He had Jedi robes and a Force FX lightsaber, and he wanted to be cremated with both of those,” laughs Vanessa Walilko as she recalls her late boyfriend, artist Ed Siemienkowicz. “If he could have been on a funeral pyre, that’s what he would have done.”
“But the artist community in Chicago is incredibly generous,” says Walilko. “They rallied around him and did a whole bunch of fund-raisers for him to cover the medical expenses.” Siemienkowicz underwent chemo and radiation, and the cancer went into remission in 2015. After this successful treatment, he started working on Forty. In 2016, he met and fell in love with Walilko.
