♪ Opening theme music ♪
Hello, and welcome to this episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation.
My name is Diane Kolin.
This series presents artists, academics and project leaders who dedicate their
time and energy to a better accessibility for people with disabilities in the arts.
You can find more of these conversations on our website artsably.com,
which is spelled A-R-T-S-A-B-L-Y dot com.
♪ Theme music ♪
Today ArtsAbly is in conversation with Jessica Kenney, a non-binary
disabled neurodivergent multimedia artist.
You can find the resources mentioned by Jessica Kenney during this episode
on ArtsAbly's website in the blog section.
♪ Jessica Kenney playing the flute ♪
♪ Jessica Kenney playing the flute - End of excerpt ♪
Hello everybody, welcome to this new episode of ArtsAbly in Conversation.
Today I am with Jessica Kenney.
Thank you Jessica for joining us.
And Jessica is a non-binary disabled neurodivergent multimedia artist, and
doing a lot of different things from poetry to music to painting, sculpture, digital art.
So, Jessica, welcome to this episode.
Thank you for having me.
So my name is Jessica Kenney, I'm a Fredericton-based artist, musician and poet.
My pronouns are they/them.
Thank you.
So what brought you to the arts, what is your background, and
what brought you to where you are artistically today?
Well, I've been creating as long as I can remember, to be honest.
I started playing piano at five.
I really enjoyed, my grandparents had a piano in their house, and
my mom used to play piano, so she showed me what she had learned.
So that was really fun to learn from my mom.
My mom also had autoharp, so it's like a - an autoharp is like a harp, but
it has all these cool keys going across it, and there's felts on them.
So what they do is they help you press the strings so that you can create chords.
It's like a guitar, but a little simpler, a little bit smaller, you can kind of like hold it in your lap.
So we'd often, my mom loved to sing, so she would sing, and we'd sing with mom
and we played autoharp with her, so it was fun, I learned a lot.
I was always into art as a child, so I was creating a lot of times.
I know it was a little hard for my mom, because she would often get frustrated
with how quickly I could switch between things, because I was going through art
and music, and I love reading, and I really love school,
so I was really into that type of stuff.
So it was hard for my mom to keep up with all my hobbies.
I think I've carried that forward with me.
It's still hard for my mom to keep up with my hobbies.
So
a lot of times, you know, you could find me like on weekends,
I was a little obsessed with piano scales, so I was playing scales a lot,
for a long time on piano, that was my thing, and it was exciting,
and I later picked up recorder, because I wanted to play flute, but flute is -
at the time, my family didn't really have the economical means to
get me into flute, so I played recorder, because I thought, you know,
there's got to be some transferable skills there.
I know after high school, I kind of moved on to college.
I wanted to follow my passion, which was art.
I still love music, but I had kind of,
it kind of slipped away from me for a little while, because I was focusing on the art side of things.
I'd fallen in love with just the expression of, and magic of hand-drawn animation.
I went to school for animation.
I actually have two college diplomas, so I went for 3D, so like video game,
computer graphics type of stuff, and back in 2008, it was exciting.
I really liked it, but I really loved hand-drawn.
We spent, I think, the first six months of college doing hand-drawn animation,
and I was so happy, so I learned so much about illustration.
We did a lot of figure drawing, and I ended up having,
basically once I had finished college, I decided I wanted to pursue a career in animation.
It was everything for me for a long time.
Like, I just - the expression of it was so, like there's so much going on,
and that was very appealing to me,
because there's, you know, you're moving things,
you're expressing and acting in animation, like in character animation.
I later got into effects animation, because explosions and stuff, that was fun.
So you can do like explosions, or water, or like sparkly stuff, like anything,
and it's just the joy of creating in animation was really there for me.
I ended up -
Life kind of decided I needed to take a different path, and I ended up
and I ended up with fibromyalgia and PTSD after a car accident.
So sometimes life throws curveballs.
I ended up struggling with managing my disabilities for a long time, and
I had to learn to take care of myself, and it was hard,
and I didn't really have the space to create for a really long time.
It took me a long time to get back to being able to sit down and do anything creative.
I lost my artistic voice for a long time, and I actually fully stopped creating for a number of years.
Over time, I learned how to embrace the chaos in my life and find new ways to manage.
I got some answers as well, on top of the PTSD and the fibro.
I learned that I had ADHD.
