Craft For Health

My Stitches Help Me Conquer Mental Illness

 

I have always expressed myself through stitches.  I talk with my hands, I nurture with my hands, and I stitch with my hands.  The Promise of Pills explores the identity of illness, the promises of drug marketing, and frustration with the current healthcare system in the US. 

 

I use embroidery to mimic the swirling colors and visible brushstrokes of oil painting. I use dozens of colors of cotton, silk, and rayon floss on each image. I spend 30-60 hours stitching every one. The time and labor it takes to create these pieces reiterates the uphill struggle of recovery and the depth of compassion needed to conquer mental illness.
 
I use my background textiles to comment on my subject matter. The cheerfulness of printed fabrics echo the drugs’ promises of sunny, uncomplicated happiness while standing in sharp contrast to the reality of depression and anxiety. I occasionally use textiles pulled from my daily life--scrub smocks, kitchen linens, bedding, and my daughter's clothing--to show how much of a person’s life is affected by illness.

I want to bring beauty and individuality to the stern geometry of pills. I want to blur their rigid, clinical lines. With the warmth and softness of fiber, I am giving humanity to medical diagnoses and their chemical solutions.

Crafts & Veterans

Crafts are an integral part of therapy for hospitalized veterans, especially those that have a brain injury and need to relearn eye hand coordination. It's a lot more fun and fosters creativity.  

To learn more about becoming a craft care specialist or to donate, please visit HHV.org.

Treasure Hunting Is Like my Art and Helps Me Reveal Hidden Feelings

I am a painter. And when I can find a moment alone, that’s when I go searching for precious things that seem desperately lost to me. I like to envision the soul as something that is hidden behind layers of thin sheer veils. Every time I stroke the canvas, gentle fingertips pull back another veil. The thicker the canvas surface becomes, the closer I am to revealing something hidden inside.

 

Gone 

Oil on Canvas. 36” by 48” copyright Christy Boyer.

Sometimes I think I know what I am painting about, or searching for, but then something unexpected happens. For the last couple of years, I have been slowly working on a series of paintings inspired from the book, Joan of Arc: Her Story by by Régine Pernoud, Marie-Véronique Clin, and Jeremy duQuesnay Adams. The latest painting in the series is entitled, Joan Marries Fire. As I worked, I kept in mind Joan’s young body burned, her indescribable pain, her ascension into heaven, her final gown of peace. I thought of myself as well: what parts represented the fire, the freedom from pain, or the white dress in my own life.

 

But then, something unexpected happened. Many who knew me thought that “Joan” was meant to be my son, Clay. Now, let me tell you about Clay. First, he is 13 and he is beautiful. Secondly, he cannot walk, or run, or talk, or hold his head up, and his communication with the outside world is limited. Well, I was floored at these assumptions. I even felt as if I had failed. No! It was supposed to be Joan! I thought to myself.

 

I looked at the painting some more. My dream Joan was there, yes. I was there, yes. Oh! Yes, Clay was there too.  I saw him now; his head so often extended and turned to the side, his pale ghostly skin, his limp whispering hands. How did I not see it before? Through his life you could say he has been married to fire. I am almost sure he longs for freedom from his broken body. I wonder if he dreams of a gown of comfort to caress his twisted bones, like the one Joan wears in the painting.

 

Joan Marries Fire. Oil on Canvas. 36” by 48” copyright Christy Boyer.

 

 

Art can be Pulled Apart, Ripped Up and Started Over Again

Because most of our lives are almost totally out of our control, I believe that everyone should have something that can be done alone, almost anywhere, and with our own hands. 

Whether you paint, draw, sculpt, scrapbook, knit, macrame, crochet, or tat, your work is your own, and you have control.  If you don't like the work, pull it apart, rip it up, and start over.  Gardening is a particular subset of this activity category because it isn't portable.  It is similar,  however, because if you don't like the red one, you can pull it out and plant a pink one.  Unlike an illness, a chronic condition or a cranky in-law, none of which can be unwound or plucked out, your craft, art or garden is yours.

There are some limits, however. It would be wonderful if everyone had at least one portable version of his or her work, and I strongly recommend projects that can be picked up and put down without creating an artistic disaster.  Sadly, this eliminates 10x10-foot murals, lampworked beads, and potato sculpture, but every good idea has limitations.

