I have completed The Hum—a piece of music based on my hyperacusis and tinnitus symptoms. It’s just over 11 minutes long, and is a calm, ambient, and somewhat minimalist piece. Here is a 1 minute, 20 second taste of the recording:
You can buy the entire 11 minute recording on my Ko-fi page as an mp3.
Read on for more information about my long and gentle music reintegration and composition process for this piece.
Continue readingNote: This has been cross-posted on ko-fi and on Medium.
2023 was a very full year with a few big projects done in tandem with other organizations. It was also the year that I finally felt I had a career again for the first time since the 2015 onset of ME/CFS. Here are some of my plans for this coming year, with the caveat that they are all fate-permitting since I never know what my body might do.
I have three main practices—embroidery, music, and writing—and have ongoing projects in each. My main embroidery project is a very large vagus nerve piece, my main music project is a composition/recording titled The Hum, and my main writing project is writing poems based on my notes from Deb Dana’s polyvagal theory audio course.
Continue readingThe 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.
The cover for the forthcoming anthology, Sharp Notions: Writing From The Stitching Life, was revealed in February, and it features my embroidery, she breathed!
I’m very honoured that SK Arts has selected my embroidery sensorium (2016)—part of my symptomatology series—for purchase for their permanent collection.
sensorium is a depiction of the hypersensitivity and hyperexcitation of my nervous system due to ME/CFS and took approximately 60 hours to stitch. My main sensory sensitivity is to sound and vibration—hyperacusis—which can absolutely overwhelm me depending on the volume and timbre of the sound. My entire nervous system becomes involved, and though this symptom has improved with a lot of desensitization work it still affects me daily.
I recently finished stitching this large (18″x12″) hand embroidery piece based on one of my SciArt text/image pieces. I’ve been working on this piece since June 18, 2018 and finished the stitching July 18, 2020, so it took just over two years to complete it. I’m very pleased with it!
I was recently interviewed by the Art the Science, a Canadian SciArt organization. I’ve focused on embroidery for the past few years, but have been doing science-based work for a long time. This interview gave me the opportunity to talk about how my practice has changed media while maintaining a science focus.
https://artthescience.com/blog/2019/12/26/creators-lia-pas/
An article/interview about my syptomatology embroideries was recently posted on ME Action’s website. ME Action is an advocacy group for pwME (people with ME/CFS).
In August 2019 I had a couple articles about my embroidery work go up online.
First, The Cardiff Review published a portfolio of my anatomy embroideries with some of my writing about that body of work.
Second, Action for M.E. published a short interview about my symptomatology embroideries.
Both these online magazines are based in the UK and I’m very happy to see my work getting attention over there!
I have a recent embroidery portfolio in Blanket Sea Magazine. It focuses on my symptomatology embroideries which explore my invisible ME/CFS symptoms. Blanket Sea is a literary and arts magazine dedicated to showcasing the work of artists and writers living with chronic illness, mental illness, and disability. You can find my portfolio here.