Art and Advocacy with Mariam Pare'

Living a Life in Full is a conversation you always wanted to have with that person who gave an amazing TED Talk or the author of one of your favorite books, or that inspirational Olympian you always wanted to know more about. It's graduate level conversations with those making a difference in the world and in the lives of others. This show brings you new ideas and approaches so that you can live a life in full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout and I hope you enjoy this episode. Welcome to another episode of Living a Life in full. I'm Dr. Chris Stout, your host and today's episode is brought to you by the ATI Foundation. ATI Physical Therapy's philanthropic efforts extend their commitment to quality care outside clinic walls by giving back to communities. They touch the lives of thousands of people each year through their ATI Foundation. The ATI foundation is an independent 501 charitable organization that gives help and hope to children with physical impairments. Since 2003, the foundation has raised over $4 million to assist children with physical impairments in our communities. Often the beneficiary families have mounting debt and are overcome by financial and physical obstacles. Through the work of the clinical and corporate team members, they raise funds to purchase medical equipment, pay medical bills, remodel families homes to accommodate their child's special needs, but more importantly, they give families hope by offering a better quality of life for their child. To learn more about the foundation and ATI, please visit atipt.com welcome to another episode of Living a Life in Full. I'm your host, Dr. Chris Stout. Today's guest is the amazing Marion Perrett. Miriam is a visual artist, designer and speaker. Her paintings and other works have been exhibited locally, internationally and are in numerous private collections. Her public painting demonstrations have become a visual metaphor to the core of her message, encouraging people towards superior levels of performance and inspiring areas of innovation and creative thinking. Her list of venues include St. Petersburg Museum of Art, the Museum of Art, Vancouver, the Orlando Museum of Art, First Canada Place, the New York City Children's Museum, the McCord Gallery, per Populous Gallery and many others. Miriam has appeared on the Katie Couric show and with Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb on the Today Show. She met with Pierce Brosnan in his home in Malibu, allowing her to personally deliver a painting that she had done for him of his iconic James Bond role. Miriam has also been interviewed on NPR and in the Huffington Post, USA Today, Chicago Tribune, MSN and Reuters, just to name a few. She paints in her home in the western suburbs of Chicago she likes to experiment with traditional oil painting and modern mixed media techniques and divides her artistic output between figurative, abstract and semi abstract modes. Welcome to the show, Miriam. It's great to have you here.

Hi, Chris. Thank you for having me.

So I think you and I connected by virtue of you donating a painting as a fundraiser to the ATI foundation, is that right?

Yes, yes. I donated a David Bowie portrait for

their fundraiser and I saw that you have a YouTube video of you painting that one as memory server. So good. We'll put that for sure in the show notes. It was just amazing to see you work, so there's a lot to cover. You've got an amazing life. I want to start for the people in the audience that aren't familiar with you to get to know you a little bit. I read that you were born in Morocco and you came to the US with your parents when you were very young. Tell us about that.

Well, my mother was Moroccan and native to the country and my father was a marine and he was stationed at the embassy there in Morocco. So they met and that's how I got born abroad. And then we came to the United States soon after the Vietnam War.

Wow. Okay. So were you, you were just a child?

Yeah, I was less than 2 years old.

Gotcha. Okay. All right. So it seems that again, looking at your bio, that from the get go you had a passion for art. Could you tell us about your early years as an artist and how they shaped you to be the artist you are today?

Yeah, well, you know, I grew up as a very artistic child. I was always drawing and painting and it just came naturally. I think a lot of. There's a lot of creative people in my family, either sewing or crafting or photography, and it was just something that we were all very creative people when I, I was surrounded by creative people growing up and I just had a love for it. And so I made that my focus through school and, you know, always dreamt of being an artist when I, when I grew up. But, you know, it's. It's a hard thing to be an artist. It's a parent's nightmare when your child tells you that they want to be an artist when they, they grew up. But I never thought that I could be an artist because, you know, they tell you you're not going to make enough money, where you're going to waste your money on art school, blah, blah, blah. But, you know, it's so funny how my life turned out sometimes because I think because I had an injury at a young well, at a prime age of 20 and becoming a mouth painter kind of gave me a life to be an artist. It gave me a lifestyle that I could be an artist. I think in any other world, if my life had never been changed by my injury, I may not have been able to fulfill my dream of becoming an artist. Which is kind of interesting. Serendipity, isn't it?

Right, exactly. So for those that don't know, can you tell us a little bit about what happened? What was that injury? What occurred?

Oh, sure, sure. When I was 20 years old, I was shot in the back while driving a car. And the. As a result from the shooting, I became a quadriplegic. I had a C5, C6 spinal cord injury, and the bullet is still in my spine today, never was removed. So it gave me paralysis from the chest down. And it. Including my arms are affected as well. My hands and fingers are affected. And that's why I paint with my mouth. When I was growing up and all through school, I obviously used my hands to make art. And, you know, when you lose the use of your hands and you're a lover of art and you say, well, I still want art in my life. How do I still make art if I can't use my hands? And I started painting with my mouth. And it was. It was. It almost came. Came to me naturally.

