Art

My entries in CHO’s Year of the Heart Exhibition 

/ Sarah K Reece / Leave a comment

I am happily bursting with creativity at the moment. This is a new ink/acrylic painting, and a mixed media sculpture of a forest spirit. I’ve created them to be part of a local exhibition by one of my favourite community organisations, Community Health Onkaparinga. (CHO) I’m very pleased to be involved.  

  • Uniting Church Hall
  • 23 William Road, Christies Beach

Come and see them in person, the exhibition is open 

  • Wed 16th Nov 10am – 1pm Grand Opening Day with shared lunch 
  • Thurs 17th 12.30 – 4pm Shared lunch 
  • Fri 18th 11am – 2pm
  • Tues 22nd 1 – 4pm Shared lunch 
  • Wed 23rd 10am – 1pm, 5 – 7pm Shared dinner, celebratory close of exhibition. 

There’s also a range of free activities, to learn more or ask any questions, please contact Lauren via student.laurenmay@gmail.com or 0416 578 143. 

Art with Love 

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

I’m still happily painting most evenings, given a chance. Last night I finished 6 ink paintings, as part of a larger project. These will illustrate a podcast I’ve recorded and be posted  online as a video slideshow. It feels wonderful to be creating. ❤

I’m also thrilled to be selling prints. My Etsy shop continues to reach people I haven’t heard of before, which is really wonderful. Recently I received a message over Etsy that truly astonished me.

I learned that people have been buying my print Waiting for You as a gift when a friend experiences a miscarriage. A woman contacted me to buy another print – a friend of hers had been gifted one, and that friend had given her a print, and she now has a friend who has  also miscarried, and she wanted to continue the chain of gifts. It’s so heartbreaking that miscarriage is so common, but to be a part of a spontaneous community response like this – it’s the most wonderful thing I could have hoped for. What an amazing development!  

It means that people are telling their friends when they are grieving, breaking the awful taboo of silence about miscarriage. It means that friends are finding tender ways to respond and connect to each other in grief. People are hurting in connection with their communities, not in isolation. They can hear about resources, they can offer compassion to the next person. It’s a very small thing, next to the loss of a child. Yet it’s also a very powerful thing. Learning that my art has become part of a spontaneous response to such a painful event makes me feel deeply honoured. This is the heart of my art, my peer work, what I love to do in the world. Thankyou all of you who read and share my world in some way, you are part of my tribe and you make this kind of connection possible. ❤

Ink painting: Stripey cat

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I’ve been having a wonderful time with my inks lately, in the evenings while Poppy sleeps. I’ve restocked my Etsy shop with all the prints I’d sold out of over the past few months, and been happily painting and getting ink on my fingers again. This wonderful stripey cat  turned up quiet without any plan the other night, and tickled my fancy. It feels incredibly good to be combining art  and motherhood. I am so happy at the moment. ❤

Sharing Beyond Gender Exhibition

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Gender is such a loaded concept, so embedded in our lives and self concept that it’s invisible to some of us, and profoundly, painfully important to others. As a multiple with male and female parts I identify as genderqueer. This has been a very hidden and at times painful aspect of my life, which I’ve only begun to explore and be open with over the past 5 or so years. Last year I was nervous but intrigued to be invited to be part of this group, creating art about gender in the context of social media.

At times I’ve struggled to locate myself within the trans community, feeling like I’m intruding into territory where I have no right to be. So I attended the first meetup very nervously, feeling somewhat like an impostor, wondering if to disclose the multiplicity and confused about how to present myself with clothes. If I dress too female will I discredit myself? I always wrestle with my sense of people’s expectations and confusion when the trans story is usually understood as being binary and involving a clear transition. As always, the more I feel the pressure to conform to a story the more I want to pull back from it – so I don’t usually wear all black to goth events and I tend to wear some signifier of feminine identity to trans events, sometimes I dress more feminine for these than I usually do… simply because there is always someone else in our system also craving identity and recognition – no matter how much one thing we may appear to be, there is so often a counter story under the surface. And because there’s nothing in the world like a multiple system for tripping each other up and getting under each others feet.

As usual, I’ve been able to claim my space by realising that I’m not the only one hiding in the wings and wondering if my experiences count. Trans identity as part of multiplicity is pretty common, and neither trans nor multiplicity resources tend to handle it particularly well. There’s tremendous tensions about visibility for trans people as well as for multiples, and in some ways I struggle with both. Being out in one area doesn’t make it easier for me to be out in another. In some ways it can be harder. So, I wrote some info about trans and multiplicity on the Dissociative Initiative website, started sharing a bit more about my experiences here on this blog, and turned up to this project.

