A banner image promoting the month-long art challenge, SciArt September 2025. The banner features an bison illustration plus text describing a monthly theme, weekly themes, and daily prompt words. The month-long theme is conservation. In order, the weekly themes are: Week 1:Lands, species, water, people, and a shared future. Finally, the list of daily words is as follows. Week one: Islet, canopy, jewel, riverbank, corridor, prairie, boreal. Week 2: Niche, vanishing, tawny, venomous, wandering, bottleneck, mimic. Week 3: Spawning, rift, trawl, cenote, depths, glacial, reef. Week 4: Fellowship, scouting, numbered, tireless, forage, bounded, harvest. Week 5: Foresight, dream. The event is hosted by LizLagomorph and LucyGemArt.

I’ve participated in SciArt September for a few years and this is year five! Liz Butler and Lucy Gem came up with some excellent prompts. The main theme is Conservation with each week on a different theme: lands, species, water, people, and a shared future. Most of my artwork is anatomy-based so I’ll be playing with the themes, but I have a number of ecological-themed poems so there will be more poetry in what I share this year.

Week 1: Lands

Day 1: islet

This embroidery imagines a diagram of a cell as a map—with some islets—with poetry about two people meeting in the landscape: cell map (2020). You can read more about this piece here.

Cell Map (2020). An embroidery of the diagram of a cell on blue linen. the details are in whites, blues, turquoise, burgundy, green, and deep orange. The labels are poetic text instead of scientific terms. From bottom right around to bottom left it reads: Pair of pleases. Chance it some. Chromatic & new to us (carries us some of the way) New to us. Chromatic nets. Please remember. Vacant. Reticent about apparent goals. The centre. Where sometimes we met. Two of us. Sector illustrating the firm approach to pleasure. Caring pleases. New to us. Remember. True newness (pleasure). Sector illustrating sides to where time ran and had pleasure.

neuraesthenia (2017). An embroidery on pale natural linen. The pale outline of a woman’s lower legs and feet, heels together, toes apart is centered. From the soles of the feet, thick red/orange lines coil beneath. From the big toes moving upwards, thick blue and off-white lines rise up through the inner calves and branch off at the knees. These lines coil and intertwine in a navy brain-like shape, and then move back down in wavy lines like a wide skirt around the ankles.

Day 2: canopy

The brain-like snarl representing my fatigue in neuraesthenia (2017) resembles the canopy of a tree.

Day 3: jewel

For this embroidery I visualized my fibroids, endometrial cancer, and ovarian cyst as bejeweled growths: Bleeding Vessel (2022). You can read more about this piece here.

Bleeding Vessel (2022). An embroidery of a uterus, Fallopian tubes, & ovaries, in black thread on white linen textured like a woodcut. The endometrium is in thick bright red & burgundy. Two fibroids are beaded in red, pink, & cream. A cyst on the right ovary is in clear, purple, & red beads. A polyp in dark red & purple beads is inside the uterus. Long burgundy strings with red beads hang from the bottom.

Day 4: riverbank

Here’s a selection from my poem The River Speaks, imagining what the river running through my city might have to teach us. You can read and hear the entire poem at Epistemic Lit.

A screenshot of part of Lia’s poem, The River Speaks. It reads:The riverbank might say being (human). is grounding. waiting. catch glimpses of what is beneath water (life). Hold these stones. The riverbank might say being (human). is fertile. Grow the green. to make what is (beautiful). Love the decay. the shift of seasons so short-lived & wild restless with change. Learn.

A black and white photo of a plaster model of a pelvis and spine. The back right side of the pelvis, most of the sacrum, and some of the lumbar vertebrae are visible. There is a screw in almost the middle of the hip bone connecting it to the sacrum.

Day 5: corridor

When someone has a broken pelvis, the point through which they put the screw is called a corridor. This is a close up photograph of one of the skeletal models I have in my studio.

Day 6: prairie

Another excerpt from a poem—a sound escapes me—with a verse about the prairie. You can read the entire poem here.

A screenshot of part of Lia’s poem, a sound escapes me. It reads: I used to think estuaries were where all the birds lived. but here, on the wide open prairie, the air is alive with their calls. Each sparrow a small mosaic. the subtly painted greys and blues of thrushes and juncos. how does such bright-beaked loudness come forth from a tiny syrinx? each stuttering from my throat a metallic twang.