Wow. So. Pardon me. So were you always a painter before the injury? Was that your primary medium?

It was what I was focusing on at school at the time, when I was 20, like I said, I. I should elaborate on that. I was in art school at the time, and I was visiting a friend in Virginia when I got shot. So it really just put my life on hold, and I had to go through rehabilitation and relearn how to do everyday activities. Yeah. One of the things that I had to relearn to do was to sign my name. And the occupational therapist taught me to do this by placing a pen in my mouth. And. And I remember the moment when I wrote my name for the first time with my mouth. And I saw that my signature resembled the signature I used to have with my hand.

Wow.

And it was like a little light bulb went off over my head. I was like, wait, okay, so my mannerisms are still inside me. My aesthetics, my. I don't know what the word is. My nuances are inside of me. It's not so much the limb that you're. You're writing with or painting with. It's the art was inside me, is what I was trying to say. And. And so I knew that if I drew. If I wrote my name that way, I could paint that way. And. Yeah, Golly. And that was all happening when I was 20. So.

Golly.

Going through rehab.

And was that it. Was that in Chicago at the Rehab Institute, what was called the Rehab Institute

at the time, formerly called the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. Yes.

And you're. Are you on the board there?

I was on the associate board for Art in Motion. That ended last year, actually. I did end that.

What was that like? What did you do with Art in Motion?

Well, Art in Motion is a annual fundraiser that we have to raise money for their art therapy department. And the art therapy helps the inpatient people going through the arduous process of rehabilitation. So it really is a therapy. And so we raise money so that they can continue that program. So we have a great art show. We have all the alumni, the student alumni playing their art, and we also have professional artists. So it's a really great party.

Oh, that's great. I've been seeing also at the children's hospital over in the neck of the woods, all with Northwestern and whatnot. Just the architecture and the design there. I mean, there's quite an aesthetic appreciation of environment and art there as well, too, which I think is very, very healing. So do you feel like the process of. I mean, you're a creative person. You have art as part of your life. How did that play a role in your therapeutic or healing process?

Through my own healing, coping process. Art was a huge part of that. Learning that I still had a part of my formal life through art was so important. The one thing that I could still do was paint. Out of all the things that I couldn't do, I could still paint and that. I mean, you know, at a point in your life when you're thinking, what am I gonna do? What I can't work, I can't. At that point, I wasn't ready to go back to school. So just relearning and reteaching myself how to paint gave me purpose during those first several years of a lot of depression and just relearning how to live my life as a disabled individual. You know, it's life changing, and it takes a while to get comfortable living or finding yourself again as a person with a disability.

I can imagine. And you also. You had another brush with. Is that right? Was there a near drowning?

Oh, and I fell in the leg.

Yeah. What happened with that? My gosh. Yeah.

I know it sounds so terrible, but I've had a few things in my life that I'm just like, I can't believe I lived. Lightning does strike twice.

I guess so.

And that what happened with that was. That was my first brush with the news and getting on tv. What had happened was I was with some friends on the lakefront and I was in my wheelchair. And for, for your listeners who can't see me, I'm in a big power, electric power chair, the same one I had years ago. And my friends were rollerblading and I was following them on the bike path in my wheelchair. And they were off in front of me. And I lost control of my power chair. My hand just kind of. I hit a bump. My torso kind of slumped over. My hand fell off the joystick and my chair just kept going. Beelined right over the edge into the water.

Oh, my gosh.

So I sank. I was seat belted into my chair. So me and my heavy chair sank to the bottom of Lake Michigan. So right where I had fallen in the water, it was an 11 foot drop. I mean, it was only a one foot drop to the top of the water, but the water was 11ft deep. So right where I fell in some. So immediately it was a sunny day in Chicago. Lots of people witnessed it happening. My friends who were rollerblading immediately turned around and came to help me. And everything happened so quickly. So I sank to the bottom of the water and people jumped in after me, but they couldn't pull me out because I was seated and I couldn't speak because I was underwater. So what occurred over just a minute and a half, two minutes of being underwater and people kind of yanking me? My friends were able to shout to the people who were in the water with me to unbuckle my seat belt. And as soon as they did, they were able to pull me over, but I had inhaled some water.

Good gosh.

And then the news was right there. Seconds later, woman falls into the lake. And there was TV cameras.

Oh, gosh. Oh, gosh.

At my worst moment.

Oh, boy.

And it's, it's funny because that happened maybe, I think that was 1998. So it was a few years after my injury and I was just starting to get out again and do things. And then that happened. But it was also. Again, it's funny how things happen. It's like a tragedy, but sometimes it can be the best thing that happens to you. Because of that, I was learning. I was still teaching myself to paint and painting more, teaching myself to paint with my mouth again. And the people who had rescued me, I painted a Picture. I painted a painting for them. It was a woman reaching out, out of the water and people saving her. And I presented it to them and it wasn't very good at the time because I was still learning how to mouth paint. But because of that and it got on the news and it was the beginning of me realizing what my art can do and how it affected people and brought people together. And so that was a wonderful thing that came from a terrible experience.

