Erin Brady Worsham

Artist Statement

Mind, Body, Spirit is made up of three pictures. These were created as illustrations for an article on staying healthy in the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s QUEST magazine.

In the three pictures we see the same sitting figure. In the first, she is painting. In the second, she is dressed for a swim, and in the third she is meditating. I went a little nuts with patterns, but I wanted to counteract the sedentary positions of the figures.

I found it very interesting, that many people told me they didn’t even notice that the woman was sitting in a wheelchair in all three pictures. And that, I realized, was the point! Her abilities, the art and swimming and meditation, outshone her disability. Maybe the world will catch on to that some day!

Catalogue Description

Erin is from Nashville, Tennessee and designed our Really Big Banners for the kickstART! Celebration in 2001. She used a communication device (called the Liberator) that has a sensor attached to her eyebrow! Erin did not formally study art until she was 33, when she enrolled in the Watkins Art Institute in 1991. In 1994, a neurologist told her that she had Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS) and would probably die in 3-5 years. In 1999, she acquired the software that allows the Liberator to interface with her computer, and you can see the result. This includes the huge banners which are making an encore appearance at kickstART2.