It was wonderful in a way to be the new nervous person again. I was vividly reminded of people’s intense anxiety about attending Bridges, the face to face group I ran for a couple of years for people experiencing dissociation and/or multiplicity. Remembering what that feels like is always, I think, a valuable thing, a reminder of what it feels like to be the people I try to create resources for. I wish I had been able to be more involved in this project, I found being pregnant a really challenging time and my system went underground for most of it, along with my sense of gender diversity and trans identity. We were very afraid that there might be changes in hormones when the males parts were around that could threaten the pregnancy, so everyone stayed in lockdown – and continuing to be part of this project felt too awkward to manage at the time.

There are some amazing people involved in this exhibition, people I have deep respect for and feel very privileged to have met or worked alongside. Some I have since given talks with, or got to know more closely, or encountered at other events and I’m struck often by their courage and generosity. If you can attend I think you’ll find the same.

Opening Night Friday

28 Oct 2016
5-8pm
‘Raj House’ Feast Hub Central, 54 Hyde St, Adelaide

Facebook Invitation

There are large prints of memes, digital art and prose, there will be DJ Marc Thomas, nibbles, drinks by Gill Kupsch… and gender-queer play as Brian North gets made-over as orange bearded Brenda. There is space for personal dress-ups if you are inspired!

We have some words from Harry Coulthard-Dare, Jenny Scott, Natalya Gee and Tammy Franks. You can buy one of our zines to prompt more reflection later… or get a raffle ticket to go in the running for a beautiful work of art by Amanda Lee Angel.

If you can’t make it you might like to come Saturday between 10-6 or attend our artists’ talk from 330-430. We’ll be drawing the raffle and awarding 3 participants with digital devices then too!

If you live too far away to visit you can see a lot of our creative activism on the inter-web at www.storiesbeyondgender.com

Waiting it out

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I’m working on these two loom bead projects to help me manage the pain/boredom/frustration of over a week of early labour. The poppy design is a gift for Rose’s birthday coming up, she has a passion for these flowers since they bloomed all through our experience of getting pregnant and losing Tamlorn.

Still no sign of little frog, but everything is looking good and we have negotiated to have the inductions delayed by a week to give her and me a chance to go into labour naturally – which means a greater likelihood I’ll be able to manage contractions without needing to use methods of pain relief (ie meds) we know I have trouble processing. The week of early labour has been moving things along slowly, I’m 80% effaced and bubs is in a good position. Fingers crossed things keep moving along!

In the meantime I’m trying to figure out what project to pick up next – art, writing, study, employment… I put out a HVNSA newsletter the other day about the upcoming World Hearing Voices Day. For a year now I have strictly forbidden myself from doing anything on my networks other than maintaining the online discussion groups in order to focus my energy on paid employment. Giving myself a day to reply to emails and create the newsletter was actually a relief – in all the mess of trying to figure out income and the deep pain that topic causes me, I felt clear as an arrow to my chest, a strong sense of love for this work. This, and my arts, is what I want to be doing. This is where my heart is.

I have been delighted to have been approached by a number of people recently for public speaking work. I am booking in dates from September onwards. It’s good to have things to focus on I can actually do something about. 🙂

 

Blessing Beads

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I’ve made the necklaces that Rose and I will take into labour with us, from the beautiful beads our friends and family gave to us with blessings and advice. Mine has an amethyst heart from Rose at the centre and purple glass spacer beads. Rose’s has a bloodstone heart from me and red glass spacer beads. Each of the accent beads are unique and beautiful and we’ve been able to recall who most of them are from which is beautiful. They are all glass, stone, timber, or ceramic, (natural materials, I have a loathing of acrylic beads) with different sizes, shapes, and textures which makes them perfect for ‘worrying’ at and using for grounding. I wrapped the part that sits behind our neck in cotton thread so the weight of the beads isn’t uncomfortable to wear. They are also waterproof. I’m very proud of them and thrilled Rose planned them, taking our tribe with us is a beautiful idea.

Art about multiplicity 

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I am doing a massive clean and sort of our home and belongings to make room for our little Frog who could come at any time now. Today I stumbled across this old artwork, made in about 2002 and exhibited at a psychiatric conference through my involvement in the Amigos program with Second Story. It pre-dates my diagnosis of DID by about 5 years, in fact I’d not even heard of the condition at this time. And yet to me it captures so well some  of that lonely, fractured experience. 

