sarah brown

i started thinking about this topic during the planning phases of our first annual show and celebration. i was sitting on the porch brainstorming with a good friend of mine. she said that her neighbor had been diagnosed with cancer, and suddenly she struggled with what to say to her. she wanted to find the balance between checking in about her friend’s health, and not checking in too much – she didn’t want it to be the only thing they talked about. in the past they had always talked about gardening. so should she keep it to that? and then would cancer be the elephant in the corner? how could she be respectful and not prying? supportive without dwelling on it?

while everyone we talk to in this project has had a unique experience, there are many common threads that we see emerge. one of the major things that people experience is the difference in how people look at them, or engage in conversation. even strangers in the grocery store, staring at their shaved heads. it’s one of the things that can impact your self esteem as a survivor very greatly, and that’s why we are set on exploring it in this project.

i hope you will join us and contribute your experiences to the discussion. we believe that by talking through some of these root causes of self esteem issues in cancer survival, we can all play a role in making the experience less difficult than it already is.

EVENT DETAILS

As always, this project seems to move at its own pace, in fits and starts. We’ve learned to be okay with this, as both us of have these “job” things that keep us busy and we have to get stuff done when we can.

Even so, we’re gearing up to have a huge year. We’ve met with more prospective models for the 2012 collection than we’ve met with in all of our previous experience combined. We’ve been advised by women in active stages of treatment, women who’ve established new families in the wake of their struggle with cancer, or chosen prophylactic mastectomy to prevent cancer in the face of frightening family histories. We’ve held our breath at the news that newfound survivor friends were battling recurrences of their disease. We even heard from an upcoming model who was so moved by this project that she added an Of Scars tattoo to her tat collection. In every way, we are humbled and inspired. We’ve heard more perspectives than ever before, met our oldest and youngest survivors to date, and heard story after incredible story. Whether we’re learning what it means to live with cancer, or to rebuild with the new identity of Survivor, it’s been a powerful and emotional journey already, and we’re just getting started.

Beyond a deeper and more diverse group of models, our project is in the process of expanding our approach to artistic exploration of the Survival Experience. We’re calling our new series Seeing Scars, and with it, we’re deepening the art of conversation about cancer. In the coming months, we’ll bring in speakers, experts, and survivors with fascinating perspective on the third Tuesday of each month. Tonight, we’ll kick off it off simply with a refresher course on the Of Scars project for those who’ve followed it for awhile, and an introduction for anyone new to the project. If you’re in Minneapolis, and you’re free, come hang out with us at the Fox Egg Gallery from 7-8 tonight. (We feed people snacks. We’re cool like that.)

In coming months, we’ll turn this part of the discussion to matters both practical and profound. We’ll explore things as seemingly simple as talking to friends with cancer, and as challenging as feeling like your beautiful, sexy, and strong self during chemo.

We hope you’ll join us for a session or two (or hey, even all six!), but if you can’t, keep an eye on the site. We’ll be creating a podcast from each of the Seeing Scars discussion events, and posting it here for you to hear, or to share with friends.

we said at the event in october that we would share the music that was created for the evening, with the healing haikus that our friend Katy and her family recorded.

if you weren’t there, just a little background on that  - we wanted an ambient soundtrack to play during the event, one that wouldn’t be distracting or jarring, but would contribute in a meaningful way to the overall atmosphere.

if you go back and read this post about the haiku assignment, you will learn where these haikus came from. they were recorded for the event and our good friend, musician Ryan Paul got his band together and put music behind them.

often in the course of that discussion, the photograph that i want to take of the person becomes very clear in my mind. sometimes i need more time to process before i talk about it, and sometimes i blurt out my idea in the meeting. when we met with our wonder woman, katy, she told us the story of having a double mastectomy on her 40th birthday. it occurred to me that we could help her reclaim her birthday – but that’s not how i said it. i get excited and all idea-bursty and just pounced on her with LET’S DO A BIRTHDAY PARTY!!  my words coming out hadn’t had time to align with where i was coming from in my mind, and it immediately didn’t feel right to her. we don’t ever want to push anyone to a place they don’t want to go, but i explained that depending on how we approached staging a birthday party it could be a chance for her to begin to replace a painful experience with a pleasant one. we did three photo shoots with katy, and we did end up doing the birthday party. she chose five of her dear friends to come participate and brought decorations and the actual birthday cards she had received. our mutual friend nicki baked a cake. people brought presents. we had the full spectrum of emotions. in the end, it wasn’t a staged birthday party, it was REAL. it was wonderful.

the photo that we chose for the october event was an interpretation of something that katy had told us in our first meeting: that she felt amazing support and friends and loved ones all around her, but still at times felt alone in her experience.

yesterday we met with an incredible woman named patty, and she went home and wrote about the meeting here. after the meeting my mind was racing with ideas that we want to try in the project. every single time we meet with a new person we learn something new, get inspired, and find our project growing wiser.

i wanted to write about our process because i want you all to know what we are doing behind the scenes, between events. i also want to let you know in case you are reading this and thinking of participating or meeting with us, so you start to get an idea of what to expect.

we are working on a plan to bring people together more often than in october. we are learning that though our project has a website, the real stuff doesn’t happen online. we want it to become more accessible, more often, and are moving slowly and surely toward that.

in the last week i’ve had so many people send me the link to this project that is similar to ours – The Scar Project and ask me how i feel about it. my first thought?