ADHD is something that you have your whole life. You don't just acquire it, but
I learned that I had had ADHD this whole time, which explains why I couldn't finish projects and
the many hobbies, and
that helped a lot.
In 2020, actually on Halloween, I picked up flute,
and I'd always wanted to play flute, so I thought,
you know what? If not now, when? I was 30.
I was just like, what's stopping me at this point?
I needed to pick that up, and I did.
During that time, I also got some other health diagnosis, and I wasn't coping very well.
I felt like at the time, I felt like I had enough to deal with,
and why did I need something new to think about?
So I was a little unhappy, but
at that point, all I ended up doing was actually playing flute for a really long time,
just so I could cope well, because I was having trouble.
When you have a lot going on, sometimes it's upsetting, and that way,
that was all I could do for probably about six months at one point,
I just sat in my living room and played flute for six months.
As a side effect, I got quite good at flute, so that's the silver lining.
At that point, that takes us to about 2021.
I had met Ysabelle Vautour in 2021.
We'd met at a show that she had at Charlotte Street Arts Center,
and she'd encouraged me to start creating again,
because I hadn't picked up illustration in a really long time.
It's hard to get back into illustration, because when you stop for a long time,
as with anything, even music, your skills,
they're still there, they're just dormant.
You have to put the practice in to bring them back and make them vibrant again.
I look at it as tarnish.
Everything is a flute reference for me. I look at it like tarnish.
If you have you flute out, it tarnishes.
It's normal, actually, it's a chemical reaction,
but it's just like our skills. Sometimes our skills, they tarnish.
It's easy. We just have to pick them back up and shine them back up
or live with the tarnish.
Because tarnish is aesthetic, it doesn't affect how it works.
I think it's a good reference.
Yeah.
So, yeah, 2021.
Ysabel was like, hey, you should try creating again.
I was like, cool, okay.
So I did.
We ended up doing a mentorship together in 2022.
We were collaborating a lot.
We were creatively enabling each other.
Ysabel had done the residency with the Botanical Gardens here in Fredericton.
We worked on a collaborative piece with textile painting.
That was cool. Ysabel did the layout
and I naively had said, oh, I want to hand sew this all. It shouldn't take very long.
I learned a very hard lesson.
We don't need glue!
I did hand sew it. It took a couple of months.
And I definitely learned some stuff that I want to do next time I do that.
But it turned out beautifully.
The piece is called The Winding Path.
It's on my Instagram.
It's all these cool cotton batik pieces that have been laid out.
And they're colorful and really cool in their designs.
They're all different pieces of fabric.
So I sewed them after we had together laid them out.
And there's actually an intentional hole in the piece.
It was intentional.
Because the piece was about, you know, how sometimes, as people with disabilities,
sometimes we're making our own path.
And it can be winding.
Because it's not always the straight line of, like, I'm doing this.
And then I'm going to do that in a quick succession.
Sometimes we have to take our own time.
Because it's not always as easy as it could be or as it should be.
And I was I'm so proud of that piece.
So, yeah.
And during that mentorship that we did together as well,
Ysabel really helped me learn how to navigate the art community.
Because what I had been prepared for when I went to college
was navigating the commercial art space.
So navigating, like, how to work with the studio,
how to work with other people in a studio on a TV show,
or how to make a piece of a game and hand that off to a developer.
So I was used to that.
I was used to, like, okay, and that teamwork stuff is really good.
Like, obviously, that has a place, and I had transferable skills.
But the art community is different
being a traditional artist. I do have traditional artist skills.
I just didn't know how to navigate the spaces of, like, finding funding.
Or, like, having a show. Or having a CV.
Like, I had resumes. But I didn't have a CV.
So I learned so much.
And just kind of learned finding my place in the art community
has been really fun and interesting.
Because it's been very different for me.
Because I've gone from being a very digital artist to completely moving to being
a very traditional artist working with physical mediums.
So it's been very different.
The summer and fall of 2022, after the Botanical Gardens residency,
Ysabel and I attended the Quiet Parade.
We did a large project
which was one of the bigger projects that I've done.
We decided to make giant monarch butterfly wings.
So we had some production issues because
I originally wanted to paint on tulle, which is, like, a mesh netting with acrylic.
It didn't work out the way that I anticipated.
So we had done some samples. and it didn't turn out exactly how we wanted.
So we improvised and we found plastic sheeting.
and we learned that you can put gesso on plastic sheeting,
which is cool.
