Broken Exhibit
Beginning January 6th and going through February 24, Sertoma Arts Center will house my exhibit Broken: Living with Multiple Sclerosis. The sections below have captioned videos of the three parts of the exhibit talking through the art and the experiences they represent.
25% of the Sales from each piece will be donated to Arts Access North Carolina, a non-profit making art accessible to those with disabilities, as well as to Team Hoover, a local (Raleigh,NC) Multiple Sclerosis focused non-profit that raises resources to fight Multiple Sclerosis, raise awareness of the disease, and help those locally who suffer with it. Items can be purchased at Sertoma Arts Center.
Or, if you would like to donate to one or both of these worthy causes, please do that here.
Exhibit Videos and Images
Understanding the Diagnosis
The Beauty of Acceptance
My Progressive Reality
Understanding the Diagnosis
Alt Description: A human back and head created out of collaged torn up street maps with darker spots located in the brain area and spinal cord. Background is a dark purple and collaged sections are blue, purple, and yellow. This was the first artwork created after my Multiple Sclerosis diagnosis in 2020. MS is an auto-immune disease where lesions (or scars/scleroses) are formed in the brain and spinal cord along the central nervous system and interrupt the signal the brain sends to the different parts of the body telling it what to do. While some people with MS don’t have lesions in their brain, cervical and thoracic spine, MRIs showed lesions in all the areas.
Alt Description: A leg created out of collaged torn up street maps. The leg is yellow and orange and has a darker red and orange coloring in the foot area. The background is dark purple around the leg and dark red radiating outward. The spinal lesions that I have interrupt the signals to my leg and my foot. The numbness in my right leg just under my knee and my numb toe on my right foot were the initial symptoms that led me to a long diagnosis process that took a year and a half. I went from working out on a regular basis and running multiple miles to not being able to walk a half a mile in the span of a few weeks.
Alt Description: The bottom of a foot created out of collaged torn up street maps. The foot is varied shades of purple and has a darker purple areas in the big toe and heel. The background is yellow. As I was sitting at a pool on vacation in 2019, the big toe on my right foot went numb. I have not regained feeling there, and I have lost the ability to control it and the rest of my toes. The lesions on my spine led to the numbness and lack of feeling I experience.
Alt Description: An arm and hand appear in the center of the canvas, the art starting from the bottom. The arm and the hand are made of collaged torn up street maps with dna helixes in the fingers. Above the hand broken in cut out in singular letters. The thumb is black and dripping, and the front tips of each finger are dark purple. The last piece in the collage series, I created a representation of a hidden symptom, a numb left thumb. This symptom would come and go at the beginning of the diagnosis process and become consistently numb over time. This symptom of MS was present on and off before diagnosis and was considered texting thumb or carpal tunnel. After finding out I had MS, I realized this was an early symptom of the disease.
The Beauty of Acceptance
Mountain Revisited Alt Description: A landscape painting with a river in the foreground, trees and natural areas surround the river as it winds between two mountain ranges with a blue sky. This painting represents the transformation that happens when your identity y changes when diagnosed with a disabling condition. Initially this painting was city scene looking up at towering skyscrapers from the ground. It was not finished, but was an outline of a scene in development. After my diagnosis and accepting my new reality, I turned the painting 90 degrees and transformed the scene into something natural and ever changing. While you can still seem the artifacts of the original scene in the vertical lines, it has become something new altogether, showing that difference is beautiful and just creates a picture with more depth.
Broken Spoons Alt Description: A pair of arms and hands with the hands bending a spoon. Between the arms rest a number of bent and broken spoons. The bottom of the sculpture is black and at the top of the arms hands, the color transitions to white. The spoons are sparkly blue and black. One of the more difficult to understand symptoms of MS and other auto-immune diseases is chronic fatigue. One of the most well-known explanations of fatigue was provided by someone with Lupus who used spoons to demonstrate energy units. This explanation is called Spoon Theory. Each activity completed in a day costs a spoon. Once the number of spoons available to that person are used, they no longer can do anything but rest. The number of spoons varies based on a variety of factors, sleep, temperature, stress, energy expenditure the day before, etc. Fatigue can feel like when you’re sick with the flu or a persistent heaviness in your body. As someone who loved a good house project and always pushed myself to do more at home, work, play, I found that I no longer had the energy and stamina anymore and required medication to help keep me going. This sculpture was a physical representation of how I was running through my spoons at a rate faster than I could recover them.
CNS Alt Description: A bust of a brain and shoulders. The brain and spinal cord are gold and the rest of the bust is black. My first creative outlet was painting, but I had always wanted to do pottery. Once I had been diagnosed with MS, I realized that pottery could be a great way to use my hands in different ways that could support dexterity and strength in my hands and fingers. This bust was an early piece I created to represent the Central Nervous System, the part of my body that is impacted by MS.