“OH MY GOD THOSE WOMEN AND THOSE PHOTOS ARE STUNNING.”

and my next thoughts, in no particular order, were:

• does this decrease the impact of what i am doing?
• what can i do to get that much attention directed toward our project?
• would people more broadly understand what we are doing if we shared all our photos on the internet?

and then i started trying to answer myself.

NO. this does not decrease the impact of what we are doing, in fact, i think it makes it stronger. we are doing our part, in our community, to make a difference in people’s lives. i am glad we aren’t the only ones doing this! we can’t do it alone!

i don’t know what i can do to increase the attention we are getting, that’s not my field. but i will say that so far it has seemed that every time it starts to speed ahead of us, it’s not as genuine. the project has its own life, and its own mind, and it has bestowed upon Kate and i the honor of hosting it, holding its hand, being its guide as it puts itself into the world. it tells us what to do, and it tells us we don’t need to hurry to have an impact. we don’t need to hurry to be doing the right thing.

people may more immediately understand what we are doing if we posted all our photographs on the internet, yes. but . . . that’s not what we want. we started this project with the intention of starting a conversation, and to make people think. we had fears in the first year of how it would be received, and we were cautious in our approach. Kate and i personally both prefer to make people happy, not to chafe or shock. above all else we did not want to shock. we wanted to provide a kind and meaningful glimpse of real women doing real things and really surviving. and being beautiful because they ARE.

here’s the thing, and i find myself saying it over and over:

THIS IS NOT A PHOTOGRAPHY EXHIBIT.

we happen to take photographs of women and use it as a way to express this conversation. we use it as a way to introduce you to women who have a story to tell. we use them as a way to get people talking about what the journey is after a breast cancer diagnosis, so that more people can participate and lend a helping hand on that journey. or to at least have a glimpse of understanding and let down their barriers.

every october (and now that we have our space, probably more often) we celebrate the women we have worked with by hanging up their photographs and throwing a party. this is not a photo exhibit because a photo exhibit can stand alone. it will still be an exhibit when no one is standing in the room. this is different – it doesn’t exist without the amazing people that come together. you look at the photograph, and the woman in it is standing there, in person. and you talk to her. and you hear her story, in her own words. and you cry a little bit, or a lot, and you are overwhelmed with the power she has claimed by doing this and you are bursting with gratitude that she has stepped forward and done this and helped to unlock the start of the universal acceptance that HAS to come.

she is a pioneer, and you are there with her and you become a pioneer too. and that is why we are here. that is what our project means. we welcome other voices, other projects. we can’t do it alone.

It’s Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and that’s important. But it doesn’t mean much if we don’t have, well…awareness. Pink is pretty, but wearing a ribbon doesn’t save lives. Early detection does.

Wearing ribbons in solidarity is a great gesture, but it doesn’t mean much if we’re not aggressively supportive of the women and men in our lives who are struggling with an illness that is at best frightening, and at worst life-threatening.

We need to be taking care of ourselves, our mothers, our sisters, our friends. We need to be reminding the men in our lives that they, too, can get breast cancer–they should be doing exams, as well. We need to stop being afraid of saying the wrong thing, and start simply reaching out with kindness. We hope that tonight, the courage and openness of our amazing models and friends will help us all to better understand this cancer that affects us all.

Here’s our schedule:

5:00-We begin! Hang out, see some art, have a snack. You know. You’ll hear a soundtrack. Listen carefully: it’s an original score by Ryan Paul and Corey Eischen of Sleep Study, written in honor of this year’s amazing survivors. In the background, you’ll hear the verses of a family deeply affected by breast cancer and incredibly proud of their survivor mom/wife. While you’re listening, please don’t look at me. It makes me weep, without fail.

6:30-Diedrich Weiss plays a gorgeous song he wrote, called “Wounds to Scars.” Pretty much, it’s perfect.

7:00-The incomparable Colleen, one of last year’s models, gives a presentation about how she works to preserve her legacy, and offers insight into how you can share your own.

8:00-Brianna Lane will play a set to wrap up the evening. If you’ve never heard her play, it’s worth coming just to see her. Of course, it’s worth coming just to see the art. Or just to hear Diedrich. Or just to hear the poetry and musical soundtrack.

Or just…come on in. We’ll bear hug your face.

and here is a sneak peek of us hanging the show. we are doing math!

she makes boxes for her son. there is one for him to open on his wedding day. graduation. the birth of his baby. the boxes contain all the things she wants to share with him on those milestones in his life. you know, in case she isn’t there to tell him herself.

this year we asked Colleen to do a presentation about legacy, and share her thoughts about these boxes that she makes. if you would like to take part in this discussion, please join us by 7 pm on saturday when she will get started.