Your resilience is amazing. My gosh. So you had also. One of the first things I saw doing research on your background. You have. I think it's on your website as well. Like you as Salvador Dali or you as Frida Kahlo. And tell us about that. How do you come up with ideas like that? They're just so wonderful.

Some people say wonderful, some people say weird. I love surrealism and things that are unusual. And you know, I do paint, but there's so many other. I love videography, I love digital art. So I do dabble in other mediums and I like to play with myself, as in photography, using myself as a muse. And you said that you saw the picture of me as Salvador Dali. I love to Photoshop. So I photo, you know, I take these photo shoots and then I photoshop them to look interesting. Like I think I have branches coming out of my head on one of them. Salvador Dali mustache. And I've even in the last few years, I've collaborated with a few other artists on some photography based projects where we. I don't know if you've heard about my Tres Fridas project. It's the Three Fridas.

Oh, tell us about it.

And we are taking photos of. Well, we're recreating famous paintings, like images from the collective consciousness of society. Like famous ones like the Last Supper, Whistler's Mother, the Birth of Venus. All these pictures that many people will recognize. And we're recreating them and changing the subject of the painting to have a person with a disability instead of who was the real. And we're doing that in an effort to kind of redress the way people think about disability and inserting our own disability culture into the collective consciousness.

And Frieda did that too as well, right?

I don't know if she did with photography.

Well, not photography, but painting of herself with the brace and things like that.

Yeah. Kind of breaking those taboos, you know, normalizing differences, showing the beauty of disability or sometimes familiarizing people. And that's why we chose to recreate famous paintings. Because if we Thought if we just presented the same image that people are used to already seeing, just slightly different way they can, it almost makes it more palatable to them. And I'll have to show you some of the photos, because if you saw them, you would see how that occurs. Because, for instance, I'll take the Last Supper. So we. For the photo shoot, we had 12 apostles, each one with a different disability. So you couldn't necessarily visually see the disability, but you knew the man with the cane was blind. And the. You know, ranging from cerebral palsy to brain injury to amputees, every apostle had a different disability. So when you look closely, you can see that, but when you step away, it's just the Last Supper.

Are they publicly available?

You know, we're having. We're debuting this. This collection of photographs we've made over the last three years. It's been a long process, but our show is actually September 6th at the Bridgeport Gallery.

Excellent this year.

And I'm so excited to finally show these to people because I've been kind of holding back because I didn't want to put them online or anything until we exhibited them.

We'll put that in the show notes. I mean, that would be really awesome to have. There was a. I don't know if you're familiar with her, but there's an artist, a performing artist, Victoria Modesta. Does that name ring a bell? I'll show you after the show. She has some amazing videos, and she's a pop star, pop artist, and she had a leg amputation. And when you start to watch this one video, it says, forget what you know about disability.

I think I know what you're talking about.

Yeah, she is amazing. I mean, it's really powerful stuff and done like a, you know, like a. A movie. I mean, her video just kind of plays like a movie. It's really amazing. We'll put that in the show notes as well. And I just. I appreciate that the use of, you know, whatever kind of, you know, expressive arts, performing arts, you know, aspect of being able to, you know, get this out into the public consciousness a bit more. So.

Right. People don't always. If they're unfamiliar with something, a lot goes. It can go a long way to just familiarize people with things. And that's why people need to see us and we need to make art. And for so long, it's other. The media tells our story. You know, the media shows examples of disability. People need to start. Disabled people need to start telling our own stories.

Yeah. Hear, hear. Good for you. So I want to get back to your art. So then you went back to art school school, correct?

I did. After I was in a wheelchair, yes.

What was that like?

Oh, it was hard. I bet nobody knew how to teach me.

Wow.

Yeah. When you're a mouth painter, there's not a lot of other people doing it. So I went through the motions with college. I took all the art classes and everything. A lot of times I just had to kind of teach myself, even though I did finish art school.

Gosh. So then you got your bachelor's, and then you applied to and were accepted to the Mouth and Foot Painting Artist Organization?

Yes, the mfpa. The Mouth and Foot Painting Artists.

Tell our audience a little bit about that.

You know, I would love to. The MFPA is a really unusual and unique and awesome organization, and I think a lot more people should know about it because it's so unique. I just can't say enough about it. The MFPA is a group of over 800 artists worldwide who paint by mouth or foot. And the association was founded in the 1950s by Eric Stedman, who. He was this man who had polio and he couldn't use his hands. And so at a time where artists were poor, and especially people with disabilities were poor, there's no livelihood, no way to make a living. He decided to make a cooperative that would. That would allow disabled artists to make a living. So that's what the MFPA is, and I've been with them for 10 years. And it's basically an association of artists who paint and make a living through their art. And we're professional artists. And it's really. Our motto is self help, not charity. You know, it's really a model for empowering artists with disabilities to be able to be financially independent.

That's fantastic. And then there's a. You're also in the international VDMfK. Is that a branch of that.