Watch out for the nesting

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I am on maternity leave and alternating my time between sleeping, appointments, nesting, eating, and sleeping. I have energy but almost no mobility, which is an oddly frustrating place to be in and puts me at great risk of turning into a Sargent major type who barks orders at the rest of my household because I want ALL THE THINGS DONE NOW. 🙂 Plus I’m hungry for the first time this pregnancy. Always. Even if I’ve just eaten. Even if I’m too full to eat anything else. I have conversations in my head that go like this:

Wow, I feel sick.
Yes, that’s because you ate a huge bowl of dinner!
Ugh I feel really awful. I hope I don’t throw up.
Don’t you dare throw up!
Hmm. I’m hungry. I wonder if we have any dried apricots left?
What? We are not having anything else to eat! We feel sick, remember?
Oh, apricots are only little though.
That doesn’t matter! How can you still be hungry?? Maybe you’re dehydrated. Go and have a big glass of water.
Okay then. Ugh, now I really feel sick. I’m so distended it’s like I can feel my skin stretching. I really feel like a donut though.
You are nuts! We are not having a donut. We don’t have any donuts.
I think I need to lie down. I feel awful. Oh, look, there’s one banana left!
Argh!!

Pregnancy hormones are also fun. Everything is personal, and everything makes me cry. All the damn time. And the nesting thing! Yikes. I waddle around like an oversized duck and no one else can keep up with me. I have decimated the front garden with the pruning of its life. Things that have not been cleaned in years are being cleaned. I am increasingly ruthless with space making and have got to the point where the things I’m boxing up and giving away to the local op shop are clothes and shoes and craft supplies and books I like, because we will have 4 people here and I simply need more damn space! RAWR.

I have also bought an art desk, one that tilts so the cats don’t get onto it. It is gorgeous. It is glass, which means installing a bright light beneath it will turn it into a cheap light box, and I got it on a very good special for the end of the financial year. When we moved Star in, I lost my studio room and everything was downsized to a table and desk in the lounge room. Now that four of us need to share this living space, and it needs to be baby proofed, that is not going to work at all. It’s the only space that’s got heating and cooling so it’s essential we can all share it. So I’m overhauling it. I’ve got rid of the table, the desk will be cleared off to become a permanent study space for Star, Rose, and whoever has study to do, and I’m installing my new art desk into the dining room. Which kind of means I have a room I can call a ‘studio’ again! I’ve tested leaving a wet oil painting on it for a few days, and so far no painted cats or footprints all over the house. Excellent! It’s all a lot of work though.

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The glorious desk! I only plunged into extreme self hate for about 4 days after buying it. That’s not bad for me.

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As my kitchen is so small, the dining room is where all the kitchen supplies are stored, so it will be a shared space between art things and cooking things. Some items like cake tins have been moved to the shed. Mostly I’m keeping the admin/household stationary in the lounge room with the computer and filing cabinet.


The cot is half assembled in the bedroom and the furniture (like side tables) we can no longer fit in the room (it’s completely taken up by bed, cot, change table, and tallboy for baby clothes) are out in the shed. Baby clothes that are size 1 and up have been soaked, washed, dried, and boxed up in plastic waterproof boxes in the shed. The lounge room is starting to look a lot better with a lot more space, I still have to clear the desk to turn it into a study station, but progress is being made!

I fill all the household bins and wait impatiently until they’re collected before I can do more pruning/sorting/cleaning. I am very determined! I have to do lists of things I want done before baby arrives which we are ploughing through at high speed, I am working on sorting out the sheds so we can find what’s in there and store new things, and I am setting up better cleaning systems and making sure we have the right tools and can keep things ticking over. I am also determined that as I’ll be doing half my labouring at home, it is not going to be a horrible messy pet fur encrusted experience. I want a clean bathtub, and glasses to drink out of and a floor that doesn’t stick to my feet. Chaos will descend on us soon enough, we are not starting out with it!

This is the desk I need to clear of art supplies so it can be used for study:

That leaves us with more room in the lounge for baby play things, for guests, to put up a temporary table for dining or big projects or tax sorting out which can be taken down again and give us the room back. Some space for hanging wet clothes in winter too. Life size tetris, it really is. 🙂

Looking forward

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

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I’ve started a new oil painting, about walking in the local park at night, as I loved to do with Zoe before I was pregnant. There’s been a lot of art this past week. 🙂

Tomorrow is our baby shower/blessing way. I’m excited. It’s been a sad week too – both Rose and I are waiting on news as each of us has a grandma in end of life care. In both cases they live much too far away for us to visit, which is hard. It’s strange being happy about the baby shower and sad about death and loss at the same time. Rose and I find ourselves feeling vulnerable and anxious, wanting our people around us tomorrow, a sense of connection to our tribe.

We move between grief and joy, the way I move between pain and pleasure in this pregnancy. One hour we curl up in bed and cry and talk about all the sense of unfinished business. The next we pack baby clothes and games and food for tomorrow, ticking off check-lists and making plans.

I’m soaking up every hour I get where I’m not overwhelmed by pain but can find the tremendous hope and joy in carrying our baby; counting the stretch marks like tide lines on my skin, Rose and I holding my generous bump to feel the baby dancing under my skin. Watching for those moments even if they are brief, knowing they will be gone so very soon and I’ll look back on them for the rest of my life, maybe even miss them at times. It’s been a very hard pregnancy, but not every minute is miserable. There’s beauty here too; hope, longing, and love. Looking forward to celebrating that tomorrow.

