This is What I Can Do

The project “This Is What I Can Do”, begun March 2024, is a fast, pressured monthly experiment in materials and outcomes. Each month I must complete a work of art or craft and physically mail photos of the work to recipients.

The artworks have no through-line, except for the reason behind the project; at age 51 I am starting over.

I have two invisible disabilities: temporal lobe epilepsy and essential tremors. In December 2023 I had to begin taking the barbiturate Primidone. Miraculously the seizure activity and tremors receded to almost nothing. In the inverse of miracle, I’ve become too doped up to do any of the work I had been doing for the past decade—designing, writing, illustrating, community organizing and more. Those things require moment-to-moment decision-making. Taking primidone makes me feel constantly slightly stoned. And I was never good at accomplishing anything while stoned.

I initiated this current project as a way to find out what I can do in this new phase of life. I used to be an artist, but abandoned it over ten years ago. What can I do now? What can art do for me now?

The mailing is free: if you or anyone you know would like to receive some snail mail contact me at kimiweart@gmail.com

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A moment on invisible disabilities:

Many people do not think much about invisible disabilities—epilepsy, coeliac disease, lupus, narcolepsy, to name just a few. Conditions rise to the level of being a disability when you must create scaffolding around your life to do the things that abled people do without thinking.

I believe it is important to talk about invisible disabilities. Many think that only those with obvious physical conditions qualify. But this symbol does not represent us all. We must honor all those who struggle mightily behind a smile to do what others can so easily do. I’m not even one of those who must struggle mightily.

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A moment on applied arts, or craft:

I am generally using materials, techniques and forms that the art world considers part of “craft” (not to be confused with craftsmanship). I think the concept that materials or technique divides things into craft or fine art is ridiculous. To me, craft must be:
-Repeatable with practice.
-Made for either usefulness or as decoration.

If it is none of those things, it is not craft, it is art. It’s also fine to straddle the line and be both.

Perhaps more importantly, craft does not fall below art in value to the world. Craft can soothe the soul more than anything else, the making and the receiving. Craft and craftsmanship keep humanity in our homes. Anyone whose very furniture is art is unhuman.

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If you really want to know about my life before:

Kimi Weart has exhibited in galleries in New York City and in museum shows in New York and Massachussetts. She has designed well over a hundred children’s books for various publishers such as Penguin RandomHouse, MacMillan, and Lee and Low. She has owned a stationery company, written and illustrated a children’s book for the Museum of Modern Art, and done original art and design for multiple environmental organizations.

If you would like to receive a physical mailing once a month just fill out the form below. No information will be shared under any circumstance whatsoever. If you would like to chat with me by email contact me at kimiweart@gmail.com