Yeah, that's our international.

Okay. And similar kind of thing. And it's. Is it all medium, so to speak, in terms of art?

Any painting.

Painting.

Painting, but any medium of painting.

Gotcha. So if my research is correct, around 2009, you had your first gallery exhibition, Is that correct?

Yes, that was 2009.

And what was that like? And where was it at?

I believe the first one I've ever had, well, I did small art fairs, but I think the first one I ever got in a gallery was Per Populous. And that was. It was incredible. It's funny, though. The first show I ever got offered to me was not Accessible? The building wasn't accessible, so I had to be carried into the door in my chair. But it was great. And I sold a lot of art and I just knew I wanted to keep doing that.

That's great. I have a friend who was in a similar situation. She was speaking, I think it was in Ecuador, and she couldn't get into the auditorium where she had been invited to present that.

Isn't that funny?

Yeah. So I think it really, you know, it raises that kind of appreciation too. I mean, just the whole design and whatnot. So your talents really clearly gained high acclaim and renown. Tell us about your experience on the Katie Couric show and the Today show.

Oh, wow. You know, around 2013, I had just a stroke of luck with the press just hearing about me. I forgot how I got invited, but I think Katie Curry Couric, excuse me, Katie Couric, that's a tongue twister. Heard about me and invited me out. And another MFPA mouth painter, a foot painter, excuse me, out to her show to demonstrate my ability on her show, which was an incredible opportunity, you know, and it was so. I wasn't really used to doing any press at that point. And the first time since sitting on her set and then all of a sudden, Katie Couric is in front of you asking questions. I almost flubbed so hard on tv, I went blink. Time stopped. And I felt my blood pressure.

Oh, gosh, it was so.

It was intense. But she's such a nice woman. And the rest of the interview went fine.

That's great.

But I'll never forget that as.

Oh, I can imagine. Yeah, the anxiety of kind of getting starstruck and everything.

Yes, Starstruck on him.

Highly. Yeah. Highly anxiety producing. So did that then give you the gumption to then go see Pierce Brosnan?

Well, you know, that's another struggle right after that. I don't know if he saw me on the Katie Couric or how exactly that happened, but he reached out to me. I had already actually painted him in his James Bond role. And he, I think, saw it on social media. And I didn't even plan on giving it to him or anything like that, but when Pierce Brosnan had heard about me, he's like, you know, I'll invite you out to my house because I said, you know, you can have the painting. When his people contacted my people or whatever, I said, I'd love to give you the painting. He's like, one step better. Would you like to come out to Malibu and bring it to me? So I was like, yes. So I went. I drove to Pierce Brosnan's house.

What a heady experience.

I parked right behind his Aston Martin. Yes, I did.

How appropriate.

He came out in no shoes. It was. It was wonderful. And he held my hand.

Oh, that's great.

I'll never forget it. And he. He does have a painting of mine. I also did paint Kathie Lee Gifford and Hodeg. I can never pronounce her last name. Copy. And that was a lot of fun. And they. And that was more of. I wanted to do them both. And they actually hung that painting on their set for, like, two years. If you ever look behind Hoda and Katie on their set, they. People think that's a photograph. That's the painting that I did.

Wow.

And it was so funny, because Kathy was so funny. The first thing she said when we unveiled the painting on the Today show was, they unveiled it. And she goes, oh, you made my boobs look so great. That was the first thing she noticed. So that was a lot of fun.

Oh, that's fantastic. So you also. You've done art for Amorose Amaro's cosmetics?

Yeah, they're a Malaysian.

How did that come about again?

They just reached out to me. They work with people with disabilities a lot as well. And I'm always up to participate for companies that are trying to employ people with disabilities, which was great. So I worked with them to design their product packaging.

How cool.

For their gift sets for a couple years. And all their swag, or what do they call it? Swag. Swag for the Golden Globes and stuff like that.

Oh, really? Wow.

So that was really neat.

That's nice. I mean, it's kind of a neat overlap with, you know, kind of more industrial or graphic design kinds of stuff to be able to use for a cosmetic line. That's cool.

Yeah. Before I was in the MFPA or able to make a living from my art, I was doing design work for years because that's what paid the bills. It's hard to sell art before anyone knows your name and whatnot. So, yeah, I was depending heavily on my design skills. So it still pays off this day with the other projects that I do. Like, even the photography and photoshopping that. It's all from my design background.

That's great. Wow. So tell us what Steam Studios is.

Actually, Steam Studios has been. We closed Steam Studios in 2017, I want to say.

What was it?

We were helping underserved youth do art programs, so we would just have classes and places for marginalized kids to come and make art anytime they wanted to. And it was really neat. We were having trouble getting a spot space. It was getting very expensive. So we actually had to close that because it was. It's not a money making endeavor, but we were just trying to serve the community. But unfortunately, it's. If you don't have a model where you're making money to keep the COVID the overhead. Yeah, it was hard. I was very sad to see that.

That sounds like a wonderful project, though. It's a wonderful idea.

And I still. We still might do it again in the future.

