statement

The feminist art critic, Lucy Lippard (1983) says that one of art's functions is to recall that which is absent -- whether it is history, or the unconscious, or form, or social justice. What is absent in health? What is absent in ill-health? What is present? When I first starting working with medically ill patients in 1986, it was a conscious choice, not only how to begin the shaping of my clinical practice, but a choice in activism. I felt that health was the next political arena for me. I believed that a revolution of consciousness was going to take place in the field of mind-body health. And that has proved to be true, not only in terms of health and healthcare, but in the various uses of integrative arts medicine. The work grew out of my experience with my own immune system illness, Chronic Fatigue Immune Dysfunction Syndrome (CFIDS), and how that experience intersected with my career, my art, my hopes, my dreams and my experience of my own "Authentic Self" or what could be called my own voice.