See Open

"I know what's going on. But I'm not trying to focus on the negative. I'm trying to see the positive in it."

That's Ellie Turkasz. She's 18, and she has more reason than most people twice her age to focus on the negative. She chooses not to.

Her mom, Jen, was the same way. Jen was 41, a worker bee with a gypsy soul and a vagabond spirit. She was the kind of woman who would tell you that negativity isn't good for the mind, body, or soul. Sleep when you're dead, she'd say, and make the most of it.

They were both artists. It's how they made sense of the world. And when their world started coming apart, it's how they held on to each other.

Before

Ellie lost her dad when she was three. From then on it was Jen raising Ellie and her brother, and for fifteen years, she did.

The year Ellie left for college, Jen started having pain in her stomach. Months went by without real answers. She started a new job. A doctor told her she might be pregnant. She wasn't.

In March 2025, on her birthday, Jen found out what it actually was: terminal pancreatic cancer.

The diagnosis was only the beginning. Jen was told she would never work again. The medical bills piled up fast. They were evicted from their apartment. Then one day Jen walked out of chemo and the car was gone, repossessed while she was inside getting treatment.

"I mean, it's funny," Jen said. "Not funny."

By that summer, Jen was in New York for treatment. Ellie was home in Tennessee. People kept telling Ellie how strong she was. She'd laugh and say she didn't really have a choice.

She was right about that part. What she could choose was how she looked at it.

The day we made art together

In July 2025, Ellie walked into Jeremy Cowart's studio in Franklin. She didn't know what the day was for.

Then her mom appeared. Jen joined on FaceTime from New York, stretched across a massive LED wall, so big she filled the room. Ellie stood right in front of her. For one afternoon, the distance didn't matter. Jeremy guided them, and they made art together.

What does a hug look like?

Jeremy started simple. He asked them each to draw a hug.

They drew hundreds of miles apart, and their drawings came back almost the same. One figure bigger than the other, wrapped around it, keeping it safe. Two people crossed and woven together. Two halves of the same heart. Jen signed hers in red: JT.

Even the darkness deserves stars

Next, Jeremy asked Jen to write a line inside a circle. She wrote: even the darkness deserves stars.

She snapped a photo and sent it over. Jeremy projected her handwriting into Ellie's eye and took the picture. A mother's words, held in her daughter's eye.

See Open

Then Jeremy asked Ellie what she wanted the world to know. She picked up his iPad and wrote two words, with eyes drawn into the letters: See Open.

This is what it means to her:

"Everybody always says when one door closes, another one opens. You can't look at the closed doors. Look at the ones that are open. And you also have to be open-minded. You can't be closed off. This is my situation. This is what I'm going through. But what is it going to lead me to?"

In New York, Jen raised her hand to the camera until her palm filled the wall. Jeremy set a clear screen in front of it carrying Ellie's handwriting and took the shot. Ellie's words, resting in her mother's hand.

"This is insane," Jeremy said, watching it come together. "They just made this photo here in my studio, but virtually Mom's in New York."

Remember me

For the last piece, Jeremy asked Jen to write whatever was on her heart.

She filled the page. She told cancer exactly what she thought of it, in big red capital letters. In the corner, in blue: Trust in the Lord. Amen. Off to the side: Always near! And across the bottom, surrounded by hearts: Remember me!!!

Ellie stood in front of her mom's words and danced. Spinning, hair flying, letting go of everything she'd been carrying for months. Jeremy just kept shooting.

After

That was the last time Jen and Ellie made art together.

Jen passed away in September 2026.

Cancer took their home. It took their car. It took Jen's work, and in the end, it took Jen. It never got their art.

Every piece from that afternoon now lives on as something you can hold and wear: Jen's stars in Ellie's eye, "See Open" in her mother's hand, the hug drawings, Ellie dancing in front of the last words her mom wrote for her. Half of every sale goes to Ellie and her brother.

Jen asked us to remember her. Ellie asked us to see open.