But I think, you know, it reminds me of some friends that have also done things with teens. I had a colleague that this is back in the day, before digital cameras and certainly before iPhones were, you know, in everybody's pocket. And they would go to like the. Whatever, Walgreens and get the little portable disposable cameras, and they would just sort of shoot their neighborhood and then they would take them and get the film developed and then put together collages. And they were sort of like these ways to be able to talk about what their life was about, talk about what their neighborhood was like, and really sort of developed this little community of photographic artists, but then also gave them a great way to express themselves. And I just think the whole creative aspect. You had mentioned art therapy, I want to talk more about that too, of the healing aspects of that and the communication aspects of that.

Art's a universal language. That's why it can do so many things.

So with your advocacy work then, in disability culture, you are also a speaker and you've spoken about issues of stigma and relationships and independent living. Tell us a little bit about that. What's your focus?

Well, it depends. I've. It depends on the situation. But I like to speak on these topics whenever I can. When the opportunity presents itself. I don't know. What would you like to know?

Well, is it a specific kind of focus? Who invites you out? What are the venues where you present?

It depends. If I do a presentation, sometimes I'll do large presentations where I speak in front of thousands of people. And that's more broader topics of, like how people can reach their highest potential, how we all are heroes. How any. I have a big belief that I'm no special than anyone else. When people call me inspirational or courageous, we all are courageous. Just because somebody has a disability doesn't make them exceptional, you know, but we all have that potential. We all can overcome. We all can be our best. And I just try to Drive home that message any, any way I can. A lot of times too, I'll do smaller presentations for smaller groups where I talk about maybe artists with disabilities or show. Show people with disabilities and maybe people that don't even know they have disabilities. There's, there's a lot of that. There's invisible disabilities and I, I'll show the art and, and talk about that.

Wow. So you'd also talked about navigating public assistance in Medicare and Medicaid, things like that. Is that some of the things that you also.

Not at an in depth level, but I try to do peer support on that level just from experience. I'm not an expert, but yeah, because

it doesn't seem like something that would necessarily be intuitive or natural for people to know what rights there are, what sort of available to them. And again, really gets back to the strong voice of your advocacy.

Yes.

So you had mentioned, I've seen in your bio about a few artists with disabilities that inspire you. We've talked about Frida and you talked about Eric founding the mfpa. Chuck Close also is someone that inspires you.

Yes. Chuck Close is an amazing portrait artist and I am particularly interested in portraiture. And he is one of the only examples that I ever had another person like myself who was able bodied and then had a traumatic incident which I think. I don't know what had happened to him, but I think it was a spinal aneurysm or something.

But he also neuromuscular. Yeah, yeah.

He became a quadriplegic and he was already a famous artist already. And then that happened to him and he still persevered and he's still painting in his wheelchair. These 20 foot paintings, one square by square. I mean that is my hero. He is my hero. And I was looking for examples that I could find to model myself after or just emulate people to look up to and show closest. Right up there with Frida.

I saw Pushing the Boundaries, kind of like a retrospective exhibit of his in Chicago at the Museum of Contemporary Art some years ago. I saw that. Did you see it too? Yeah. And there was sort of like this one. I forget if it was because I know he does a lot of self portraits. There's one I think he did when in a younger age. It was all by his thumbprint, you know, know at this huge wall size.

The detail is amazing. It is because if you stand back 20ft, you can see every hair, every pore. It's amazing.

And then he also. It reminds me of you with experimenting with other kinds of Media and other kinds of technology. Because I remember in another part of that. I haven't thought about this in years, he had holograms. And they were like. I can't. It seems like, if memory serves, there's sort of like these three things. And because they were holograms, you kind of had to like, look at them in a certain kind of way. You couldn't look at them, you know, from any which angle. And I thought, oh, my gosh, you know, this is the next evolution. Yeah, exactly. Honestly, come up with that. So well. And then Frida as well. I mean, I remember that if my art history serves, had polio.

I think she had a trauma.

She had polio to begin with. And then had a traumatic car. Car wreck where she got, like, impaled. Yeah. With a guardrail or something, too. And then, you know, used, as you mentioned earlier, you know, kind of used her art as a, you know, expressive way to, you know, get back to self portraits, you know, showing how she, you know, what she felt her life was like. And, you know, I mean, just. We'll put a little history in, you know, in the show notes of her, because I think she just really was, you know, to think about doing that in the 1950s.

Exactly. She was one of the first to start those dialogues with the people viewing her art. Very powerful. She recorded her miscarriages, her traction, her braces, and also she also painted from bed a lot, which I always. I see these pictures of her in a brace from her whole torso, bracelet attraction, and she is painting in bed and she also had to sit in a wheelchair sometimes. And I can absolutely relate to that.

Wow. So you've mentioned collaborations with other artists with disabilities in pursuing that. How did that culture start? How did that, you know, how did you get together with these other folks? Was it people seeing your talks? Oh, really?

