I’ve been participating in SciArt September for a few years now. Glendon Mellow and Liz Butler came up with some excellent prompts yet again this year, each week on a different theme: horror, sci-fi, fantasy, folklore, and the end. I shared older work based on all the daily prompts.
My interview on the Arts Ably podcast is up! Diane and I talked about how my artistic practices in music, writing, and embroidery shift with my ME/CFS and disability.
A couple months ago I had the honour of being interviewed by Daniel Moore for the podcast Post-Exertional Mayonnaise. The name of the podcast is a play on Post-Exertional Malaise (PEM), the hallmark symptom of ME/CFS.
Daniel and I had a wide-ranging discussion and talked about whether its possible to flourish whilst living with ME, making art with a disability, flow states, symptomatology, meditation, and Stoicism.
You can also listen on your favourite podcast platform via the PEM Podcast webpage.
I’m excited to announce that I’m a featured artist in Opera Mariposa’s 2024 Benefit + Awareness Month! 🦋 I’m honoured to share both art and music to support the ME | FM Society of BC and raise awareness for those affected by ME/CFS, Long Covid, and Fibromyalgia. Join me for this all-online charity extravaganza at Benefit.OperaMariposa.com from May 1 – June 1, 2024. There’s music, art, over $3,500 in prizes and more – and it’s all for a great cause!
I’m involved in the benefit in a few ways. Read on for how my music and embroidery are being featured!
Continue readingNote: This has been cross-posted on my ko-fi. There are a few other monthly updates there if you would like to read back a few months.
Webinar Report
Another monthly-ish update and another very full month. The main creative work on my plate was teaching a webinar for CHASE Medical Humanities about the visualization process I use to create my symptomatology pieces as well as how to use the poetic technique of homophonic translation to re-vision and re-own dense scientific texts.
It felt good to stretch my teaching muscles again. I’ve been teaching in some capacity since my late teens—music, yoga, and meditation—but had to stop when I got sick in 2015. Despite an ME/CFS crash the day before, I was well enough to present my webinar and the parÂticipants seemed to enjoy and get a lot out of the work. A few people even shared their symptomatology image/test pieces on social media. Here are a few:
Gillian Blekkenhorst started with a trachea and expanded their piece from there.
website: https://blekkenhorst.ca/
Twitter: @gblekkenhorst
I’ve been participating in SciArt September for a few years now. Glendon Mellow and Liz Butler came up with some excellent prompts yet again this year, and I shared older work based on the prompts. Below are all 30 days of my posts!
Day 1: starry
stars within, stars without (2017) is part of my symptomatology embroidery series. This is a map of the paresthesias (tingling) in my upper body due to ME/CFS, stitched as I experienced them.
The date of the official launch of Sharp Notions: Essays on the Stitching Life, approaches! It’s out on October 10th, but you can preorder it now. Pre-ordering has become very important in publishing, so doing so will help the longevity and success of the book.Â
My contributor copies of Sharp Notions arrived and it is a stunningly gorgeous book. It’s hefty and printed on full colour glossy stock.
I have completed my liver embroidery. It’s another large piece, H 15″ x W 21″ (38 Ă— 53 cm). I stitched it from 20 June 2022 to 5 June 2023. I’ve titled it tethered by fluid and ligaments.
Unlike some of my previous symptomatology pieces, my liver issues haven’t been resolved during the stitching of this piece. . . .
Continue readingThe cover for the forthcoming anthology, Sharp Notions: Writing From The Stitching Life, was revealed in February, and it features my embroidery, she breathed!