Gilding

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So, yesterday morning I was eating a bowl of porridge in front of a financial counsellor as we tried to look for ways to keep supporting the three of us on the two incomes we have at the moment. (welfare are still dragging their feet about their obligations to Star, so nearly 4 months together we’re still struggling financially) I’d used breakfast time to put on loads of washing. Rose was home sick in bed following a night of asthma attacks and nebuliser. Star was sick at school and I was on standby to go and pick her up if she didn’t improve soon. And I was trying to have breakfast and get through all my errands without dropping any balls. Ah, the life of a parent!

Today I’m home. A whole, uninterrupted workday is music to my ears! Working from home when we’re all sharing the same space and my art studio now doubles as my admin space, the dining table, and study space for others is frankly painful. Getting things done while my household are out studying is my best bet, but it’s also prime appointment time which means hours stuck in waiting rooms and driving or bus-ing around the countryside.

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Mid-afternoon and my table looks like this. I’ve been able to gild all the prints that have been ordered for Waiting for You. I’ve also spent some time researching and testing a few different gesso/size products (these are the ‘glue’ that binds the gold leaf) to see how they work using different tools and papers and which might be most suitable for various applications. I haven’t been successful yet in finding anyone to teach me gilding techniques in Adelaide, so I’m learning from reading online, youtube videos, and trial and error. I’m extremely tired but happy with my work. It’s a joy.

Following up Waiting for You

/ Sarah K Reece / 2 Comments

I’ve been working on filling the art orders from the opening night of my exhibition Waiting for You. The exhibition is only open for another 7 viewing days (Mon – Fri 4-6pm), so if you haven’t made it in yet you’d best get your skates on!

I delivered this beautiful notebook today to a lovely person who was at the opening and particularly fell in love with this artwork. I ordered it in especially and was really happy with how it turned out on this blank notebook, just beautiful. 🙂

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Of the prints I’ve had ordered for embellishment – in this case the customer asked for a print to be made much larger than the original so they could see the tiny details better. This is about 1 and a half times larger and it’s stunning. If I’m able to hold this exhibition again I think I will display this artwork at this size instead. I’m planning to do all my embellishing of prints tomorrow so that I can send the prints that need it in for framing next. Everything is on track to be ready by the close of the exhibition on May 20th.

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I’ve also created a keepsake for the exhibition, this little booklet. It’s free, on display at the exhibition (or I can send you one). It contains a short biography, description of the origin of the exhibition, price lists of the art, information about the artbook Mourning the Unborn, and links to Sands and other online resources.

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I’ve also placed free brochures for Sands on display by the exhibition for guests. There’s also a little visitors book for people to leave thoughts and messages.

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Beautiful Review of Waiting for You Exhibition

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The most lovely article about my exhibition has been written up by artist Julia Wakefield for the Weekend Notes. She attended the opening night and has snapped lovely photos of me and guests and the embellished prints. I look very pregnant and fairly exhausted but the art is glowing. 🙂 She describes it as “a courageous, beautiful exhibition about a taboo subject” and writes about the history of how it all came about as well as her impressions. It’s gorgeous to read and so good to see some photos of the night! I brought my good camera but left my SD card home, so I don’t have a lot of pictures to remember it by. I very much appreciate an article like this! ❤

www.weekendnotes.com/waiting-for-you-art-exhibition-about-pregnancy-loss-and-motherhood-at-the-box-factory/

Sarah K Reece, miscarriage, pregnancy, art, art exhibition, mental health, SANDS, loss, grief, mourning

More positive feedback is coming in from people who couldn’t make the opening night but have attended the exhibition, which is very heart warming. Some people from further away or interstate have expressed interest in an exhibition local to them, which I shall look into the logistics of. The embellished prints I currently have on display are continuing to sell too, which is very exciting! If you’re planning to attend do sing out, if I can I’m happy to meet you there. 🙂

Wonderful Arty Things

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My lovely exhibition Waiting for You is still on display at the Box Factory in Adelaide until May 19. (details here) As I can’t attend every day, I’ve been working on setting up materials that will be helpful to those who couldn’t attend the opening night. Today I finished the final draft of my brochure about the exhibition and had a collection printed, it contains information about me, how the exhibition came about, the artbook Mourning the Unborn, and prices. I bought these stands today, and they are now on display alongside brochures from Sands, all free for anyone. There’s also a display copy of the artbook for people to have a look at.

If you’d like a brochure yourself, Sands have theirs on their website, and I can pop one of mine in the post for you – those of you with orders will get one with your art as a keepsake. 🙂

I’ve also been to the printer this week and placed the opening night orders for art and frames, and the printer there loves my work and has offered to display some framed on his wall, for sale to his customers. How wonderful!