So we had these giant hand-painted wings on, like, wire and plastic.
And so we were doing costume design.
And also painting.
And trying to...
I needed to make several copies of the wings.
And I needed them to be accurate.
So it was difficult because I had to maintain...
I had to find what was my original.
And only trace off the original.
So that I didn't have...
Because when you trace things, you have...
It's like artifacting. Like, you lose quality.
It's like if you take a picture.
And you keep just saving that same picture.
And saving it.
It loses quality.
It's like that with tracing, too.
Believe it or not, if you're tracing your own work.
and you're trying to make copies of your work by hand.
You have to be really careful.
So we couldn't actually fit these giant wings.
We also made giant tutus.
Which was awesome.
Had a lot of tulle.
Luckily, it was wedding season and there's used tulle.
People buy it for, like, draping and stuff.
And so I got a lot of used tulle.
And we made these hand-sewn tutus on ribbon.
It was awesome.
But we couldn't fit the wings in my car when we were going to Halifax.
And so we had very, like...
Even my mom helped. My mom.
We have pictures of my mom with the hair dryer out.
Like, drying all these, like, sheets and sheets and sheets of monarch butterfly wings.
And it was hilariously fun.
But we couldn't fit them in my car
so we ended up having to ship them flat without assembling them.
So when we got to the hotel, we had to assemble these wings.
And luckily, Ysabelle's spouse, Ramneet, was with us
and had the idea of - we should use the stapler!
And it was such a good idea.
It was so simple, but I was like, thank goodness!
Because the way that I had thought that they would fit together didn't work.
But the stapler was perfect, and you couldn't see it.
So we were stapling late into the night.
Luckily, the parade was rain dated
and we went the next day.
And things were assembled.
And tutus had been sewn.
And it was it was great.
We actually had four pairs of wings
because Ramneet, Ysabelle's spouse, and my spouse Samuel, had come with us
and they had also dressed as butterflies with us.
And we had...
A full army of butterflies.
There were four of us.
It was quite the time.
And Quiet Parade was so unique
because it was accessible.
It was a low sensory accessible parade.
They even had like on...
I can't remember exactly how they did.
But on radio channels, they had like visual...
they had description,
they had audio description.
You could hear the parade audio described.
Which was cool.
And they did have a band but they all had mutes in their instruments
so they were playing very like piano.
And it was so cool.
And we had certain guidelines for design as well.
So we weren't allowed to use certain materials and things like that.
Because like it couldn't be too shiny.
There couldn't be stuff that was really loud.
Because it was a low sensory parade.
Because parades are not always accessible for those of us with sensory needs.
So I think it was so cool.
And it's such a once-in-a-lifetime experience to be able to experience this
and be part of it, and create that project.
So I'm super proud of that.
And it was so fun.
I think Ysabel and I had a ball going.
And it was a good experience.
So that kind of takes me until 2023.
In the fall, I actually did a residency with the Fredericton Arts Alliance in 2023.
And so they're like a local art group.
And they do provide like residency opportunities in the summer
in the Casemates downtown in Fredericton.
And I had decided to work on an installation
because I hadn't done installation work.
And I thought, you know what? I should do that.
Why not? How hard could it be?
And I have no fear.
I only realize when I get into it how big things are.
And
But it was very fun.
So what I wanted to do was I was looking for this convergence of art and music.
So that had started becoming a thing in my design increasingly.
I was like, I have to do this convergence of art and music.
They have to go together.
There's got to be a way that this works.
So I thought, how can I do this?
And then I was like, oh, I do textile stuff still too.
So I was like, I'm going to make a giant felt board.
And I think, I can't remember if someone had sent me a picture of a cork board
that was giant that someone had on Facebook Marketplace, or if I just found this thing.
But there was this four foot by three foot cork board.
And I thought, oh, I could make this into a felt board.
So to the fabric store we went
and got a lot of flannel
and a lot of felt.
And yeah, over the course of a week, I made an installation to do sheet music.
So I have this four foot by three foot felt board
and I stapled the flannel onto it.
So it's white flannel. It's very, very soft.
I had white pieces of actual felt.
I chose not to get felt off the roll
because it's really hard to cut straight lines
and I didn't have tailor's chalk.
And so I very badly needed to -
Also, I wanted to have it so that it was scalable
so like, if I had to send it somewhere where it needed a smaller board,
because four foot by three foot is kind of large,
that I could put it on a smaller board.
or I could just have things set up individually or something like that.
