Arteliance

This morning I went for bloods and was reminded of all the times I went for bloods when I was sick and the results were life or death (although at the time I sort of blocked that out of my mind). For someone with leukemia the blood test results take on an almost cosmic, overwhelming importance. They become your whole world and are given daily in the hospital—even written on a poster on the wall in your room. They indicate how the chemotherapy and then the recovery are going. First, there is the CBC which gives your overall numbers: WBC (white blood count) needs to be up but not too far, RBC (red blood count) helps one not feel exhausted and platelets also have to be up high enough to keep one from just bleeding to death inside.

After the bone marrow transplant the CBC numbers indicate whether or not its working. i.e. whether the transplant engrafts. Later, the emphasis switched to ALP and ALT (liver function tests indicative of GVHD which is a complex process where you want some but not too much). I had moderate–severe GVHD which is more than you want. The numbers had to be monitored weekly and my medication adjusted accordingly. Fortunately my GVHD was responsive to medication and only flared up when I did good things like tai chi or art workshops (like I said, it was complicated).

Today’s bloods were just part of a routine checkup but the reminders of what bloods used to be like for me brought tears to my eyes.

onematch.ca

Being a stem cell transplant recipient myself and being alive because of it, I can’t begin to express how important it is for people to register to donate.

I started this blog without a clear vision of what I wanted to do with it. The challenge I set for myself was simply to post rather than to constantly redesign it.

The clearest vision might be to post my own artwork but I find myself posting links to things I want to remember and to things I find important or interesting. These things include design (I worked as a designer and art director in Calgary for 15 years), other artist’s perspectives, and various web applications that I use on a daily or weekly basis.

As I stick with this blog over time, I am learning that it can be much more than a personal bookmarking tool, it can be a place for:

• sharing ideas and doing it with authenticity and learning about myself and others in the process.
• sharing my own experiences with AML and a bone marrow transplant.
• sharing my artwork.

With these things in mind, I’d like to make the following New Year’s blog resolutions:

• post biographical information (my resume and portfolios) to facilitate contact and trust.
• posting of more Bone Marrow Transplant information to help others who are considering or going through that process (may be contained in a different blog and keep this one more focussed on art and design).
• posting more including doing and posting more artwork

And, finally, because I can’t resist:

• redesign with an emphasis on typography to support the visual information and the process of communication.

I have always been fascinated with drawing the human figure. In my work I strive to capture the energy of life and depict what it means and takes to be human and alive.

In 2000, I was diagnosed with Acute Myelogeneous Leukemia and underwent four rounds of chemotherapy including one round for a Bone Marrow Transplant. I came to Medicine Hat after that and discovered an active art community that I could work and exhibit with. I started showing my work in 2004 and found that my experiences with illness made the depiction of energy, life and humanity even more important to me and my own work became fuller, more authentic and dynamic.

My work has been influenced by my art instructors who told me that I should study Giacometti and by Bev Tosh who showed me that our mark is the same large or small by having us draw on a tiny piece of vellum and then putting it in a slide mount and projecting it on the wall. I have been using an intense, energetic, and web like line in my work ever since.

Sarah, 05.05.10, graphite on paper, 18 X 24 in. Enlarge

Leukemia…eh!?

I met Justin online through a friend whose sister had AML and a bone marrow transplant at the same time I did (June 2000). I had forgotten how really hard it and the GvHD were. Reading Justin’s blog brings it all back. He is a very strong and brave young man.