Kelly Bigelow Becerra painted beautiful canvases and even buildings then received a stage 4 cancer diagnosis.
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (WTNH) — There is an artist’s designs all over New Haven that are impossible to miss, but you may not know the creative mind behind the work. Now that artist finds herself in the struggle of a lifetime.
Behind the work for New Haven’s Downtown Crossing, you’ve seen her art work. If you’ve enjoyed the new Canal Dock Boathouse, you probably saw her work. And if you’ve bought something made in New Haven, that’s her logo telling you.
“That made me feel like my design work had a purpose, like I was doing good things with my design work,” said Kelly Bigelow Becerra.
Before the design work, Becerra was an accomplished artist. Hailing from the cornfields of Michigan, she painted beautiful canvases and even buildings since coming to Connecticut. But in 2016, she got some news that was not pretty at all.
“I’d gone in for surgery and then it turned out that surgery was cancer and then 2018 was when I found out that it was stage 4,” Becerra explained.
She kept working and kept the news to herself. Until she couldn’t any more. It’s an extremely rare and incurable cancer. She let the world know about it in a social media post last year…Her doctor telling her last April she likely had just a year left to live. Becerra is just 48 years old.
“In the past week, I’ve started hospice, and there’s no more procedures for me because of the danger,” said Becerra. “My lungs have gotten so bad.”
Through it all, she has kept up her childhood love of roller skating. Even skating around the hospital after hours. She now has a GoFundMe to help with medical bills and funeral expenses. And she plans to keep working to organize her art.
“In a way that’s preserved and archived in a way that it can generate money towards a scholarship to help other kids in a cornfield someday go to somewhere and be able to live somewhere beautiful like New Haven,” Becerra said. “And I want to do as much good as I can with the time I have left.”
New Haven is left a little more beautiful because of what Kelly Bigelow Becerra leaves behind.