So I did all these little tiny sheets of, like, you can buy them.
They're just cut out sheets. It's a little bit more expensive than buying off the roll.
And then I had needle felted the staves,
so the black lines that you see on music,
onto these white pieces of felt.
And Ysabel is actually my partner in the case.
I actually had two partners. I had Ysabel and I had Laura Forrester.
I think her last name was Forrester.
But so I think we had, I had two artists with me that week,
which was cool, because our theme was collaboration.
Ysabel had suggested that instead of putting it portrait style
I should put the felt board landscape.
So we did that and it was perfect.
So we could fit more sheet music on it
and my spouse had helped me find a font to print out all these paper stencils
for the sheet music and stuff.
And that way it could be -
Because I'm used to just doing it by hand.
So I was going to put in Photoshop and get all my assets done by hand.
And then this was, ended up being.
He's a software developer so he's very precise.
So he was like, well, if you do it this way,
you can scale everything together
and you can have it be more reproducible. And I was like, oh, I love this.
So he put it in LaTeX was the program he used,
and made it so that we could print all these things off.
So I was hand weeding all my stencils out.
And then I was pinning my stencils to black felt
to get like music notes and rests and different things,
and then hand weeding again.
There was a lot of scissor mileage.
And so I made giant sheet music.
I learned so much. There's so much precision to written music
that I think that unless you're writing it by hand, like we do tend to miss it.
Like when you go above B, your notes turn over
or like where like your whole rests and your half rests sit on the page.
And things like that. There's so much precision that like I think we take for granted.
because like reading music and writing it,
like just physically writing it out are different.
It's a different feeling.
I wanted people to be able to kind of like connect with music too.
That was the point of the project as well.
Because I find, I know like when I show my mom my sheet music,
she's like, Jess, that makes my eyes cross. It's really too complicated.
And I'm like, oh, it's not that bad.
I mean, I work with it all the time.
So for me, it's not that scary.
But I think when people see sheet music
and they're like, it's a different language.
It's very difficult.
You know, we've been trained to read the alphabet alphabetically
since we were really little.
But if you're not trained to read music.
It is a different language. It is hard.
This is what I wanted to try to encourage people to do
is have this kind of friendly, touchable thing
that they could walk up to and touch and play.
So that you don't need to necessarily understand how to read it.
You can just introduce yourself to it
and make something
and maybe see some of the patterns that are there
like, you know, just put notes on lines, or put notes on spaces
and stuff like that.
And kind of see some of the different elements.
I hope what people are taking from that is not scary, it's just different.
So that was the goal of that project.
And it's been exhibited at a couple different places.
So it was in Speaking Out
which was a group exhibit last year.
And it was in a group show recently,
Bodies in Motion, which is a group show
with Ysabel Vautour and Ramneet Kalra.
So it was pretty cool.
It was at the Provincial Archives,
which the show just finished on the 3rd of June.
Oh yeah, yesterday.
Yeah, I know.
I can't believe we're in June already.
So.
I have a question for you. It's going back -
I love this idea of connecting the music to the other kind of arts.
Because music is an art.
But if you consider art as a broader view,
you can connect all these things.
And so you can even communicate a language that is not necessarily the written language of music.
Or the art of cutting and pasting.
Or the art of sewing.
It's about the intersection of all that.
Absolutely.
I wonder too if the intersection of this all is expression.
And this is what I've been moving towards in my thoughts.
And I'm so happy you brought this up.
Because this is what I've discovered.
I was at a flute -
I went to - During Catapult,
It's an arts accelerator, it's art business classes.
I was really grateful to be part of that.
During my graduation weekend,
for that I was also attending a flute conference
because it was in the same city.
And I was like well I have some time in between my last few classes with Catapult
and these flute lessons,
these flute classes that they are putting on.
It was put on through Haynes,
which is they're a flute maker,
and Long & McQuaid.
So they had put these classes on at Mount Allison,
which was in the same place or very close to where we were in Dieppe
to go see these flute classes
and to do the Catapult graduation in Dieppe.
And it hit me all of a sudden when I was at these flute classes
and they were talking about, you know, all these different techniques,
and expressions and things.
I was like these people are painting with sound.
Because I know for me I'm a lot more heavily based in visual arts.
So I know a lot more about that.
And music I'm mostly self-taught.
I've only recently had lessons.