Yes. Well, they. The Internet, because especially being a woman with spinal cord injury, I didn't know a lot of other women with spinal cord injury or I didn't know a lot of other independent people with disabilities kind of doing the same thing in my areas. I just felt very isolated. So through doing searches on the Internet, I had met friends that kind of were also artists, but also women with spinal cord injury. And a couple were actually in my area. Rebecca Torres, I've been collaborating with her for the last four years. She's also an advocate. She does the company Backbones, which is a peer support group for people with spinal cord injury. And she's an amazing artist. And also Tara Ahern, who's a photographer, and she, I think, has a spinal muscular disability, and I'm doing the Tresfriedas project with them. So not only are we getting together as women with disabilities and artists, but we're also trying to improve our community through it.

That is so cool.

So thank goodness for the Internet.

Yeah, no kidding. So maybe to kind of shift gears, I think it's obviously related to the history that you've mentioned about, but I'd like to hear your perspectives around gun violence and how making art has helped you process your trauma and your feelings about what had happened back when you were 20.

Yeah, well, whenever I do speak about gun violence, I usually. I try to remind people that today it's not so relevant because there's so many shootings on TV and stuff all the time now. But there's been many years at the point where people thought it was somebody else's problem. This is shooting. This is something that happens to other people. This doesn't happen to my kids. This doesn't happen to my family members. It doesn't happen to nice people living in suburbia. So I always felt that I was an example of, like, hey, no, this does happen to anyone. It could happen to anyone, and it's a problem. Gun violence is an issue in. In this country. And I'm glad that we're with the light of all these school shootings and every. The public shootings that are going on. I'm glad that people are looking more closely at gun laws. And I'm not even against gun use or anything like that. I just think people have to be smarter and innocent people shouldn't be so affected. Yeah.

So does that then segue into. I know that, you know, there's been a lot of traumatic experiences that you've, you know, dealt with and with others in your family in the context of those kinds of experiences, what have you learned about coping? Has it been through the expressive arts or what kinds of things might you share with the audience that have had a similar experience?

Well, I don't know. Art. If I didn't have art, I don't know what I would tell. What I would do or. I don't. I don't. I tell people they should find their. Their own thing. For me, it's art. But those types of. Any activity you can put yourself into can help you cope through anything. People need to have a purpose. They need to have a reason to get up in the morning through any challenge you're facing. Yeah.

So in the context of, do you feel like it's Helped you with or others, like through the art. Like a therapeutic process with experiencing.

Right. Well. Oh, you mean making art to cope specifically. Yeah, I mean, you can get a lot out of it, expressing your feelings. Sometimes people don't have words for the things they're feeling. But a color or shapes or even. Even just expressing your anger or frustration or your quietness. Art can do all those things. Just putting crayon to paper or paint to paper. It's a magical thing. I always encourage people to try art, especially if they're going through physical rehabilitation, too, because the physical action of painting can be therapeutic.

Yeah. Physically as well as emotionally.

Exactly, exactly. Chris, do you paint at all? Have you ever tried?

Yes. Yes.

You will have to show me.

Yeah. Oh, golly. Well, this will not appear in the show notes, but back in the day, I was an architecture major, so I'm really good. If I can have. And this is pre CAD and stuff like this. Back when dinosaurs and things, I was designing caves. But, you know, if I could have a ruler and a pencil, I could do pretty well. But we still had to do renderings and freehand stuff. And kind of my thing, I guess, back. Back in the day was watercolor. So I really liked that. And for a period of time, my mom worked at the. This was in Indianapolis. She worked at the Indianapolis Museum of Art. So for me, I could kind of get. Go there and, you know, go to the places where other. Other people didn't get to go and whatnot. But I would say, you know, I'm certainly a wannabe, but historically, I, back in undergrad and stuff, you know, would draw in high school and paint a little bit with watercolor. But now I think it's more so photography. Really? Yeah, I just. I like to take odd pictures of interesting things. So that's kind of.

I think I would like that very much. That sounds right up my alley.

Yeah, Well, I think you would, too. I mean, maybe that's why I resonate with a lot of the photographic as well as the painting that you've done.

See, I kind of knew. That's why I asked you that. I get that sense from you.

Oh, thank you.

Now, what brought you to that? We're kind of switching. I'm interviewing. But I'm so curious, though. What made you. Did you do that for therapeutic reasons? You said watercolor. Like, what compelled you to. To actually start that?

Gosh, that's a very interesting question. Everybody asks me, what brings you to it?

What brings you to it?

