Ephemera by
Ephemera is a poetic and dreamlike take on a graphic memoir set in a garden, a forest, and a greenhouse. The story drifts among a grown woman, her early memories as a child, and the gossamer existence of her mother. A lyrical entry in the field of graphic medicine, Ephemera is a story about a daughter trying to relate to a parent who struggles with mental illness. Gorgeously illustrated in a painted palette of warmy, earthy tones, it is a quiet book of isolation, plants, confusion, acceptance, and the fog of childhood. Loewinsohn's debut book is an aching, meditative twist on autobiography, infusing the genre with an ethereal fusion of memory and imagination.
Slightly Unbalanced by
Slightly Unbalanced surveys the prevalence of psychological neurosis as a subject in contemporary art. During the past 15 years, inspired by the work of several prominent older artists, a younger generation has expanded the contemporary art vocabulary to encompass a subject that is now well known by the general public. Cumulatively, they make use of psychology as a kind of lingua franca--we all know what the symptoms of neurosis are, if not the particular diagnoses. Beginning with historical work by Louise Bourgeois, Mike Kelley, Bruce Nauman and Cindy Sherman and proceeding to more recent work by artists including Alex Bag, Sophie Calle, Beth Campbell, Harry Dodge and Stanya Kahn, Sarah Hobbs, Sean Landers, Cary Leibowitz, Dave McKenzie, Tony Oursler, Danica Phelps, William Pope.L, Ada Ruilova, Ward Shelley and David Shrigley, this exhibition catalogue encompasses the range of media prevalent today: video art, installations, photographs, paintings and drawings.
Everything Is OK by
From the bestselling author of Quiet Girl in a Noisy World comes a gently humorous and poignant collection of comics about anxiety and depression--because sometimes even the simple things like getting out of bed every day feel like an uphill battle. Everything Is OK is the story of Debbie Tung's struggle with anxiety and her experience with depression. She shares what it's like navigating life, overthinking every possible worst-case scenario, and constantly feeling like all hope is lost. The book explores her journey to understanding the importance of mental health in her day-to-day life and how she learns to embrace the highs and lows when things feel out of control. Debbie opens up about deeply personal issues and the winding road to recovery, discovers the value of self-love, and rebuilds a more mindful relationship with her mental health. In this graphic memoir, Debbie aims to provide positive and comforting messages to anyone who is facing similar difficulties or is just trying to get through a tough time in life. She hopes to encourage readers to be kinder to themselves, to know that they are not alone, and that it's okay to be vulnerable because they are not defined by their mental health struggles. The dark clouds won't be there forever. Everything will turn out all right.
Swallow Me Whole by
In his Eisner-Award-winning breakthrough, Nate Powell quietly explores the dark corners of adolescence - the countless tiny moments of madness, the vague relief of medication, and mixed blessing of family ties. Swallow Me Wholeis a love story carried by rolling fog, terminal illness, hallucination, apophenia, insect armies, secrets held, unshakeable faith, and the search for a master pattern to make sense of one's unraveling. In his most ambitious book to date, Nate Powell quietly explores the dark corners of adolescence - not the cliched melodramatic outbursts of rebellion, but the countless tiny moments of madness, the vague relief of medication, and mixed blessing of family ties. As the story unfolds, two stepsiblings hold together amidst schizophrenia, obsessive compulsive disorder, family breakdown, animal telepathy, misguided love, and the tiniest hope that everything will someday make sense. Deliberately paced, delicately drawn, and drenched in shadows,Swallow Me Wholeis a landmark achievement for Nate Powell and a suburban ghost story that will haunt readers long after its final pages.
Art in the Age of Anxiety by
Artists and writers examine the bombardment of information, misinformation, emotion, deception, and secrecy in online and offline life in the post-digital age. Every day we are bombarded by information, misinformation, emotion, deception, and secrecy in our online and offline lives. How does the never-ending flow of data affect our powers of perception and decision making? This richly illustrated and boldly designed collection of essays and artworks investigates visual culture in the post-digital age. The essays, by such leading cultural thinkers as Douglas Coupland and W. J. T. Mitchell, consider topics that range from the future of money to the role of art in a post-COVID-19 world; from mental health in the digital age to online grieving; and from the mediation of visual culture to the thickening of the digital sphere. Accompanying an ambitious exhibition conceived by the Sharjah Art Foundation and volume editor and curator Omar Kholeif, the book is a work of art and a labor of love, emulating the labyrinthine corridors of the exhibition itself. Created by a group of writers, artists, designers, photographers, and publishers, Art in the Age of Anxiety calls upon us to consider what our collective future will be and how humanity will adapt to it.