So I don't know as much about it as I would love to know.
But it hit me so hard.
I'm like you know these people are painting with sound.
And like in music we do talk about colour, right? We're talking about tone colour.
And we're talking about different types of expression and things like that.
So I found it really cool to like start making these connections
between like art and music
and tone colour, and colour and art.
It's been so cool to see these connections.
And this is my goal is like this is what I would love to share.
Because I know for me too.
Learning music has been hard sometimes
because I learn differently.
I have ADHD.
Things are a little different for me sometimes when I'm learning.
So where art and stuff I picked up really quickly.
I don't pick up music as quickly.
Like some stuff I do and some stuff I'm just kind of like okay.
I have to think about this for a while.
Yes but you chose the flute.
And the thing with the flute is that - not in the right -
It's a very good thing because the flute has a lot of vibration.
It does.
And when you play the flute it vibrates,
it makes your whole body vibrate.
And because you are working a lot with sensory cues and sensory things,
the flute brings you that
and can - in a way there is no good or right way to learn music.
It's your own way to learn music and appreciate and grow into music.
And so your way of learning is based on everything else that is artistic.
The colour that you can associate to the sound.
But also the whole -
this small instrument which is the flute
has this power to be -
to make your body artistic, in a way,
with the music.
It's true and I know
It really struck me when I first picked flute up after being away from music for many years.
I played piano primarily when I was really young.
I played piano up until about the end of high school, just casually.
And it's different.
Like I was describing to my music director at church, I had said to him,
I was talking about scales on piano, I'm like, you know, they're laid out.
It's laid out so nicely.
And with piano, it's very visual.
But with flute, it's so in the air.
And I didn't mean it as a little joke, but at the same time, it's true.
It's so in the air.
You don't visualize it.
And when I had first picked up flute, I forgot to buy music.
And as we often do with ADHD, sometimes, you know, we go for the thing,
and then we forget stuff on the list, and
so I bought a finger chart
and luckily I got the flute.
But at the same time, I went home and I was like, oh, no.
And it was during COVID.
So I didn't want to just go back out and be like, oh, I gotta go buy music.
So I sat with the finger chart for a really long time.
And I was just like, well, I guess I'll just work on these fingerings
so I can learn how to do fingerings.
And I hadn't read music in so long.
I didn't remember how to read music anymore.
So I was like, I got to learn this again.
This is the most important thing.
Because I didn't want the frustration of having to think about reading music,
and trying to play music, and trying to do fingerings, and trying to sit right
and like all the things we do with an instrument, right?
So I really felt like...
I was thinking about it recently, because
I play other instruments, too.
You can't play just one. They're too much fun.
So I recently picked up clarinet.
And so sitting with the finger chart for clarinet, and I was thinking back
about when I sat with the finger chart with flute.
And I'm like, you know, it's like you're introducing yourself to it,
or it's introducing itself to you.
And you're learning how to work together.
And like, because I know a flute, it's so second nature.
It's so like, once you learn all the fingerings, it's so easy to associate them.
It's so easy to have it feel connected in the way that you play.
I don't have that experience with clarinet, because I haven't been playing that for very long.
But I've only been playing it for a couple of months
and I'm still... Fingerings are hard with clarinet.
They're not very similar to flute.
And so it's been, I'm experiencing that again
and it's really made me think about kind of those processes and like learning processes.
It's been really cool.
Wow.
So piano, flute, clarinet, autoharp.
I also... I dabble in piccolo.
I was getting into viola
but I found, I casually play viola and violin here and there.
I don't - they're harder to play.
I do better with wind instruments.
I find strings are, as sometimes as much as we want to do something,
it's okay to just keep it as a fun thing.
And that's what I'm doing with the string family right now.
I love it.
But it's a little bit more challenging for me than wind instruments.
So I also played recorder in high school.
I have alto recorder as well, here at home.
Invite a full orchestra to play with you.
I know.
My mom's like, we have to get you cymbals for your knees.
And then you can be like a one jazz band.
There is something I read too.
Are you also writing poetry?
Yes, I am.
I do write poetry.
So it's definitely been interesting.
I write a lot of free verse.
I've got a little bit of published work in different things.
So right now I'm writing a poetry book about the...
I have it written down, actually.
So I'm also illustrating it, about living on government assistance.
So it's interesting because like I'm using imagery of like the seasons.
So I'm calling it the chronic seasons of my life.