Tomorrow I will be working on a guest post for the Sands blog for Mother’s Day, which I’m very pleased to have been invited to write.

There’s also a review of the exhibition by artist and writer Julia Wakefield, which I feel very fortunate about and will share with you very soon. 🙂

It’s wonderful to see this exhibition/community event continue to grow in various ways beyond the opening night.

Tonight I attended the Healing Voices film and was once again struck by how tremendously important artists of all kinds can be in creating community and bringing issues to light. While many other people did the hard work of organising the screening, artsy people wrote and directed and edited and created the beautiful content that spoke to people. I still lament that there has been no real home for me in mental health locally, but I am feeling great hope and strength in standing on the platform of arts to be part of change in the world. A friend from down south was lamenting the difficult hours that Waiting for You is being exhibited currently, and asked me if I might be interested in finding a hanging space for it in her area sometime. I think that would be a fantastic idea and I am keen to explore other opportunities for the exhibition beyond May.

I’m also quietly giving some thought to World Hearing Voices day coming up later this year and what I might be able to do as an artist to raise awareness and be part of that. There’s a place for me somewhere.

25 weeks pregnant and a week of birthdays

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What a week. Rose and some friends organised a surprise birthday camp-fire night for me a couple of days after the exhibition opening. Once I got over feeling embarrassed and a little overwhelmed, it was the nicest evening. Everyone else did the cooking and organising and running around and I just lit a fire and sat next to it. It was so peaceful and relaxed. We ate baked potatoes and chocolate cake and sat around in the dark telling stories and jokes and listening to songs on the guitar.

I’ve been taking things very gently since the opening night, a fellow artist kindly warned me in advance to expect a crash so I blocked out a number of days to just rest. I thought I would be very emotionally down after the big high, which often happens for me with personal talks in mental health. This was a very personal talk, I read poems about mourning Tamlorn. I’ve never openly wept in front of a room before like that, nor made so many other people cry with my sharing. It was a very precious space.

But the surprise for me was that the crash has been physical with severe pain levels. I must have been more tuned out of my body and pushing it harder on the lead up than I’d realised, because the moment the last guest left the opening night, it hit me so hard I could barely walk. I’ve done not only all the art and framing and hanging work, but so much admin and organising. I cooked two huge pots of soup for the night so had big blisters on my hands from cutting loads of pumpkin and peeling a big bag of potatoes. I was very lucky to have so much help with the set up and pack up from kind friends.

I spent all next day in bed, getting up for short hobbles around the house every 45 minutes to stretch my joints. Since then I’ve spent until noon or later every morning in bed just managing the pain. I was talking to another pregnant woman today who is a few weeks further along than me, and she told me that yes, at 30 weeks she’s just reached that point where the pelvic pain is kicking in and getting a bit uncomfortable. I bit my lip.

So it’s been pretty wonderful to have the recovery time from the opening match up with people being extra lovely to me for my birthday. I’ve been very spoiled and nurtured which has been very appreciated. I’m calling this whole idea of an exhibition for my birthday a win. I’ve been far less stressed than usual about an upcoming birthday, I feel incredibly proud of myself for pulling off such an important event and bringing to life a dream I’ve had for many years, and the opening itself was a tremendous success. I shall definitely be doing it again.

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In the meantime I’m working on the admin and orders from the opening night and doing all the follow up and finish off work to tidy the loose ends. I’ve been debriefing and reflecting on what worked well and what I would do differently next time and capturing as much of that as possible so that it will be easier to do this again. I don’t know if this was a fluke or the start of something great in my life but I’m hoping to build on what worked. It’s the first break I’ve caught in a long while, the first work related endeavour that has turned out well in a long time! I’m celebrating that. And I figure that one of the indicators of a successful project is that in the aftermath of it, I’m actually excited about the next one. ❤

The Opening Night was incredible

/ Sarah K Reece / 6 Comments

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I’m home in bed, tucked up under an electric blanket to ease the very bad pain I’m in, reflecting on a whirlwind evening. It was an amazing success, whichever way you cut it. The most amazing group of people attended. I sold a lot of art. My talk and poetry were very well received. And the food – and cake especially – were incredible! (thankyou M!) Friends and family pulled together around me, efficiently sorting out the background work. I was stunned by how busy I was, I thought I’d have much more time to talk to everyone. My sales paperwork wasn’t as helpful as I’d hoped it would be, and I was the only one who could work the card reader for most of the night so I was doing a lot more admin and less connecting than I’d hoped… But a self hosted exhibition is a steep learning curve and I have learned so much for next time.