Yeah, I guess probably as a boy with My life, circumstance and situation, I just doodled and sketched and things like that. I was kind of more drawn, I think, to geometric kinds of things and experimenting with colors more so colored pencils and markers and things like that. And then as I got older and like my late teens, early 20s, you know, got more into paint and things along those lines. But I think as probably a young, young boy, it was probably just more expressive kinds of things and just trying to be creative. Honestly, as silly as this may sound, you know, like comic books influenced me and things. So I would try and draw stories or tell stories through, you know, almost kind of like a storyboard kind of kind of thing. But once I got into high school and then college, high school, I mean, I just sort of liked everything I did fashion, art, I did clay and ceramics just in, in class, you know, just because they were assignments. But, you know, really I felt challenged by certain mediums and I thought it was really kind of a good thing for me to have that challenge to learn different kinds of techniques. Like we did. I don't know why they had us do this, but we did. We used like quill fountain pens, not things that had cartridges, but where you dip them and then draw. But we had to do it on manila paper, which is so tack, you know, it's like just gritty, like doing it on sandpaper. It's like, can't we do this on vellum? It'd be so much easier. But it was sort of like. So we just did these weird kinds of things. And I think it was just more so to get, you know, a feel for our tools and things. So. But then as, you know, as I got older, I just, I would just dabble and draw things and you know, I did stained glass for a while and just, you know, just butzed with things, but always like the challenge of, you know, playing with it, so.

Wow. And it's interesting because a lot of people either like right minded or left minded, like very analytical or creative. And you have really both of that going on.

Very sweet to say that. I don't know, but thank you. Thank you. So I think was it recently you had a show at North Central College?

I did. Is that another solo exhibition?

That was really cool. So how did that come about and what did you show?

They invited me and I had over 15 works.

Wow.

Over my. It wasn't any particular collection. It was a variety of landscapes and portraits and yeah, it was, it was a good, great success. And it was up there for over a month.

Wow. So how do you go about selecting what gets shown and what gets left behind.

Well, a lot of times I'll paint a series, you know, I'll paint and I usually tend to exhibit my work in collections and it's really a lot of what I get invited for. So I know lately I'm focusing again on portraits, but now I'm. The collection I'm working on right now is a series of very large portraits. So for a long time I was doing landscapes and things like that. And I've kind of shifted gears. So there'll be some neat exhibits coming up in the next year from my work, photography wise and painting wise.

Wow, great, great.

Well, you'll have to come to my

Will certainly come to them and, you know, keep me posted. I'll be happy to, you know, post them on all of our social media outlets and things as well too. I just. What you're saying reminds me. I just saw a British documentary on David Hockney and I just. I'm a big fan of his. He was kind of in the, oh, gosh, early 70s, kind of Studio 54 era, Jean Basquiat and those guys, but survived and is still doing things today. And he's actually experimenting with iPads and with doing sort of like a landscape, the same space but like varying it. Like every day he goes to the same place and it kind of does, but he. And he creates all these rules for himself, so it has to be the same place. And then he uses this iPad and he like, has to do it in a. Like he restricts himself to a certain period of time, etc. And then he was part of the other part of the documentary was showing this new exhibition that he was doing and he was kind of talking about like, you know, the scale of what some of the art is and how you need to, you know, appreciate what the viewer's perspective is going to be. And, you know, it was just fascinating. I just never.

So was it video or is it still.

It was still. Still photography. Almost like. Or still imaging, I should say. And almost like a. Like a painting isn't the right word, but like, but like bringing colors into the image that he had and almost making the image look less like a photograph and more like a painting.

That's like the wave of the future.

Yeah. And he.

Incorporating technology.

I had first seen some of his stuff years ago. He would do these Polaroids and I don't know how he did it. Part of it just fascinated me. Like, how did you do that? But he would take these Polaroids and let's Say, you know, he had a. I don't know how many have 120 Polaroids of A. Like, of a still life, but they would all be these different polaroids and different, you know, perspectives and angles and stuff.

So all the small photos made a bigger.

Made the bigger. The still life. Yeah. And I thought, did you get, like, really close? Because, you know, if you took it like this, it would be like this. But if, you know, you'd have to get, like, super close, and then you'd sort of have to appreciate the different angles, and it was just sort of like this, and they were just fascinating. I mean, it was almost like cubist photography. You know, it was sort of like.

I was gonna say cubism.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, that's kind of what it. You know, it reminded me of. And again, this is whatever technology of the 70s or 80s or whatever, but, you know, bringing that.

And that is so funny because. Have you ever seen my guitar painting? I have a very large painting of a guitar that. The reference photo I used for that was I used 10 pictures of parts of a guitar to make a picture of a guitar. And then I painted it so it looks like a guitar, but it's made up of different pictures of a guitar. So it's along the same lines.

All right.

Interesting, the things people will think of.

Yeah. Well, I'll. When we're done, I'll see if I can find some on my phone real quick and show you, because it sounds very, you know, similar. Parallel. Yeah. That's so crazy.

But I thought I. There are no new ideas. I thought I came up with that myself.

Everything's been done before. It's variations on a theme. So I just. I have to say, and I kind of. I hope I said this in the beginning, but I'm just such a big fan of you and a big fan of your work. And again, we'll put links into the show notes and stuff, because just your website is just so fun and so cool and your sense of humor and your ability.

Yours too. Kind.

Thank you. So true. And. And I love what you say. I wanted to make sure I said this in our talk today about your art. In your artist bio, you say that, quote, that through art, you have immense freedom. And I just thought just that was such an elegant and poignant, beautiful phrase. And I just wanted to highlight that. I feel like you're as poetic as you are artistic. So I meant that.