I have had something in my hands since I was a small child, beginning with un-lamented Paint by Numbers in the 1950s.  I made lanyards at summer camp, and I have done embroidery, macrame, seed art, soft sculpture, cheerfully incompetent quilting, batik, and  needlepoint (Blue Ribbons in the Minnesota State Fair).  I am now a painter of nanoscapes, which are the source of an apparently unending amount of pleasure.  My first nanoscapes were painted on 3x5 cards.  Now many of them are much larger (22x33), but I always travel with brusher, paper and paint on palettes that fit into a makeup bag. Have paint, will travel.

Did any of this work cure an ailment? Probably not.  However, having work to do every day that gives me pleasure every day has certainly helped to keep me on an even keel throughout what most people consider trying times (death of my Dad, loss of a long-time job).

My name is Susan Gainen and you can see more of my work at www.susangainen-nanoscapes.com 

Crafty Kathy at CHA

I'm just learning how to create movies and utilize all the amazing footage we have from our travels.  Here's a video of Kathy Peterson using the Glider Pro from Glue Arts at the CHA show in Orlando.

Designing and Creating Linocuts is My Happy Passion by Karyna

I absolutely enjoy every chance I get to create any of my designs and crafts. I especially love the smell of certain inks and the feeling I receive from a successful finished print, in this case my linoleum block prints, also known as linocuts. This is my therapy.

I've found my linocuts not only relieve stress from my job but other life tensions. More importantly they're enjoyable to make even when everything is just right. No matter how time consuming some may be to create, especially due to dot patterns I paint on a few, the process is relaxing. They're calming when I have the bad habit of always being on the go - something I'm working on. Linocuts have turned into a passion, even serving as the catalyst for starting my shop, Paper Squid. I'm so glad I discovered this form of printmaking.

 

When not creating block prints and other craft, I work at an advertising agency as a full-time graphic designer. Though happy and grateful for what I do, it's ironically this very thing, (with demanding corporate clients and many late nights) which has produced my desire to step away from that world and create for myself. Using my two hands, not just the computer, creating because I want to, not because I have to are important. In this process I've found a new appreciation for design and the art of handmade craft and how special it can be.

Creating craft &/or art of any sort should be tried by everyone, at least I believe so. No experience or specific skills necessary. Start a daily journal with funny observational entries in the form of stick figures, (I actually did this once). Create scrapbooks, try knitting, write daily handwritten notes to friends and family while actually mailing them out; anything! It's wonderful therapy and just plain enjoyable to do.

 

Linocuts are a great escape for me from the high stress of the everyday and I absolutely love creating them.  My name is Karyna E. Amador and you can see more of my work at http://papersquid.blogspot.comand http://papersquid.etsy.com

An Insult from a Friend Sparked My Career inArt by Isabelle PLUS A GIVEAWAY!

In my mind I'd always wanted to be an artist and make my living as an artist, but had made a lot of decisions that made it seem unlikely that would happen. I'd dropped out of art school after a year and became a nurse for one. I also had no studio, and hadn't been doing any sort of art for several years. When I was 24 my mother suddenly died in a tragic accident. She'd been struggling with alcoholism and mental illness since I could remember and her death brought overwhelming sadness and relief.

 

Some months later, after being immersed in family drama around my mom's death, I was in Boston talking to a friend about my remote artistic intentions. My friend, who'd watched me attend and then drop out of art school, and who's father, incidently, died on the same day as my mother, so I forgive her callousness, said to me, "I keep hearing you say you're going to make something happen, and you never do." My heart dropped. That was my biggest suspicion of why my mother had been so unhappy, and was now dead, and it stung to hear someone say it to me. So, to make a long story short, it was being deeply insulted by a friend that sparked my career as an artist, and wound me up for two year crash course in the practices and business of being an artist.

I found a local ceramics co-op and spent about a year relearning what I'd known in high school and trying to teach myself how to slip cast, and eventually broke down and took a mold-making class. I was incredibly fortunate to find a part-time school nursing job at a private school about two blocks from the studio that paid enough that I could just get by until I started making money from my art. I would work from 7-noon at the studio and then work at the school from 1-5:30pm. At my first group show at the co-op I made $1400 and nearly sold out. Then I got a booth at an outdoor market and was able to make and sell about $500 of pottery a week. I was able to set up my own studio near my house, had a friend help me make a website,  got a credit card swiper, and was in business.