Invisible Wounds by
Cartoonist Jess Ruliffson spent five years traveling across the country interviewing veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan Wars, from kitchen tables in Georgia and libraries in New York City to dive bars in Mississippi and back porches in Vermont. What she finds is that the real experience of soldiers at war is a far cry from depictions in popular media like Zero Dark Thirty or American Sniper. In these illustrated interviews, Ruliffson shares the stories of men, women, and non-binary ex-soldiers who struggle to reconcile their wartime experiences with their postwar lives. Identity lies at the heart of these stories, as they grapple with their gender, their race, and the brutality they've witnessed and caused. In this compassionate, probing book, Ruliffson reveals how America's endless entanglement in wars have affected the psyches of the people who wage them.
Bird Brain by
When Chuck Mullin began experiencing anxiety and depression as a teenager, she started drawing comics to help her make sense of the rollercoaster. Eventually, she found that pigeons--lovably quirky, yet universally reviled creatures--were the ideal subjects of a comic about mental illness. Organized in three sections--"Bad Times," "Relationships," and "Positivity"--and featuring several short essays about the author's experiences, Bird Brain is a highly relatable, chuckle-inducing, and ultimately uplifting collection of comics for anyone who has struggled to maintain their mental health.
How to Look at Outsider Art by
Outsider Art has become a catchall phrase for everything that is raw, untutored, and extreme in art. Recently, it has grown from being the hobby of a few collectors to a movement of significant importance in the art world, and is on the verge of being integrated into the contemporary art mainstream. However, even many aficionados can't say precisely what Outsider Art is or identify the best artists, baffled by a world without rules. How to Look at Outsider Art gives an overview of the field's most exciting works, some of them never before published in book form. It offers guidelines for aesthetic and collecting judgments, and gives compelling accounts of some of the field's spectacular successes and equally visible failures. This book features case studies, which provide indepth examinations of individual works by particular artists and discusses their critical and popular reception.
Arts for Health: Storytelling by
Exploring the potential for storytelling as a creative practice for health and well-being, Michael Wilson considers how the art form might help us reconsider the power relationships in healthcare contexts and restore agency to patients, in partnership with medical professionals. Storytelling is explored not simply as a means of conveying information and experience from one person to another but as an act of listening, a process for thinking, evaluating and understanding. Wilson reflects on his over thirty of years of researching and practising storytelling, and blends his experience with a collection of case studies representing diverse approaches to storytelling for health, including theatre, stand-up comedy, writing, visual arts and digital storytelling. Most importantly, storytelling is approached not from the point of view of the medical practitioner or educator, or even the patient, but through the lens of those who tell stories as a creative and everyday practice. It is a book with the storyteller at its core.
Portraits of Resilience by
Photographs and stories of people who have coped with and overcome depression, anxiety, trauma, and other challenges."In MIT professor Daniel Jackson's recent book, Portraits of Resilience, being resilient means beingvulnerable. It a gives a glimpse into how students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-one ofthe most competitive and elite universities in the world-cope, overcome, and find meaning in theirlives." -The Boston Globe More than 15 million Americans grapple with depression in a given year, and 40 million are affected by anxiety disorders. And yet these people are often invisible, hidden, unacknowledged. At once a photo essay and a compendium of life stories, Portraits of Resilience brings us face to face with twenty-two extraordinary individuals, celebrating the wisdom they have gained on the frontline of a contemporary battle. We hear from a young man who was struck with a debilitating sadness just when his life seemed to have turned around, and a medical student whose self-image was transformed by an antidepressant. We meet a physicist whose troubles led him to reassess the role human connection played in his life, an overachiever who developed one of her closest friendships in a mental hospital, and administrative assistant who grew up with an abusive parent but learned to heal and create a new life for herself. No one is immune to depression or anxiety; all of these narrators achieved success as students, faculty, or staff in the demanding world of MIT. The pressures of a competitive and high-pressure environment will be familiar to many. And the mysterious and overwhelming grip of depression will be recognized by those who have suffered from it. But the search for purpose and meaning that pervades these stories is relevant to everyone. These wise people give us not only solace and reassurance as we face our own challenges, but also the inspiration that challenges can be overcome-and that happiness, while elusive, can eventually be found.
Lights! Planets! People! by
Renowned astronomer Maggie Hill is giving a lecture about her career, to inspire young women to work in science. She's also attending her first ever therapy session in order to overcome some debilitating anxiety. These events force Maggie to examine her greatest achievements and biggest regrets as she tackles space science, mental health, and communication - both interpersonal and intergalactic. A new comic about legacy, loss, human curiosity and the economics of failure - adapted by illustrator Lizzy Stewart and writer Molly Naylor from Naylor's play of the same name.
Rock Steady Brilliant Advice from My Bipolar Life by
Rock Steady: Brilliant Advice From My Bipolar Life is the eagerly awaited sequel/ companion book to Forney's 2012 best-selling graphic memoir, Marbles: Mania, Depression, Michelangelo, and Me. Whereas Marbles was a memoir about her bipolar disorder, Rock Steady turns the focus outward, offering a self-help survival guide of tips, tricks and tools by someone who has been through it all and come through stronger for it.
