Gallery show highlights artist’s struggle with rare brain tumor

A parental advisory sign hung on the door of a gallery room Friday at the Ivy Tech John Waldron Arts Center, hinting at the serious material hanging on the walls inside.

The exhibit began with photograph portraits of smiling people against light-filled backgrounds — innocent enough. But smiling portraits transitioned to photos of brain scans with a bright, white tumor glowing at the brain’s center.

John D. Shearer, the man whose brain scans hung on the wall, is a cancer survivor, professional photographer and adjunct faculty member at Bloomington’s Ivy Tech Community College. His exhibit “I’m Too Young For This @#!%” features art from his pre-cancer days, as well as art he created during treatment.

Shearer was 28 years old and a master of fine arts student studying photography at Indiana State University when he was diagnosed with a rare brain tumor. He visited a local clinic thinking he had migraines and walked out with a list of referrals and additional medical appointments.

“She could see the brain swelling through my eye,” Shearer said of that first
appointment.

The tumor was so rare that he said his medical team couldn’t give him a prognosis — none of them had treated his type of tumor before. Two days after his diagnosis, he had surgery that left him partially paralyzed on the left side of his body and temporarily blind. Shearer said his neurosurgeon warned him that he might be different after the surgery.

“I thought, ‘Oh, wow, maybe I’ll like broccoli,’” Shearer said. “I didn’t think I was going to wake up blind and paralyzed.”

He put his degree on hold for one semester after the surgery to focus on his recovery, and he eventually started using photography as part of his recovery process.

“Doing this work,” Shearer said, pointing to his brain scans hanging from the wall, “helped me navigate all of the emotions.”

Shearer said he thinks of photographing others as a way of idealizing them, so using himself as his subject helped him idealize his situation and make his treatment experience more positive.

“Everything I did before getting sick was about photographing other people,” he said. “It was really the first time I had to turn the lens around and look at myself.”

Shearer said he thinks he got more good than bad out of the experience. In addition to eating right and exercising regularly, he met new friends through his cancer survivor group, some of whom attended his gallery opening.

Barb McKillip, a friend of Shearer and wife of one of his cancer support group
members, attended the gallery opening to show her support. She said she particularly liked Shearer’s piece titled “Positively Self-Lying,” which features MRI scans superimposed over phrases such as “I am happy.”

“I just think it’s very sad, a young man having to go through this,” McKillip said. “For him to be able to use his talents to display his emotions says a lot about John.”

As for what’s next in terms of photography, Shearer said he wants to resume photographing other people but that he might be more selective about his subjects.

“I would like to go back to photographing people, maybe to photographing cancer survivors,” he said. “Maybe young adult cancer survivors.”

However, this plan is still tentative. His main focus will now shift from work to
fatherhood.

His fiancée gave birth to their first son, a boy named Harrison Lee, on Wednesday.

They brought their son home from the hospital hours before the gallery show opened Friday.

His grandfather, Dave Shearer, was there with other family members to support the gallery opening.

“At first there was a lot of mood changes and not knowing, and it was very difficult,” Dave said. “We’re very proud of him. All of us are.”