 

Admittedly, I had a pretty manic delving into my art career, and as a nurse I might suggest a more moderated approach. I think my circumstances gave me a way to take was I was given and use it as fuel, instead of becoming hopeless or depressed. Now I'm learning to think of success as something that is good because it makes life better for us and the people around us, and not something that I desperately need in order to avoid becoming my mother.

The biggest gift my mother gave me was showing me that no matter how nice or interesting you are your life can become a tragedy if you don't exercise your influence over it. I recently started running after some sluggish suspicion that I might injur myself. My mantra that keeps me going and feeling like I could run over a mountain if I needed to is, "I am so much stronger than I need to be to do this."

www.isabelleabramson.com

 

Isabelle has been kind enough to offer this  handmade votive holder  and fabulous candle.  Simply POST YOUR COMMENTS on her post and we'll pull the winners name out of a hat!  GOOD LUCK!   Offer ends February 6th 2010.

 
 

I Know I'll be Okay Doing Something Art Wise

I am a working and exhibiting artist. I graduated from Otis College of Fine Arts in 1989. Right after graduation, I came down with an unknown disease that caused me to be comotose for a week in intensive care. When I was released, I had no memory of my graduation, the fact that I went to Otis, or that in fact I was a working artist with a studio in downtown L.A.

Shortly afterwords my then husband of 20 yrs. left saying he no longer wanted to be married. When I got my strength back I expressed my feelings of anguish and sadness by painting. Some of the paintings were very difficult to look at. Some, what most of my viewers called "interesting." Throughout the following yrs. I continued painting, and exhibiting my work at various venues. I discovered Zen Meditation and Yoga and my paintings subsequently became much quieter, until today I could be called a minimalist.

Then came my ultimate challenge, last Jan. 2nd. I discovered a lump in my right breast. So far this yr. I have undergone, a lumpectomy, 7

1/2 weeks of daily radiation "therapy??????" I have a intervenous infusion of every 3 weeks for a year (6 more to go) of a drug called Herceptin, and am on a estrogen blocker. All of this causes arthritic like pain in all of my joints, especially my hands, shoulders and elbows. Not good for a painter. The estrogen blocker also causes insomnia, and hot flashes. I went off the blocker for a week and beginning last night am trying a new one. Hopefully my hands especially, will be better.

I began to weave a basket, hopefully calling it "The Miracle Basket"

From all the information, schedules, apointment slips and everything related to my diagnosis. This was 3 weeks ago. I had to stop as my hands were extremely painful and swollen, and I couldn't push the needle through the paper. But, I am working in my studio with watercolors and encaustic, soon oil paint. The pain has subsided and I am affirming that the new estrogen blocker won't have similar effects.

Art, the making of it, the creating, the physicality of doing it has saved my life. As long as I can think about and do something art wise, I will be OK.  

www.joyartist.com

My Art Brings Me Comfort by Laurie

I love making beautiful things, whether it is sewing or painting. I have invested a good part of my life learning to paint in all kinds of mediums. 

I keep my art supplies close at hand, they bring me comfort.  Learning new techniques brings me the greatest joy.

 When I share them on my blog I receive such nice responses.  Selling my artwork is exhilarating. 

My name is Laurie and here's my blog address: http://lauriescharmingdesigns.blogspot.com/

I Grieved the Loss of My identity as a Potter by Sue Duda

With a Bachelors Degree in Art, specializing in pottery, I began my career as an artist in 1976.  I created functional and decorative pottery, ambitiously for 22 years.

Inspired by the ocean, scuba diving and snorkeling adventures, I began to draw fish in the 1980’s.  I still created pottery while my collection of colored pencil drawings and acrylic watercolor paintings grew, to the point of naming my artwork “Ocean Dudes by Duda”. 

During my pottery years, I didn’t know I had Rheumatoid Arthritis! I consumed Ibuprofen 24/7 to cope with pain.  I accepted pain as part of my life, as I worked slumped over a potter’s wheel and mixed all my clay and glazes from scratch, lifting 50 pounds of clay or lifting heavy kiln shelves.  Drawing was easier on my back, wrists and hands, than my work as a stoneware potter. Although I grieved the loss of my identity as a potter, eventually I realized I did not have to give up being creative. I just needed to be creative in a different way. Drawing enabled me to experience the cheerfulness of color, without pain.