Day 7: boreal

An excerpt from my poem rain . forest, written while sitting in a park of pine trees on a rainy day. You can read—and hear—the entire poem at Epistemic Lit.

A screenshot of part of Lia’s poem, rain.forest. It reads: large pines, branches heavy with needles & cones. wait in their weightiness. hang in the wetness. branched, each one like bronchi. each tip a lymphatic round cone. the heaviness, stillness. the reaching up. & hanging down so I am draped beneath. sharp scent. each drop of rain a small weight. sweetness on the tongues of needles. each cone a filled vase. each branch an arm.

Week 2: Species

I definitely played with the prompts for this week’s theme. Mostly embroidery and one videopoem.

Autumnal Mitosis Sampler (2024). Two cells dividing embroidered on off white linen. A circle of brown stem stitch is the cell membrane, the corona radiata is in bright orangey yellow zig zag chain stitch. The edges of the dividing cells are in bright orange split stitch. The nucleolus of each cell is in bright yellow bullion stitch. The cytoplasm is stitched in variegated orange/brown thread in a mix of seed stitch and French knots. Lia’s initials are stitched in off white whipped back stitch.

Day 8: niche

A stem-cell niche is a microenvironment where stem cells are found. Here’s my autumnal mitosis sampler of a human reproductive cell (2024).

Day 9: vanishing

The term Millions Missing is used for ME/CFS advocacy since most people with the disease—like myself—rarely have energy to leave their homes. My SciArt embroidery body map (2016) illustrates the invisible symptoms I experienced at the onset of ME/CFS.

Body Map (2016). An outline of a naked woman is embroidered on linen in the same bone white colour as the linen. She stands legs together, her right hand covering her groin, her left hand, palm up, extended slightly to her side. She looks to the right. Her entire body except for her belly is covered in intricate markings representing different neurological sensations. Her face is a mask of green lines, feathery grey lines cover her shoulders and chest. There is a thick band of intricate burgundy stitching around her waist. Her forearms and hands are covered in thick blue undulant lines. Her right leg has bands of burgundy along the muscles, with small dots around them. Her inner left leg has a thick line of blue running up it, with thin branches spreading towards her outer leg.

Day 10: tawny

My symptomatology embroidery—stars within, stars without (2017)— is stitched on tawny linen.

stars within, stars without (2017). An embroidery on ochre linen, there is the outline of a head and outstretched arms. Tiny blue filigree decorates the face and hands and there are light coloured stars on the chest area and around the neck.

Day 11: venomous

This excerpt from my videopoem ossa. ora (2015) features a bumblebee. You can watch the entire videopoem here.

(Alt text: A bee lies in a white oval shell. Two human baby teeth lay one to each side of the shell. Animated text reads: cuspid-framed bee bed. a dry wind. stinging things gone still.)

An image of a vagus nerve embroidered on green cotton. The main nerve lines, brain, and face are in blue. A bright red anatomical heart is below the blue nerves. Around it is a bright golden yellow halo in a vesica piscis shape. Three sets of ribs are in bright green/yellow. There are some tiny details in different colours along some of the nerves. Burgundy roiling with sparse tiny black knots are in the gut. The nerve endings in the diaphragm area are lengthened.

Day 12: wandering

My SciArt embroidery the wandering ghost (2024) is of the vagus nerve. Vagus is Latin for wandering. You can read more about this piece here.

Day 13: bottleneck

This SciArt embroidery WIP detail is of the stent in my left iliac vein. I have May Thurner’s syndrome which compresses & creates a bottleneck in that vein so a stent was placed to remedy it: deep dilation (2025)

A pelvis, lumbar vertebrae, and part of the iliac vein are sketched in blue marker on white linen. Most of the iliac vein is outlined in grey-green stem stitch and the photo is focused on this area. A section on the left branch is outlined in darker grey-green split stitch with some horizontal and crossing threads stretched across it. Intricate turbulence is stitched in single strand dark aquamarine backstitch within the iliac vein. The bones are being stitched in thick backstitch in a white just slightly bluer than the white linen. An hourglass shaped needle minder reading, “this is taking forever” holds the needle.

An embroidery of an inner ear done in bone white thread on dark purple linen. The centre of the spiral is labeled “nave of vibration”, the body of the inner ear is labeled “plumes of sound”, and the tubes are labeled “windows open.”

