Candace Anderson's breast-cancer diagnosis seven years ago brought uncertainty to her life, and to express that complexity and find form for her experiences, she turned to art.

"You go through the process of letting go of control of your life," she said. "You have to cancel things for doctor appointments. The disease preoccupies your life."

The Massachusetts-based watercolorist began creating tapestries soon after her diagnosis. She had been talking to a friend about her disease, and the friend advised her, "Be like a garden watered."

So Anderson went to work, blowing bright watercolor paints over paper so that the hues would run together and merge. Then she glued the paper scraps together to form a quilt-like collage.

At the top of the first tapestry she made, she wrote her friend's healing words: "Be like a garden watered."

She has worked other meditative phrases into subsequent tapestries. "After darkness, thousands of suns open and start to shine" is a phrase that trickles down through another tapestry she made.

Three years ago, after her cancer went into remission, Anderson decided she wanted to teach other women with the disease how to use art to help them "let go."

The women said the classes helped them, so Anderson decided to branch out from the New England area and share her art with women throughout the nation.

She is in Salt Lake City this week for the Susan B. Komen Race for the Cure, scheduled for Saturday. She plans to donate three of her tapestries to local breast-cancer clinics, and she is working to get thousands of people who have either had or known someone who has had breast cancer to sign them before they are donated.

People can sign the tapestries today at the Union Pacific Depot at The Gateway and at the race on Saturday.

Coretta Glaze, a breast-cancer survivor who signed Anderson's tapestry, said it is important for women suffering from the disease to connect with one another.

"People just need to talk about it and not keep it inside," she said.

Anderson said a big reward of her work is seeing its effect on women who also have gone through the disease.

"Art helps people heal," she said. "The (tapestries help) people use art as a way of letting themselves go. It's a very freeing, exuberant process."

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E-mail: dgardiner@desnews.com