WHEN KNOWLEDGE DOESN'T FEEL LIKE POWER

I am something of an autodidact, self-trained in sewing, embroidery and fiber arts, and enjoying deep learning in areas such as native plants, moths, and my local forest ecology. Chronically ill people are often forced to be autodidacts, to be their own champions, and when your disease is rare, you often know as much as or more about your illness than some of your doctors. But there is a downside to it as well. For me, it has become almost obsessive, researching symptoms and possible diagnoses and treatments, and at some point it becomes exhausting and counter-productive. 

I’ve found that slow handwork – especially hand embroidery or basket weaving techniques – is one of most soothing and meditative things I can do, and removing unwanted species from my woods and making something new and beautiful out of them is symbolic of my attempts to continue to make beauty within the confines of my illness.

For this piece, I began with Japanese Honeysuckle vine, which I removed from my woods and twined into a framework using raffia.  

I tore out pages from an old copy of “Gray’s Anatomy” that discussed areas of the body where I experience my worst symptoms – the skin, the digestive tract, the muscles, the hips and the shoulders. I layered them with muslin and eco-dyed them using leaves from the forest floor.  I cut them to fit some of the open spaces in the framework, then hand embroidered and machine stitched into them, organically following marks made by the eco-dying and obliterating the text from “Gray’s Anatomy.” In one section, I made a print from the top of a pill bottle using acrylic paint, and then hand embroidered French knots in response to the mark made.

In three open sections, I made hand weavings using eco-dyed cotton string for the warp and paper cordage for the weft. The paper cordage was handmade from a large sheet of decorative paper that was leftover from when I was able to hand bind blank journals to sell at art fairs. Finally, I continued the embroidery into the hand-woven surfaces.