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To everyone who came – thankyou! Thankyou for being there, for crying with me, for buying art, for your gifts and hugs and stories and connection. You have moved me deeply. I sincerely hope that everyone who wept felt safe and accepted, that the pain we touched tonight was healing rather than traumatising. I think we did something special together. I know it was very hard for some of you, very risky, that it took courage and trust in me. I honor that. It was very hard for me too, but very beautiful, very precious. Thankyou for doing it with me.

I know a lot of people couldn’t make it – the exhibition itself is still on for another 4 weeks until May 19th. I’m also going to be getting the rest of the prints up in my online store over the next few days, my artbook is already available and I’m more than happy to sign a copy for you and pop it in the post.

With love xxx

Food, kids, etc – last minute questions

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Opening Night!

Tucker:

Yes, there will be food. Myself and other friends are bringing platters of veggies and dip, hot soups, breads and cake. One of the soups is gluten free, dairy free, vegan, and actually still quite tasty. 😉

There will be spring water, juice, and fizzy drinks. This is a alcohol-free event. I can’t drink as I’m pregnant so I don’t see why I should pay for liquor license for you lot to have a glass. 😉

Kids:

Are welcome! Obviously depending on their age you might need to explain some of the topic or discuss some of the artwork with them to help them understand or process. Some of the images are paintings of nudes (not graphic or sexual), there are some stylised depictions of blood, and some are very sad – it’s up to you what you feel is appropriate for your child.

Gifts:

Yes, this is my birthday celebration, but please don’t feel like you have to bring a gift or card. It’s completely fine to just turn up. If you like giving gifts or cards however, then please don’t feel that I’m going to set it on fire if you do. You’re welcome to. If you like the idea of a gift but are short on time or not sure what to do, please consider buying some of my art, or making a donation to Sands SA, who will be there on the night. 🙂

Shopping:

The embellished prints on display are all available to buy, and there will be many other options such as unframed regular prints, and my artbook which you can take home on the night. I can accept cash, card, and paypal. I am also adding content daily to my Etsy online store.

Access:

This is a wheelchair accessible venue with a lift and accessible toilet. There is street parking all around the area on Carrington and Halifax Streets. You can’t drive from Regent Street North to Regent Street South, but there is a path for access on foot if you park on Carrington St.

Freedom & safety for a charged topic

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My Waiting for You exhibition opening night is just around the corner and I want to speak briefly about creating safety when dealing with such a painful theme.

For many of us, this is a really charged topic. It’s painful, intense, deeply personal, and may not be something we’ve ever really had a chance to process – much less to engage in a public setting. Breaking taboos can be liberating but also triggering and incredibly distressing. I’m deeply aware of this, because Rose and I are in this place in a very real way, right now. I want to share publicly the same conversations I’m having with her, because I suspect she’s not the only one feeling conflicted. I want to speak into the heart of that conflict because it’s what hurts so badly and makes it so hard for us to talk about these things and know what we need. We often feel pulled in contradictory directions – needing to talk about it/see it in public/bring it to light, and also needing to hide away from it and deal with it in privacy. It can be really hard.

I have taken a number of steps to help the opening night to be a safer space. You can help me with this in how you treat the other guests and yourself. Here are some guidelines and values I’ve set for the evening:

Freedom

  • You are free not to come! I won’t be upset with you if I know you personally. You are not under pressure to attend to support me.
  • You are free to be ambivalent and unsure. It’s okay to decide at the last minute if it feels like a good idea to come. It’s okay to change your mind. Please don’t force yourself to do anything that doesn’t feel like it’s right for you.
  • Free to leave any time you need to. It won’t be ‘rude’ to step out or leave early. No judgement. You’re also welcome to step out for a bit then come back.
  • Free to decide you’d rather attend privately instead of for an open night with other people around.
  • Free to buy something that speaks to you to take home, and free to find the art confronting or disconnected from your experience, and support me in other ways if you want to.

Feelings are okay

  • It will be okay to feel things. It’s okay to cry, to be moved, to remember, to talk about things.
  • It will be okay to feel good, or sad, or mixed up, or lots of things at the same time.
  • It will be okay not to feel things, to be numb, or not in that space, or not public about it.

Resources on the Night

  • Sands Australia will have a representative at the evening who is more than happy to talk to anyone looking for information or support. Sands provides a helpline and other resources around miscarriage, stillbirth, and newborn death. She will also have brochures and information you can take home and look at later.
  • Tissues and friendly people around (my tribe is full of good people) who can give you space or a hug. Some of my friends are champion huggers, so just sing out if you need one.
  • A place to be involved. Rose and I have created a small installation We Love – providing a space for you to participate and recognise your own losses. You can write names or something meaningful to you on papers provided and have a time to reflect.

