This piece begins with the gut, but it does not stay there.
A green clay intestine sits within a lush, living background. It is both anatomical and imagined, a body part and a landscape at the same time. From it, moth or butterfly wings emerge, as if digestion itself is producing flight.
I think about the gut as a place of transformation. Not just of food, but of experience, emotion, and care. What we take in becomes what we are. What we tend to becomes what we can sustain.
This work is about healing as abundance. Not scarcity. Not restriction. Not control. It asks what happens when care becomes something fertile instead of something corrective. When attention to the body becomes an act of nourishment rather than discipline.
The lush background is intentional. (Cause I love love love lushness). It is not decoration. It is a reminder that healing can be full. Overgrown. Generous. Nature does not heal in straight lines. It grows, decays, returns, and grows again. Compost becomes soil. Soil becomes food. Food becomes life.
The moth wings emerging from the intestine hold a quieter meaning. They speak to transformation that is not always clean or linear. Moths are drawn to light, but they are also creatures of night. They move between states. Between knowing and becoming.
Art is medicine.
This piece asks how we might bring more lushness into our own healing practices. What would it mean to treat rest as nourishment? To treat food as care? To treat the body not as a problem to solve, but as an ecosystem to support?
Where are you in the cycle of growth and decay? Where do you wish to be?
Abundant is an offering of that question, held in green matter, winged possibility, and the quiet reminder that healing does not need to be minimal to be real.
If you’d like to hear more about the particulars of the show, check out Linnea and John’s podcast This is Not Art Therapy (The Podcast) for more banter. In Episode 47: Linnea-sode (Slow Bloom) {Art Show/ Fundraiser}, they discuss the show in greater detail.
June 9 update
I’ve changed the name of this piece. In this write up I call it abundance, but I also call it “I don’t like the name of this one and I’m probably going to change it.” (Could this be a hint at my lack of acceptance?) I still waver between feeling lush, and feel like I am withering away.