Wisconsin Life

A good portrait paints a picture of someone's personality. There's just more to capture in a person I think. You can capture a soul, a character, a mood. Jon Wos thrives on the challenge of capturing those details. A moment. An emotion. An idea. He spends several hours a day in his Oshkosh studio, bringing a blank canvas to life. A person just has so much story they can convey just in and of themselves. Jon knows how to sketch someone's story because he learned how to share a very special one... his own. Jon was born with osteogenesis imperfecta. Otherwise known as brittle bone disease. It makes his bones more fragile than the average person. At birth, he had 13 broken bones. My bones would never really heal well enough before the next fracture. So I would fracture several times a year, different bones. First 10 years of my life, I... I think, we didn't keep track, but I probably had more than 50, 60 breaks. The slightest bump, twist or fall can lead to a bone fracture and a long, difficult recovery process. Everyday activities that most people take for granted are risky for Jon. It made life difficult, but it also drove him towards his passion. I was always-- any extra time I had, was art. Still Jon struggled with self-image. He carried the fear of a fracture around with him constantly. Art became his therapy. He began experimenting with glass. There's just something about glass that I've always been attracted to, even as a little kid. It may even have something to do with my bones are basically glass. I really like to just experiment with it and see what, if I change this one thing, what's going to happen in the end? His big breakthrough came in college at UW-Oshkosh. A professor encouraged him to transform his canvas into a mirror. He started a series of self-portraits. I started out exploring my past. And the pain and struggle that I went through with having osteogenesis imperfecta. Soon he found himself looking forward. The whole process of the self-portraits was very much a journey into me finding my... my happiness I guess. How to get past the disability. Jon discovered that even though his body is fragile, his spirit is not. No matter what you want to do, there's always going to be something to stand in your way. Most of the time I think it's yourself. Jon learned to manage his condition. Bone fractures became less frequent, and his art flourished. It gave me a sense of pride. Something that I could do that others couldn't. A lot of times I'd run up against things that I couldn't do that others could. So this was a big self-esteem booster for me. Today, Jon is a full time artist, producing everything from portraits to stained glass windows. His works appeared in galleries from Wisconsin to California. It's been more than a decade since his last bone fracture. Now, he's not just a successful artist. He's a happy one. I don't see how I can't have a very positive attitude considering the life that I was given and then what has become of it. And that's a portrait of persistence. I like to show people with my art, I guess, that life......um... is worth the struggle, even if it gets pretty tough sometimes.