Art can be powerful. It can bring the private into a public space. It can help us to speak about things its difficult to find words for. It can help people not to forget that behind silence and cultural taboo are real people who need and deserve safety and connection. It can express and share our unbearable experiences in ways that help make them bearable to look at. This kind of art can be a speaking back to silence, a way of documenting things that were erased from our lives and never allowed into our histories and family stories. These things happened. We felt many things about them. They changed us. They are important. We deserve space to share our stories, mourn our losses, and rebuild our lives – without secrecy, without shame. In community; with connection, privacy, and love.

Waiting for You Exhibition is Open

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It’s up and beautiful and ready for viewing! The theme of pregnancy, loss, & motherhood is so special to me. The works are joyful, heartbreaking, raw, and tender. For those who missed my heartfelt radio interview about my experiences of miscarriage and this exhibition, it is now available as a podcast through Radio Adelaide here.

The Exhibition

Open between April 19th – May 19th, Monday to Fridays, 4-6pm.

It’s at the Box Factory, 56 Regent Street South, Adelaide. (map) This is a wheelchair accessible venue. All works are available for purchase.

If you are on Facebook the event details are here.

The Opening Night

Was a wonderful success. 🙂

There were prints and cake because this was my birthday celebration this year. I launched my beautiful artbook Mourning the Unborn. As I was dealing with a charged topic, I took care to create a safer space – read about the values and resources.

Last minute questions about food and kids etc.

My Online Store

Especially for those further afield, I have just opened my Etsy Art Store and begun stocking it with prints from this exhibition, and my artbook Mourning the Unborn. It won’t be quite as lovely as seeing these beautiful gold embellished prints framed and displayed, but you will still be able to see the artworks and buy a regular print yourself.

I’ve turned 33 this year, and I’m glad to use this moment to put my work out into the world, and honored to include everyone it speaks to in some way. ❤

Listen to me talk about miscarriage and art on Radio

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I was interviewed recently about my experience of miscarriage, my upcoming exhibition Waiting for You, and the launch of my artbook Mourning the Unborn. It’s a very personal interview and lasts about half an hour, with the lovely Jennie hosting on Arts Breakfast. If you’re local you can tune into Radio Adelaide at 101.5 FM, Saturday the 16th April at 10am.

It’s now available as a podcast online here.

I gave the interview yesterday, which was an incredibly hard day for me. I had a fall the night before going out to a date night with lovely Rose. Walking in the dark I turned my ankle in a pot hole and went down a bit hard. Yesterday baby didn’t do the usual morning kicking, and by 3pm they still hadn’t woken up despite me walking, resting, drinking cold water, and eating something sweet. I got a bit worried.

So, following this interview Rose picked up Star and I and we spent a long evening in the hospital waiting to make sure everything was okay. We’ve just got the last test result back this evening, and everything is looking fine. But needless to say I was feeling a bit raw and don’t actually remember much of the interview itself.

I feel it was very good, true to my experiences and work. It’s also exposing and personal and I feel a bit daunted by being so public. I hope it’s valuable and I’m looking forward to meeting people on the opening night and getting some feedback about this whole idea in person.

My Artbooks have arrived!

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

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Here they are, all ready for my launch. They are lovely! Full colour, high gloss, very beautiful. I’m into the final preparations for the exhibition side of things. The last custom frames will be finished this week, and all the prints are in.

I’m sick with a sinus infection, bad fibro pain and very irritated skin. Rose is down too, she started with a sinus infection and tonsillitis, but today it’s developed into a chest infection and the tonsillitis has gone bacterial and nasty. So we’re both pretty miserable!

I’ve only got a couple more weeks before everything needs to be finished and ready to hang. The last key orders for custom sized matting for the embellished works need to be put in this week, so I’ll be home for the next while, covered in gold fragments and sizing while I get them all finished. I’m gilding the tenth work tonight before bed. It’s a relief to see it coming together.

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22 weeks pregnant

/ Sarah K Reece / 1 Comment

I’m on the upwards swing of my mood cycle, and enjoying it immensely. I have DONE things and FINISHED things and I am back for a little while in the place where hosting an art exhibition actually seems like a good idea. This is unlikely to last so I am getting as much mileage out of it as I can. 🙂

Last week I learned that Centrelink (Australian welfare) had given me until today to gather a very important assortment of supporting documents from individuals and organisations. Considering the Easter long weekend knocked 4 business days out of the already tight timeframe of one week, I have been a very busy person. It’s like war, really. Of paperwork. The most stubborn and well informed person wins, if you don’t starve to death or beat your own brains out against your desk in the process. At least, that’s my take on things. So today I uploaded a stash of documents and I am hoping that I’ve made some pencil-pusher somewhere very happy and they can photocopy them in triplicate and file them all to their heart’s content. I’m done!

