Artists at Work North Adams Cohort
NEW: Looking to book an interview as a young adult cancer patient/survivor? Here’s the link for that.
In February, Artists at Work announced their North Adams grantees…including me!
This is a transformational grant. AAW offers an annual salary to artists in the tradition of the Works Progress Administration and requires each artist partner with a community organization or nonprofit to complete a project.
It’s a way to move my art (both writing and quilting) into the world of social practice and advocacy, and a way to create some offerings for patients and survivors to process what they’re going through, to commemorate, to honor the slog that is cancer treatment—and to share data about the rise in young adult cancer.
Since 1990, there has been an alarming increase in young adult cancers, with breast cancer leading the pack. There are new members of our club every day. While there has been an overall decrease in cancer deaths, there has been a whopping 79.1% increase in cancer rates for people under age 50 ACROSS THE WORLD.
This increase necessitates new methods and practices of care. Younger people are starting or building their careers. They often have young children to care for, or they are in the middle of taking care of aging parents, or doing both at the same time. It’s hard to recover from the financial blow of treatment if you lose your mid-level job in the middle of chemo.
After treatment, we’re expected to go back to “normal” without much time to re-evaluate who we are and what’s important now. We also live with the constant reminder that with decades to live, the cancer could come back.
Many of us (including me) live with daily complications and severe after-effects from treatment. Those symptoms often require intensive work to pinpoint a cause or find a solution. In this economy, we simply do not have the ability to attend midday support groups, daily PT appointments, and other programming designed for the needs of an older population.
I am delighted to have funding and space to do this work. It feels so necessary, and it feels like something I need to be doing. Also, my fellow grantees are both AMAZING artists themselves, and I’m stoked to learn from them and experience this year knowing we have one another as a resource. I’m getting an incredible chance to make something. My life as a cancer survivor is NOT easy, but I’ve been walking on air since I got the news. Right now, I’m doing research, mapping out a design-thinking-focused project, and interviewing young adult cancer patients and survivors in the community. I am hoping to gain a deeper understanding of what we need and what our experiences are like (particularly within a rural setting where health care can be complicated) before creating anything for our community. I also have some ideas for art around this and how to incorporate data in that art. Please stay tuned (and contact me if you’d like to participate).