Day 14: mimic

I’m fascinated by how parts of our anatomy mimics shapes in nature such as the inner ear being shaped like a snail shell: nave of vibration (2017).

Week 3: Water

This week I found embroideries to fit all but one of the prompts using a few detail shots.

Day 15: spawning

My winter night night mitosis sampler (2024) contains two meanings of spawning: it’s a human reproductive cell creating our spawn, and the cytoplasm looks a bit like spawning fish.

Two reproductive cells dividing embroidered on white linen. The edges of the dividing egg cells and the nucleus membranes are in light grey split stitch. A circle of light purple stem stitch is the cell membrane. The corona radiata is in dark navy zig zag chain stitch. The nucleolus of each cell is in navy bullion stitch. The polar bodies are stitched in burgundy single strand back stitch. The cytoplasm is stitched in variegated blue/purple thread in a mix of seed stitch and French knots. Lia’s initials are stitched in white whipped back stitch.

A photo of a small fox skull taken from directly above on a dark blue-black rug. The cranial sutures form a sort of peace sign on the round part of the skull

Day 16: rift

A photograph of the cranial sutures—a sort of bone rift—on the ethically sourced fox skull in my studio.

Day 17: trawl

A detail of the abdominal vagal nerves in my SciArt embroidery the wandering ghost (2024). It looks a bit like a trawling net.

A close up of an embroidery focused on the abdominal vagus stitched in blue chain stitch in perlé thread on dark green cotton. There are many layers of crossing wavy lines. Spiralling around the very straight main vagus is single strand whipped back stitch in electric blue. Some roiling burgundy back stitch in burgundy perlé thread is between the blue. Sparse tiny black French knots are stitched in the gut area. The nerve endings in the diaphragm area are lengthened with one and two strand whipped back stitch.

An embroidery on bone coloured linen of the inside of a human skull looking down from a cut open top done in thin black thread. The textures make it look like the Vesalius woodcut it is based on. In the bottom left corner of the skull there is the tiny silhouette of a woman done in bronze thread.

Day 18: cenote

My SciArt embroidery woman in skull (2016) imagines the inner lower half of the human skull as a sort of cave.

Day 19: depths

A detail of some of the text on my SciArt embroidery of the iliac vein: deep dilation (2024).

The left side of a pelvis, lumbar vertebrae, and part of the iliac vein embroidered on white linen with some of it in a bamboo hoop. Most of the iliac vein is outlined in grey-green stem stitch. A section on the left branch is outlined in darker grey-green split stitch with honeycomb filling stitch stretched across it. Intricate turbulence is stitched in single strand dark aquamarine backstitch within the iliac vein. The bones are stitched in thick backstitch in a white just slightly bluer than the white linen. A block of text is stitched in dark grey with some letters thicker and smoother than others. It reads: Deep. Deep. Dilated. A tributary. A portal. A black knifecat needle minder holds the needle.

Day 20: glacial

My current work-in-progress which I started in February. #Embroidery is a glacial art.

The lower torso and hips of a woman are outlined in black thread on wrinkled black linen. The public hair is in an embroidery hoop and being stitched in black thread. An hourglass-shaped needle minder that reads “this is taking forever” is attached to the cloth.

A piece of purple linen in an embroidery hoop. Stitched in chain stitch is a light greenish blue coral or plant or algae design.

Day 21: reef

I embroidered this coral-like piece to teach myself tambour embroidery in 2016.

Week 4: People

More videopoems this week along with full embroidery pieces.

Day 22: fellowship

Breathing is the one parasympathetic function we have some control over. In my many years of practising and teaching meditation I’ve realized breathing is a type of fellowship with our bodies: she breathed (2018)

An embroidery on a pale natural linen. There is a bone white diagram of a vocal apparatus, trachea, and bronchi/lungs. In between the branches of the bronchioles are small words embroidered in cursive in thin burgundy thread. They read: she breathed. Inhaled. exhaled. she knew. that breathing. was beauty. was the way. inside. to outside. when her breath. tightened. she found. ways. to soften. be still. to allow that. in. of the out. breath. to be. the. way through. she found the throughline. somehow. it. also found her. still. and breathing. deeply. each day was. new. each breath. a. different. path. always. through her. and. throughout her. such a. simple. thing, breath. such a journey. through. trees. and. branches. how the body knows. to still. itself. if we learn how. to. listen deeply.

