I'm writing a visual memoir about my relationship with art through illness. This section will contain my thoughts and essays that I will leave from time to time, and perhaps teasers and snippets of the book as it moves closer to completion. Wish me luck - a book, as it turns out, is quite a feat!

Teal blue, lime green, and neon pink blared at me floor to ceiling from Katherine Duclose’s gallery exhibit, Reappraisal, last week. Bulgy and rough textures danced with each other unwilling to settle, shapes and images peaked out from behind curtains, and even through the window from the outside garden. Wall after wall had been rolled into the space, shelves mounted, tables and crates created rooms and nooks and crannies everywhere that the artist filled to the brim. The exhibition was a cacophony of delight and surprises.

This was a unique exhibit in that viewers were not held at arms length from the art, or from the role of artist. The lines were blurred as visitors were explicitly invited to touch the work, move around it, manipulate some of its objects and shapes however we saw fit, to create our own works out of colours, shapes, and textures. I indulged in doing just that.

The sheer existence of an exhibit like this inside the normally clean, white, and hallowed space of a serious gallery felt like a celebration of who I am at my very core. 

Turning to the right, I wove through the structures and had to slow down to take in even a fraction of what was offered to me. There was a dinner table that was set like a child’s fantasy; a mix of a Hogwarts potion class, the paint-swatch section of the hardware store, and the game peek-a-boo, with little surprises everywhere my eyes rested.

“Oh look!” I told my companion “There is a picture hiding under there! Oh look, those dried flowers look like they’ve been dipped in glass - how did she do that?” It was a wonder–all of it, and as a full-grown human, I don’t get invited into wonder very often.

As adults we’ve learned to rein it in. As parents and caregivers, we in turn rein our kids in too, After all that’s where we learned it first, when we were young and being taught to follow the order of things. Order is important, delight is distracting. Stay in the lines, repeat until it's perfect, do what you are told.

But at that exhibit last week, it was as if she was inviting me personally to let go– of the control, of the restraint, of the rules, and follow the lead of curiosity and delight.

I am well aware of the criticism of art shows that insist on joy. “Frivolous. Unnecessary.” Some folks think that if artists aren’t making work about pain or politics, we are out of touch, wasting our time. There are wars happening, threats to our bodies, threats to our freedoms. “What is the point of a show like this in the context of a world where danger is just around the corner?” I can hear them say.

That is the point, I think. Injections of joy, of wonder, of enchantment. These offer relief. Now more than ever we need the reminder of what it feels like to play, we need, displayed in in front of us, an example of what happens when someone follows their curiosity, when they care for it fiercely like a one cares for a precious child, feeding it and playing with it and allowing it to grow strong, to have opinions to make decisions for itself.

There is something fierce and protective in the reclaiming of delight, in re-assessing and re-building one's history, as she did in the forming of this exhibit, with permission to be oneself for the first time.

This art show, in which crystals are dangled in front of the window to cast rainbows through the room, that has a made a sculptural creature shaped from expired birthday balloons, is here precisely to remind viewers what else is possible, what else might exist beyond the fear and rules, beyond endless hours scrolling TikTok or mind-numbing day jobs and balancing the budget. When we have all but forgotten how to live in our bodies, to notice how things feel and look and sound –the sensory world that is our pathway to remembering that we are living, breathing, feeling humans.

I know, to the artist herself, this exhibit is about more than delight and the permission to indulge in it. There is layer after layer of meaning and story there (around re-evaluating history, reclaiming personhood) but that is the thing with art shows, once an artist offers it up, the viewer gets to lay claim to her own experience. For me, the invitation into wonder is what I will take with me.

After we have set up residence in our minds, this show reminded me what it was to be alive in a body, to feel with my skin, to revel at the play of color again.

This is who I am at my core, curiosity, play, delight and expression. I am still that girl who falls in love with the ladybug who lands on my ruffled dress, counts her spots and gives her a name. I’m still the girl who squeezes her doll tight so she can feel safe in my arms, who paints with bright colours, who runs towards the sprinkler on a hot summer day and squeals in excitement at how cold the water splashing is. I am this person as much as I am the one who puts the sprinkler away at the end of the day, and who releases the insect back to the wild, who adjusts the bath temperature so it is just right.

This is why we need artists–To coax us out of our comfort zones. They have learned to follow curiosity, to suspend disbelief, to play and wonder. They lead the way and entice the rest of us to follow into new and surprising territories, they tell the stories that would otherwise stay buried, they try things we are afraid of trying and, in turn, we get to see that they survived the task, and so maybe we will too.

Artists are our guides into being more fully human, and art is here for anyone who wants to grab ahold of it and find out what it’s like first-hand.

Also, if you read this before the show closes March 21st, 2026, its at The Act Gallery in Maple Ridge, BC. Go check it out.