Art & Advocacy

I wanted to share with you that last week I received the Canadian MS Society's Spring/Summer magazine in the mail. As I was flipping through it, I came across me! Back in February, they invited me, as someone living with NMO to join their Flee or Fight national campaign. I was honoured to be a part of it and submitted this photo. I knew it was going to be used-I just didn't know where, when or how. It's really exciting that it was included in the magazine which was sent out to homes across Canada! What a great way to raise awareness!

I also finally was able to gt my hands on a copy of Dawn DeVries Sokol's new book. It's a chunky monkey, loaded with beautiful art journal pages. If you don't own this one, it really is a must have.

I am please to share that my artwork is on page 33.  Both of these pieces of work mean so much to me-the man on the left was my Gramps' maternal grandfather (my great, great grandfather) old man Reimer and the family in the photo on the left is my Gram's family-my great grandparents (I was named (my middle name) for my Great Grandpa Nowell, who died a month before I was born) and my Grams' siblings. (M great aunts and uncles.) My Gram is the tall one at the back. It's a really lovely way to remember them. My friends Seth Apter and Penelope Harris also have work in this book.

I am currently working on finishing up my latest zine and watching my post box for all the zines being submitted to the exchange I am hosting. So far three have arrived and they are amazing. I am looking forward to packaging them all up and sending them off to everyone. I know they are going to love them! I have included the art work that's in Dawn's book in my zine. I couldn't resist!

I also participated in the MS Society BC-Yukon Division's art show. These are the pieces I submitted. It was a great way to help raise awareness for NMO. At one point, as I was taking this photo, two women walked up and one pointed out to the other, the long lesion on my spinal cord shown in the middle piece. (Which, by the way was published in Seth Apter's The Pulse Of Mixed Media.) I leaned over and said "Yeah and that's an NMO lesion, not and MS lesion." They then introduced themselves as scientific researchers at UBC. They were quite excited to see an MRI image used in this way.

It's been a busy time settling into our new home and neighbourhood. I've been busy feathering our new nest. The days just seem to fly by.