Do Not Feed OCD
I made this as a reminder to not feed OCD by giving into compulsions, whether that's asking for reassurance, giving it to someone else, or a whole host of other compulsions. Response prevention is how you starve OCD and break the cycle! The animal I chose to represent OCD is a mouse, because a friend calls their OCD "little mouse" as in "If you give a mouse a cookie..." Anyone who wants to put this somewhere as a reminder for themselves or others is welcome to. Feel free to contact me to ask for specific aspect ratios.
More about thisCertainty
I call this one certainty because of the way the eye interacts with it. Try it: how long can your eye stay in the calm and light of the center before it's drawn into the chaos all around? In my experience, a temporary feeling of certainty is achievable through compulsions, but it's always temporary. There's always chaos again, until one stops seeking certainty at all.
More about thisADHD Energy
This piece emerged organically and energetically using the blending modes in Adobe Illustrator. I feel it captures the energy and excitement that's centered in my chest and flies all around when I'm pursuing a new project, spurred on by my ADHD. It connects to my value of Magic, where I am the fulcrum by which things become more than they are. It is one of my favorite ways to be.
More about thisGeometric Hummingbird
Before this assignment, I thought art was something I couldn't do. Much to my surprise, it received a lot of positive feedback from my class, and my life has been different ever since.
More about thisProtest at Pride
For this piece, I made a color stripe pattern based on the original Gilbert Baker pride flag, where each color had a meaning, before the colors were changed and cheapened for commercial appeal. A single woman holds these colors against a backdrop of the time I marched with Google for Pride.
More about thisContemplative Quill
My sweetest cat, Quill, was a wonderful and cooperative model for the photo shoot for this one. This was the first piece I made consciously using Bezier curves, with the pen tool in Adobe Illustrator.
More about thisConcentric
This piece was made during an OCD support group based on the poem by Rumi, "Zero Circle."
More about thisI Felt a Funeral
In this project, I chose to illustrate the last stanza of Emily Dickinson's "I Felt a Funeral" by giving the words visual actions. I chose "I Felt a Funeral" because of how the poem conveys my experience of OCD. I once got stuck repeating it in my head, until I found the significance of the "then—" which places the funeral at a point in time and provides a bridge to the next thing.
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