After a long two years of tests, doctors told Wisniewski she would never work again. She was just 23 years old.
“When I still worked at the Bible factory my car broke down, and I didn’t have the money to fix it,” says Wisniewski, now 52. So she stopped into nearby Fulton Auto Service to ask the mechanics for advice on how to fix it herself. The garage was owned by John Wisniewski and his son John. “They started teaching me a few things about car repair.”
A romance developed between Patti and John, who eventually married in 1987. Soon after, Patti became an auto mechanic and joined her new family’s business. She recalls how Old-time Westside customers would come in and say, “You don’t belong here. You’re a woman. You’re not fixing my car.”
“Or they might say, ‘It’s so nice that you’re helping your husband out. Pretty soon you’ll learn to change oil,’” says Patti, laughing. “By that time I was pulling motors!”
From car repair to community activist
After 13 years as a mechanic, however, Patti had developed further neck and back problems and had to leave behind the career she loved. Still, she needed something do to take her mind off the pain.
“So I started volunteering,” she explains. “One Sunday morning, while I was still working 80 hours a week, John and I went down to the garage and found we could enter through a window instead of the door.”
The discovered break-in inspired her to start a citizen’s crime watch. Working with Karen Larsen of the Grand Rapids Police Department, she founded the West Side Mobile Watch. Over the course of the next decade, the watch trained 120 volunteers to patrol the streets of the lower Westside to watch and report criminal activity.
“Crime was so bad that even the bums left our neighborhood,” says Wisniewski. “Early on a couple of our members came upon a group of guys beating a kid with two-by-fours, a hammer and bricks. The volunteers stopped, called the police and saved that kid’s life. He had to have surgery on his hand and you could have stuck your finger right into his skull, but he made it.”
The West Side Mobile Watch was so effective that it outlived its usefulness. “The first sign of our success was the return of the bums,” says Wisniewski. “And one night I saw a little old man walking his dog down the street at 10 p.m. I thought, ‘Cool!’”
Still, Wisniewski realized the trouble was largely caused by only a few and that most of the teens were good kids. A friend on the board of the Grand Rapids Youth Commonwealth (now the Boys and Girls Club of America) urged Patti, who played competitively, to teach the kids billiards.
“The kids just had one pool stick, one rack and a half a set of balls,” says Patti. “I started teaching them to play, we upgraded the equipment, and I organized weekly tournaments.”
Soon Wisniewski branched out to cooking classes and art classes. “Everything I ever do snowballs into something else,” she says. “The kids gave me as much as I gave them, if not more.”
A true community activist, Wisniewski also volunteered at Sibley School, helping the art teacher, and she is past-president of the John Ball Park Association. In that capacity she organized Easter Egg Hunts and fishing derbies. These days she is aiming to set up a sidewalk sale on West Fulton and would like to get an arts fair going in the neighborhood. Last month she organized a Christmas party for neighboring entrepreneurs to encourage camaraderie in the resurging West Fulton business area. Patti also had an Open House at Accents Gallery so the 40 artists whose work she has on display could invite their family and friends in to see their artwork.
A creative career change
Creativity is the common link in Patti’s varied careers. “If I couldn’t find a gasket anywhere I made one. I was working on a 4100 Cadillac engine one time. Everything is attached to the water pump, which makes it an eight-hour job,” she explains. “I looked it over, took a pry bar, and pulled the motor back to get at the water pump without removing it. My husband said, ‘You can’t do that!’ But I did. I locked the new pump in and was quickly done. There’s all different ways of looking at things and figuring out how to get them done.”
Wisniewski’s creativity is today expressed through her art. In addition to designing the layout of her gallery, Patti dabbles in drawing, painting, photography, tissue art, texture art, floral design, jewelry, folded paper and computer-generated design. She recently won a “Best Window Display” award from the West Fulton Neighborhood Business Association. Her goal for 2009 is to obtain grant funding to start a program for neighborhood kids aged 8-17 to take art classes and display their work in her gallery.
“I didn’t even know I wanted an art gallery until my husband bought the building for me for my 50th birthday. I think it’s a great building for art, with the hardwood floors and big front windows. ”
Located at 1054 W. Fulton St., Accents Gallery offers two floors of consignment art, art supplies, and photo supplies. Wisniewski has wide format printers and those capable of printing a photograph on canvas. She also has a laser engraving machine that can personalize on wood, metal, marble, glass, and plastic.
“I take about 30 pills a day to keep going,” says Wisniewski. “My body is technically allergic to itself. But through it all, I keep busy.”
Deb Moore, a Grand Rapids resident, is a freelance writer, personal historian and contributor to Rapid Growth. She last wrote for Rapid Growth about indoor gardening in Grand Rapids. Photographs:
Patti WisniewskiExterior of Accents GalleryPatti WisniewskiInterior of Accents GalleryPainted glasswares by Patti WisniewskiAll photographs by Brian Kelly - All Rights Reserved
Brian Kelly is Rapid Growth's managing photographer and Grand Rapid based commercial photographer and filmmaker. You can follow his photography adventures
here on his blog