An embroidery of the venations of the eye stitched in blues, greens, and purples on bone coloured cloth. In a circle outlining the eye is a poem that can be read starting on any word: behind her blue green eyes were fine lace webs so she could see purple mist opening.

Day 23: scouting

A big part of scouting is looking at details. This SciArt embroidery—eye poem (2016)— is of the venation of the eye and features a circular poem. It also fits with Migraine Awareness Week since my migraines are around my right eye.

Day 24: numbered

An excerpt from my videopoem ossa . ora (2015) featuring fifteen of my son’s baby teeth.

(Alt text: 15 baby teeth lined up in 4 rows against a black background. Animated text appears and disappears between various rows. It reads: twenty chewing beads. lost once. lost again. fifteen musing pearls.)

Day 25: tireless

My videopoem about the heart which beats tirelessly in our chests: susurrations (2008)

An embroidery on deep purple linen. There is a purple outline of a feminine right hand from the side, palm up, fingers curled slightly inward. There are many tiny white French knots covering the fingertips and light blue, gold, and navy French knots on parts of the palm. There are fine filigree lines connecting many of the French knots and white strands of thread strung from each fingertip to an apex above the hand. There is a starburst floating above the palm in white and light blue.

Day 26: forage

One of my hand paresthesia pieces—push, pull, & tingle (2018)—since we use our hands to forage. It also fits with Migraine Awareness Week since my migraines worsen the tingling in my hands.

Day 27: bounded

My current embroidery work-in-progress. I often make large pieces, and the hoop creates a boundary for me to focus on a particular section. I haven’t gotten to the SciArt part of this piece yet but it’s coming!

Lia’s fingers show a wooden embroidery hoop with a 4.5 by 5 inch trapezoid of black on black whipped backstitch that looks a bit like flames, but if you’ve been following this piece you’ll know it’s pubic hair. It’s definitely pubic hair. There’s a white chalk line on the upper edge showing about a centimetre in height to go, especially in the centre couple inches, and some chalk lines within the hairs. An hourglass-shaped needle minder that reads “this is taking forever” is attached to the cloth.

An anatomical heart on natural linen stitched in burgundy embroidery floss: some thick, some thin. The three branches off the top of the aorta look like tree branches. There is a burnished light brown thin line coming up between the aortic branches, the recurrent laryngeal nerve, that unfurls into small leaves. Some cursive text is stitched in thin black thread on the lower right. It reads: how the heart unfurls the throat. Lia’s initials are stitched below the text in off-white. The blue marking lines are still on the cloth and needs to be washed out.

Day 28: harvest

A piece where I imagined the recurrent laryngeal nerve as a plant with its leaves unfurling in the throat. (I still need to wash and stretch this piece!)

Week 5: A Shared Future

The last two days had me a bit stumped at first, but here they are as well as a short update on my creative plans for the next while.

Day 29: foresight

A sketch for a future piece of SciArt embroidery based on some of my polyvagal theory and meditation imagery.

A pencil sketch on off white paper of feminine head and shoulders with an anatomical heart. There is a curving branching net coming out of the top of the heart and covering the neck and face.

An embroidery of a head and neck stitched in blue thread on green cloth. The brain is stitched in back stitch and the vagus nerves in the neck are stitched in chain stitch in perlé thread. The facial nerves are stitched in single strand chain stitch and back stitch. A thin dark purple line entwines the nerve on the forehead and some curved light green lines emanate from the eye.

Day 30: dream

Dreaming takes place in our brain. Here’s a detail from my SciArt embroidery the wandering ghost (2024) of the brain and facial nerves.

Future work

I’ve been sick with cholangitis issues since late June with very little energy so I haven’t been writing much. SciArt September seemed possible because of how it’s split up so I hope to do some other creative work in 5-10 increments as I’m able. Here’s a few things I have in progress:

A post about a tattoo based on my work
Pulling together a new poetry manuscript
Finishing my mitosis embroidery sampler pattern
Cleaning up, wet blocking, and writing posts for a few embroideries I finished months ago
Listening through my piano improvisations to choose the best ones for an album

So even though I’m not posting long form writing very often, things will eventually appear here, fate-permitting.