On Hold Alt Description: Pink, white, and blue swirls burst from a series of white tick lines at the bottom third of the painting. Around the swirls are dots of yellow, white, and pink paint on top of a deep blue background. Underneath the tick lines is a muted reflection of what is above. In the communities of people with chronic illnesses and disabilities, a common challenge is the time cost of dealing with doctors, insurance companies, pharmacies, and other systems where additional effort is required to get something done. I have spent hours of my life since diagnosis waiting on hold for someone as I do what is necessary to take care of my health. With the fatigue and cognitive fog I have resulting from MS, I can’t multitask while waiting on hold. So instead, I let my mind wander and relax. And, when it is time to pay attention again, it takes time to switch contexts to the matter at hand while I shake off where my mind went during those many minutes or hours it took to get someone on the phone.
Head Lesions Alt Description: A bust of a head and shoulders. On one side eyes and hair are carved into the surface. On the other side is a deep carved area with lines radiating out from that spot. The bust is white and purple. I created this bust to show how a brain lesion can radiate out the the body from a central location. The front of the bust appears “normal” while the back contains the damage impacting the body.
My Progressive Reality
Pain Alt Description: A dark purple torso from the base of the head to the top of the hips fill the space. In the middle of the torso, the spinal cord is illuminated in yellow, and the shoulders, right mid-section, and right hip areas are yellow and red. The left outside of the torso is black and the right outside of the torso are white and light blue. As my MS has progressed over time, I have more pain, especially when I do or don’t do certain things. This painting was created at a point in time where I has having more pain than normal. My shoulders are impacted by stress and sitting too long. I also rely on my shoulders to compensate for leg and hip weakness by using a cane and walking sticks to get around. Another symptom that has existed since prior to diagnosis is called a MS Hug, an ironic label for the unrelenting tightness someone an experience in their sides or chest. My hug lives in my right side just under my rib cage to my waist. There is no way to alleviate that tightness, and in my case, is made worse when under stress or feeling fatigue. Moving down the right side, I don’t have control over my hip flexors, so my right leg does not lift more than 1/2 to a 1/4 of an inch. Because of this, my gait is abnormal, and I swing my leg out to walk. This causes pain in my hips and glute as I compensate for this weakness.
Broken Body Alt Description: A body existing in a nebulous field of yellow, pink and blue. The body hangs like a puppet with the right elbow elevated and the left side hanging. The right side of the body and the left arm are shaded with dark colors. As my Multiple Sclerosis progresses, my fatigue and body disability has increased. There are days and times where these symptoms are overwhelming and I no longer feel in control of my body but reliant on the forces around me to function. This painting is an attempt to capture that helplessness on the bad days.
no f's left to give Alt description: A white bowl with gray sprinkled around the black text in the middle of the bowl that says “no f’s left to give.” There are many times where my patience has been exhausted due to fatigue these days. While I take care to be kind and respectful with all people, when I am empty, I don’t have any “f’s left to give.”
Out of Spoons Alt description: A white cylinder with a black image of a skull and cross spoons and black text that says “out of spoons.” As my fatigue has increased and my mobility has declined, I find that I run out of energy, or spoons as relayed in spoon theory, much more often and much more quickly. To all my fellow spoonies, I see you and understand what being out of spoons means.
F Bomb Alt description: A black sphere with a shiny, red “F” on the front. yellow, orange, and red pipe cleaners spark out of the top of the sphere. As I run out of energy and I can’t get out of bed or off the couch to do things I enjoy; as my balance wavers and I fall back down to sitting; as I catch my toe on the ground and stumble; when I realize I forgot something in another room and I have to get back up to get it, I let loose a F Bomb because all these things suck and they’re hard. The language feels appropriate in those instances. Thanks MS - this F Bomb is for you.
My Dead Leg Alt Description: A leg from mid-thigh to mid-calf that is dark purple with red areas in the knee, left thigh and right calf. The left side of the painting is purple and the right is yellow with the leg radiating into the outside colors. I don’t have control or much feeling except for tightness and spasticity in my right leg. I receive treatment to reduce the tightness in the leg, but it still contracts the more I use it. I have to manually lift and bend this leg, and as it tightens, the pain increases. These issues limit my ability to walk on anything other than a smooth, level surface. My ability to go up and down stairs is greatly limited and can only be done with assistance, whether from a person or a device. This painting was created in a moment of frustration from the challenges My Dead Leg provides.
Hidden Numbness Alt Description: A hand rising from the bottom edge of the painting. The majority of the hand is yellow, but the thumb and next two fingers are black. The black extends down from the thumb and down the arm. The background is purple-red by the blackened fingers and purple-blue by the other fingers and arm. In 2023, I found out that my MS was initially misdiagnosed as Relapsing-Remitting, the most common type of MS, and was Primary Progressive instead. My new neurologist told me that he could not identify any relapses where I had gotten better, or where the symptoms remitted or lessened. Instead, my symptoms were slowly getting worse over time. One of the ways that this progression was manifesting was in my hand numbness. Where I started with my thumb being numb off and on, that numbness has spread, and now my thumb and three fingers are consistently numb now. Because of this numbness in my left fingers, my dexterity has declined. And this will all just continue.