And I'm talking about the lived experience of living on government assistance
because I don't find people talk about that very often.
Or they do and it's just within their own groups.
And we need to start talking about these experiences
because I feel like people think that people living on these different safety nets and assistances that
the government provides, that they provide enough sustenance that people can get by easily.
And that's not the case.
It's very difficult. You know, people with disabilities often live in deep poverty.
It's not an easy life.
And it can make you very dependent on other people, like
family and things like that, which is not inherently a bad thing, but it can feel bad.
It can feel difficult, especially when, you know, other people are
hitting milestones in their life, like buying a house or buying a car
doing all these exciting things that people do.
But you're kind of like, well, I paid my bills for the month
and I was able to buy food, which those are great.
And that's important, but it's hard.
It's hard because you're not able to be as involved in your community or in
life itself because you just financially can't.
So I feel like it's important to start a conversation about that.
Yeah.
So I'm trying to share, like, different things.
Like, I've got a poem about, like, my cats
and stuff like, my cats are my best friend
because I know sometimes, like, we can feel very isolated.
It's hard, especially, like, during COVID.
A lot of us are immunocompromised and a lot of us are still isolating
and because it's still there.
Like, COVID is still there and we are still
immunocompromised and it's difficult.
There's still a danger to us and we have to do what's right for us.
But it can be hard because it puts barriers in place for us to participate in
community and to participate in, like, events and things like that.
So, like, the poem about my cats is, like, you know, sometimes I feel really isolated.
I'm home a lot, but I have cats and I also have rabbits and they're very sweet.
And so I spend a lot of time with my pets and
I just was talking about the poem, like, you know, sometimes I'm having a really hard time and then
the cats will hop up and sometimes they'll sit on me or they'll, like, they'll purr and
it's very sweet and, you know, they make you feel better.
They really take your troubles away because you're like, oh, I have this little
sweet cat and so you can pet them and they're soft and they're lovely.
And so I could talk about cats forever.
But so, yeah, so I'm trying to talk about, like, kind of the happy parts
and also, like, the difficult parts like, you know, why do I have to live like this?
It wasn't my fault. It wasn't my choice to be disabled.
You know, being able-bodied is a temporary condition and disability is
one of the few things in life that doesn't discriminate.
So it's very hard.
I've kind of been picking up the poetry and setting it down.
So I've got about half finished.
I'm hoping to finish probably next year, I think, is what I'm thinking.
I'll generously say next year.
It'll probably be a little longer because I've got to do my illustration.
I'm hoping to do, I'm thinking about doing gouache and watercolour with that
just because I like how they play together, I like how they layer,
and I think I could get some really vibrant seasonal motifs going,
especially with the gouache because it's so bright.
But yeah, it's been interesting.
It's hard going between mediums sometimes.
Like, I've got this adjustable, I call it an adjustable art practice,
because, like, I have to accommodate myself.
I always have to think about...
I like doing things, I like being busy.
But it's hard because, like, especially with the fibro, I get tired.
I get really, really tired.
And sometimes I'm up for playing flute, sometimes I'm not.
Like, I might be in too much pain to... it's hard because sometimes your hands
get in pain and you're like, yeah, I can't do really precise stuff.
Or like, you know, illustrating can be hard because, like,
just even the thinking and the planning can be difficult.
So, like, it depends how I'm feeling for what I'm doing.
And it's also the ADHD, which makes it hard because, like,
it's easy, it's very easy to want to do a lot of projects and balance between them.
But it's really hard when you're like, I want to be doing this, but I can't.
So it's like, but I want to be being creative.
So, like, sometimes, like, on my worst days, often you'll just see me crocheting.
Like, I crochet a lot.
I make a lot of blankets.
I can't follow a pattern, actually, with crocheting.
I will fully admit that.
I can. It's not that I can't.
It's I choose not to.
Because like my spouse had told me, Jess, some people follow a pattern because
they're testing their skills and they like to follow the pattern, and it's very fun for them.
But if it's not fun for you, don't do it.
And I thought, that's great. That's good advice.
And I love that.
I feel less guilty now.
So I make patterns on my own.
I should write them down.
So that when I pick up my projects, I don't have to -
I sometimes have to take my projects to my mom and be like, can you read this?
My mom also crochets and knits and she can look at a piece
and, like, kind of read the crocheting.
And I'm just like, that's wild.
I can kind of do that, but not very well.
Um, but my mom can.