Yesterday I picked up a second big collection of prints for my upcoming exhibition and spent the evening cataloguing them and filing the originals safely away. Very time consuming process, but also exciting and satisfying! They are sooooo lovely. I am very excited about showing them to people. And I’m hoping like crazy that my catalogue will make re-orders much easier for me, and adding new information a simple process… please?

I was recently introduced to trello.com and I’ve trialled it this week to help me keep track of my various to do lists… I am managing the household admin for my family, a lot of admin for our amazing teen, everything for my exhibition, and my own personal stuff that needs doing. I’m loving trello. Managing multiple projects is much easier when I can update and modify things online instead of endlessly rewriting my lists as they get harder to read over time. I am taking on admin better than I ever have this year, I’ve accepted that it’s just going to be one of my roles in my family and the faster I adapt to that and the more skills I develop the less stressful it will be. There’s still days I want to set my desk on fire, of course, but I am delegating more and accepting that my fledgling organisational skills are needed and necessary and help my family run more smoothly. I’m also finally counting the admin as ‘housework’ and not double loading myself trying to make sure I do lots of that too- I think growing up it wasn’t treated as a real thing that actually took time and effort and skill, like lots of the things women traditionally did for their families. Repositioning it as important (and something no one else wants to do) and acknowledging that it takes dedication on my part is helping. We keep tinkering with new structures for housework and bedtimes and homework and sharing the very small space we live in now there’s three of us here and bit by bit I feel like we’re muddling our way towards approaches and systems that work for us.

Pregnant still at 22 weeks now. Bubs kicks and does back flips and wriggles around every day, mostly just a nudge here and there, but sometimes a good hour of frenetic dancing I can’t sleep through. It’s pretty awesome to have that constant reminder they are alive. Both Rose and I are still struggling with pretty intense anxiety about them, personally I feel almost obsessed by my fears about having a stillbirth. I still haven’t heard from my midwife despite many phone calls and messages left for her. I have a letter from the hospital telling me she will be in touch sometime, and reminding me that until I have that all important first meeting I’m not officially in the program or allowed to ask for support from them. So irritatingly I’m trekking off to my GP for hand holding and advice about horrible itching (which can be a sign of important things going wrong, or can just be my usual unhappy skin being extra unhappy) and so on. I know having a midwife doesn’t magically make anything safer or better but as the weeks go by it’s getting harder not to resent not having her on board or take it all personally or feel a bit overwhelmed by the fears of something glitching with my health and being kicked out of the midwife program anyway. There’s a whole lot of things I can’t control and won’t be given a choice about, and having that restrict any further is a possibility that feels suffocating.

Health wise I have a lot more energy, thankfully, and the nausea is much rarer. Food aversions are in full force still and unpredictable. Cravings are starting up, so far I’m fascinated by coffee which is unusual for me. I’m restricting myself to 2 cups a week but those I am very much enjoying. Possibly linked to that is that the fibro pain levels are high, and my mornings and nights are nasty. I can barely walk most evenings due to severe back pain and uncooperative nerves that don’t want to bear weight on my legs. Mornings I wake up feeling like I’ve been kicked a few times by a horse. My life currently puts deadlines in front of me that require I drag myself into the world of the living and make things happen. Once the deadlines have passed I usually need some days of seriously not adulting very much at all to recover. Tomorrow will hopefully be one of those days.

Tonight, I’m loading up an online game to reward myself, and in the background I can hear Rose singing our stressed teen to sleep. I adore my peoples. ❤

New prints for my exhibition (this is awesome)

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Yesterday, I collected about half the prints for my exhibition Waiting for You. Eee! I have discovered that there are many differences in the way printers handle things, even when using the same place. If I haven’t specified something each printer has a slightly different take on things. Which has made me realise that I need to be keeping much better records (ie, any records at all) about what I’m doing so that I can reorder items easily and see what’s going on with my collection.

So the other thing I’ve done is started my art catalogue. It’s hard to find out how other artists do this, but for me I’m putting everything into an excel spreadsheet, and coding each artwork with a number, and each print work a corresponding but unique number too. Then I have a folder for each artwork with certificates of authenticity and descriptions for when its displayed other bits and bobs related to that work. Most important in the folder is the master document that corresponds to the catalogue number and name, and contains all the specifics like the size of the original and exact details of any prints I’ve ordered…

Between these I can easily see what’s going on with that work, when I made it, if I still own the original, what has sold and what hasn’t (for stock taking) and I can easily reorder something. It’s slow and painstaking work, but I’m also finding out very satisfying. Seeing my work in a new light – just how many exhibitions I’ve been part of and work sold.

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Today between errands I’m working on price lists and trying to figure out how I’m going to frame things when I’ve run out of budget. First self hosted solo exhibition means going through the creative process steps 1-6 around once a week, if not once a day. o.O Hard work but satisfying.