Patients as art : forty thousand years of medical history in drawings, paintings, and sculpture by
Patients as Art explores the capacity of art to provide a unique perspective on the history of humankind. Fearturing over 160 full-color works of art, this book offers a pictorial review of medical history stretching from Paleolithic times to the present, reflecting the ideals and sensibilities of the times in which they were created, and communicating formal, spiritual, and scientific values. Rarely have experts considered the potential clinical implications of such works or their collective value as an archive of medical history. Many prominent works of art have depicted aspects of medicine's long struggle against ignorance, superstition, and religious and political dogma to emerge as one of mankind's greatest achievements. The particular works included in this book were chosen both for their esthetic appeal and for the skill with which they depict important developments in medicine over time. Dr. Mackowiak reveals what these works have to say about the status of the "art of medicine" in the past, and its relationship to the medicine of today.
Snowbird by
Trying to save the world while struggling to save yourself is a recipe for (climate) disaster. In this magical realist graphic memoir, Erin navigates the punk/activist art scenes while dealing with personal and environmental devastation; racial inequality and internalized racism; and the sometimes difficult business of staying alive in the face of mental health conditions. It asks and answers the question: what would we do if we could counsel our younger self?
Ties That Enable : Community Solidarity for People Living with Serious Mental Health Problems by
Ties that Enable is written for students, providers, and advocates seeking to understand how best to improve mental health care - be it for themselves, their loved ones, their clients, or for the wider community. The authors integrate their knowledge of mental health care as researchers, teachers, and advocates and rely on the experiences of people living with severe mental health problems to help understand the sources of community solidarity. Communities are the primary source of social solidarity, and given the diversity of communities, solutions to the problems faced by individuals living with severe mental health problems must start with community level initiatives. "Ties that Enable" examines the role of a faith-based community group in providing a sense of place and belonging as well as reinforcing a valued social identity. The authors argue that mental health reform efforts need to move beyond a focus on individual recovery to more complex understandings of the meaning of community care. In addition, mental health care needs to move from a medical model to a social model which sees the roots of mental illness and recovery as lying in society, not the individual. It is our society's inability to provide inclusive supportive environments which restrict the ability of individuals to recover. This book provides insights into how communities and system level reforms can promote justice and the higher ideals we aspire to as a society.
The aesthetics of disengagement : contemporary art and depression by
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, more than half of the world's population will have a depressive disorder at some point in their lifetimes. In The Aesthetics of Disengagement Christine Ross shows how contemporary art is a powerful yet largely unacknowledged player in the articulation of depression in Western culture, both adopting and challenging scientific definitions of the condition. Ross explores the ways in which contemporary art performs the detached aesthetics of depression, exposing the viewer's loss of connection and ultimately redefining the function of the image. Ross examines the works of Ugo Rondinone, Rosemarie Trockel, Ken Lum, John Pilson, Liza May Post, Vanessa Beecroft, and Douglas Gordon, articulating how their art conveys depression's subjectivity and addresses a depressed spectator whose memory and perceptual faculties are impaired. Drawing from the fields of psychoanalysis as well as psychiatry, Ross demonstrates the ways in which a body of art appropriates a symptomatic language of depression to enact disengagement - marked by withdrawl, radical protection of the self from the other, distancing signals, isolation, communication ruptures, and perceptual insufficiency. Most important, Ross reveals the ways in which art transforms disengagement into a visual strategy of disclosure, a means of reaching the viewer, and how in this way contemporary art puts forth a new understanding of depression.
The Unapologetic Guide to Black Mental Health by
An unapologetic exploration of the Black mental health crisis--and a comprehensive road map to getting the care you deserve in an unequal system. We can't deny it any longer: there is a Black mental health crisis in our world today. Black people die at disproportionately high rates due to chronic illness, suffer from poverty, under-education, and the effects of racism. This book is an exploration of Black mental health in today's world, the forces that have undermined mental health progress for African Americans, and what needs to happen for African Americans to heal psychological distress, find community, and undo years of stigma and marginalization in order to access effective mental health care. In The Unapologetic Guide to Black Mental Health, psychologist and African American mental health expert Rheeda Walker offers important information on the mental health crisis in the Black community, how to combat stigma, spot potential mental illness, how to practice emotional wellness, and how to get the best care possible in system steeped in racial bias. This breakthrough book will help you: Recognize mental and emotional health problems Understand the myriad ways in which these problems impact overall health and quality of life and relationships Develop psychological tools to neutralize ongoing stressors and live more fully Navigate a mental health care system that is unequal It's past time to take Black mental health seriously. Whether you suffer yourself, have a loved one who needs help, or are a mental health professional working with the Black community, this book is an essential and much-needed resource.