That's also another language, right?
It is. It is. Oh gosh.
When you see the patterns, um, it's, it's its own language as well.
And there's, uh, some really fun eccentricities with that.
Um, my mom knits and, and crochets.
I can only crochet. I, uh, I tried to knit.
And, uh, like I told my mom, my mom was like, as I was knitting, she's like,
it just keeps getting tighter and tighter.
I'm like, that's because I'm stressed.
And she's like, if it makes you stressed, don't do it.
And I'm like, that's a good advice.
Um, um, and it's okay to not do one or the other.
Like, um, I know a lot of people go back and forth, but I find, uh,
crochet works really well for me.
Cause like, it's just, it's so loopy.
Everything connects really well,
which is nice.
So yeah, when I'm not well, I often crochet and I make my own patterns.
I'm making a bag right now.
Cause I was thinking about the beach, so I made a little beach bag out of cotton.
And I often make blankets, but I try to not make blankets in the summer,
because my - I'm on medication that makes it hard to
temperature control, if that makes sense.
Like I find I get hot really easy, but I don't realize it.
And then I, and then I'll feel sick.
So I'll be like covered in this like really lovely blanket that I'm crocheting.
And then I'll be like, I don't feel good.
And it's like, oh yeah, cause I'm too hot.
That's the hazard of crocheting in the summer if you're doing blankets.
So I try to keep it small and yeah.
So on other days, like this past week I was painting
and I haven't painted in a long time.
So I did three paintings actually, um, which is really big.
Cause usually I do about a painting every six months.
So, um, so that was pretty big.
I did abstract painting.
I did a painting of a monarch as a practice painting and I made myself a sign.
So I was pretty excited I'd made my own sign.
What is your sign, what does it say?
It says my name. It just says Jessica Kenney.
And it has like a monarch wing on one side.
And I did like a gradient of...
I tried to really facilitate the sense of motion,
through brushstrokes.
So what I wanted to do was I took yellow and orange
and I did like kind of a gradation.
It looks a little bit like fire.
I put a little bit of glitter paint in there, on the yellow paint to really make it kind of stand out.
And in the bottom right-hand corner, I painted like a monarch wing.
And then I wrote my name in black letters
and my last name kind of went along the curve of the monarch wing.
Nice.
You know, I'm thinking with all these artistic skills that you have,
do you sometimes like sit and think of all that,
all that you do?
And for me, it would be related to what it means for you
to work in disability arts.
Yeah, I do often like, I've found it hard to...
When I first started getting into the art scene and applying for things,
it's not that I learned hard lessons because, like, people were nice about things. They weren't like mean or anything,
but I learned some lessons that
I think differently.
And so for me, what connects, I'm like, oh yeah, I sent these five pieces
and they're like, okay, Jess, why is there a textile piece, a painting,
an illustration and a sculpture?
It's like, cause they're all the same colour.
So for me, this is why they all related.
They were all the same color, but it's like, it's a lot of times.
So I had to try to work more in series because I don't think that way.
I don't think about like, okay, so for me, I was, it was hard because I...
the way I connect things is very different.
So I kind of had to take a step back and be like, okay, how does,
how does everyone think?
Because if I'm thinking this way and it's not the same,
how does everyone else think about these things?
And how do I show, how do I support my proposal with my work
and how do I keep the thread?
You know what I mean?
So, I found that a difficult efforts to try to,
to try to
keep making those connections, but also
realize that other people didn't connect the same way.
And that's okay.
I just need to kind of learn how other people connect.
And when I do my applications, I try to put that type of thinking cap on and be
like, well, how would arts adjudicator
be looking at this instead of how does Jess connect this?
It's good to be unique, right?
It's good to be, to have this, this little thing that nobody else has or this...
In French you will say "fil conducteur," like this thread.
You know, Picasso, he did a series of blues. That's right.
I mean, there is nothing wrong about the fact to have
a colour that connects all that.
But one of the things that has to be learned in
the writing of applications or things like that is
how to make it sound special enough so that it will catch the eye
of the person who's reading the file.
And that's an art, right?
That's... again, we were talking about different languages.
This is another language and that's something we need to learn when we are applying to that, right?
That's true, and I've learned so much and it's -
it's definitely a different experience.
And, you know, if I think when people are trying to get into learning that stuff,
the best thing you can do is actually volunteer to sit on a jury
because it lets you be part of your art community and it lets you
kind of see the process behind the scenes.
I know, what's been hard for me too about, kind of
navigating these spaces is figuring out like what's successful to me and what's not.
Like I, I don't get to participate in as many residence opportunities
because a lot of them are outside and I don't do well with the heat.
And I... so I just, I don't apply to them because it's just like, I
I'm on medication that makes me really temperature sensitive.
So I unfortunately have to be inside.
But a lot of times with these residency opportunities, they're like, outside.
That's like, it's okay, but...
And it's okay for people who can, but yeah, not everyone can be outside and in the public or in the heat.
So it's, I found that difficult.
I understand that. Yeah.
But it's important to recognize your own access needs
and to have that integrated into your own process, right?
Exactly. Like I mostly right now, I love that you're mentioning that because I...
Whenever I do proposals, I actually try really hard to schedule time in for rest
and stuff and make that part of my project
because like, we don't talk about that enough.
People don't talk about, okay, well, you know, I can do this in two months.
Well, why when someone else can do it a month, it's like, well, you know what?
I know that I have non-usable time, like non-functional time.
There's rest, which is like, you're intentionally resting.
And then there's time that's just not usable.
And that's not rest, it's time where you're not feeling good enough to do anything.
And that's, it's not that you're able to really rest during that time, so I find there's kind of a difference there
and making sure that, you know, you're aware of
like, I mean, we're usually pretty aware of our own needs
and stuff like that, but putting that in your project and
even if you're not necessarily seeing it in your project outline,
but just having it be like, okay, well, I know that this is going to take me this long.
So I might say two weeks instead of one week, because it's giving myself time
and making sure that I can meet my deadlines, but not be sick and,
or I can meet my deadlines and still be sick, but not overwork myself,
especially with fibro, because, you know, I can flare you up so bad,
especially if you push really hard and the stress can make it worse.
So you can end up in this cycle of just being too stressed and getting sick
and then being more stressed because now you can't meet your deadlines and then getting sicker.
And it's hard, it's hard to come back from a flare up.
You do, but it takes time.
It does. Yes.
Okay. Yeah. Thank you.
That's all very good topics.
It's really, as you say, it is not discussed enough.
So I'm glad that you are mentioning all that. Thank you so much.
I have a last question for you to end our conversation.
It's about people who in your career as an artist have motivated you
or inspired you, are present in your life.
If you had a few names or one name to give, who would it be and why?
Well, I know Ysabel's come up a lot throughout our conversation.
Ysabel Vautour is a Fredericton artist and she really inspires me.
I know she creates community and I think that's so important.
She runs the New Brunswick Disability Art Collective.
And it's a space for disabled artists in New Brunswick to kind of
come together and communicate.
We share art calls in the group.
It's a Facebook group.
So art calls are often shared and it's just a nice place for community.
I love Ysabel's painting, because she's colour-blind and I,
the way that she paints and uses colours is so cool because this is part of her story.
I think it's neat to see how she sees differently
and to see the colours that she sees or doesn't see in her work.
And it's so cool.
Well, you connect through colours, right? So it makes sense.
I do. Colour is a big thing for me.
Another artist I want to mention is Dr. Lea Pearson.
She is from Music Without Pain.
She is changing -
She does body mapping for flute, which is really cool.
And it's been a different way of thinking.
I had a consultation with them a while ago because I,
I have fibro and luckily, I don't have a lot of pain when I'm playing.
but I wanted to have that conversation with someone and be like,
how do I stay out of pain when I'm playing and what should I be thinking about?
So I think what they're doing is so important because in...
I don't have as much experience in music spaces, but I do feel like we don't talk about pain in music as much.
And, you know, we're doing things that can cause like repetitive stress injuries or things like that.
Like we're using our hands in ways that are complicated
and we're using our bodies in ways that, you know, we're becoming one with an instrument
and that's, it's not without risk.
So it's important to be careful and to know as much as we can about staying safe.
So they've, I've learned a lot from them, from reading their book and
from the consultation I had and it's been really cool to learn more.
Oh yeah. Okay. That's great.
I have to have a look.
Absolutely.
Okay. Thank you so much for all that
and all the best for all your future applications and your creative process, which is fantastic.
Really continue doing that, right?
It is really important to keep connecting with all your skills and put them out there.
Thank you for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity.
Thank you. And so have a fantastic day,
and maybe see you around with some arts.
Definitely.
Have a good day.
You too.
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