And I meant that not just. Just physically, but as a person. I feel like I've had a Chaotic life and art is what grounds me. And I'm boundless in art and in my own reality, in my everyday life isn't as free as I am in my art. So that is my refuge.

That's wonderful. Well, and the fact then that I

really feel that way.

If you can't tell me. Yeah. And the graciousness that you have with that, the grace that you have with that, to then share it with others, because then all of us get to benefit from that, you know? So, I mean, people might keep a journal or keep a diary or keep a sketchbook or whatever, but then the fact of what you do with your speaking and what you do with the things that you do to present yourself to the world and the public and then your showings, I mean, that's huge. That's hugely inspirational.

Thank you.

It's just. It's very touching. So what's next? You've got your thing.

September coming up, some shows coming up. And I'm working larger and. I don't know, just more of the same. Chris, I'm excited about the future. I'm excited about what I'm gonna paint next.

And you were mentioning before the show that you've got a new technology to be able to do larger.

Yes. I have been building an easel, a special easel that allows me to paint. Paint larger. And anyone who doesn't know me or hasn't seen me paint probably doesn't realize this, but when you're a mouth painter, you have very limited reach with a paintbrush. So I can usually only paint 11 by 14, maybe 16. 12 by 16. And things larger get very difficult. I'm having to flip the canvas over upside down, which I do.

Oh, sure.

Which is harder with a portrait, if you can imagine.

Oh, my gosh.

So that's always limited me, and I don't like being limited. So Jonathan and I, he helped me design it, and he actually put it together. It's easel that scrolls canvas. So we can put four feet wide of canvas, and it scrolls it. So it always brings the part that I'm painting in front of me. So I am able to paint larger.

And keep your same distance.

And keep my same distance. And I don't have to reach. So I can reach the top of the painting by scrolling it down.

Making the painting come to you. Yes.

Amazing.

That's brilliant.

And. Yeah. And it's it. This came to me 20 years. I've been painting now by mouth for 20 years, and I'm still just now finding something.

Well, you're Inventing new technologies for yourself. How, like, how wide is it? Do you, like, could you vary it? Could you make a 2 foot wide or X foot wide?

Up to 72 inches. Wow. And I actually recently got commissioned by the Craig H. Nielsen foundation to do a portrait of Craig H. Nielsen. He had passed away, also has a disability. You know, he was a spinal cord injury. And that was. The commission was 4 foot by 5 foot. And I did that before I had invented this easel and. But my neck was sore. But I had painted it and I. I had flipped it upside down to paint the face, and that was really hard.

Gosh.

I have some video footage of that too. I think I'm gonna put it on my YouTube channel.

Let us know, we'll link. Yeah, that's. That, that's amazing.

But that was what kind of. It sparked me to say, like, I need to build something. Yeah, this is too much. Because I loved working big. Big art has a wonderful impact. You know, when once I started seeing my art bigger, I was like, yeah, I think I want to keep doing this. Let's keep going this direction.

Homage to Chuck Close. That's cool.

Yeah. Chuck Close, though, he has that. That famous artist money that he can.

He can do.

He can get the whole wall of

a canvas to move.

Yes, I did see on a. On a video I think he did for BBC or CBS or something.

The whole thing.

Yeah, it moves and it turns. It spins when he does 20 foot canvases. He had to have a motor for that.

Well, it's one thing to still to have like, clever, creative technology, but it's another thing to be able in your artist's eye, to keep that perspective, you know, I mean, good gosh. That's. That just seems impossible.

Take some planning. If you plan it.

Wow. Wow. Well, tip of the hat. Wow. Not that I do it anymore, but it's hard enough just doing it right side up, so. Man, Miriam, I've so enjoyed our time together today. For our listeners, what are some of the best ways to learn more about you, your work, the organizations that you support?

Sure. They can find me online. I'm on Facebook. I'm on Instagram. My website is marianparret.com and all my links are on there. I'm also on the MFPausea website, so if your listeners would like to see some amazing art from other people with disabilities, the mouth and foot painting website's great. Yeah. And I hope I came across okay on your podcast today, Chris. It took me a while to warm up because interviews sometimes I don't always like talking. Talking about myself.

Sure, sure. Well, you kind of turned the tables on me there, Miriam, for a second.

I had to ask you some questions, but it's been so much fun.

Oh, I so enjoyed it. I've been so looking forward to this. And again, just a part of the. I guess selfishly, I get double fun because I get to do the research, so I get to see all the visual things that are amazing and then have the chance to talk with you about it and to do that. So I hope that through this kind of conversation that. And we'll turn on a variety of other people to learn more about you, see your work, come to your exhibitions and follow you. It's just, it's amazing and it's an honor to have you here today.

Thank you. And it's an honor to be talking with you. You've done amazing things too, Chris, and you've had an amazing life.

Thanks. You're very sweet.

Thank.

You. Living a Life in Full is a production of Stout Media, a subsidiary of Gordian Knot, LLC. Assistant Producer, Gracie Wong Music Dan O' Brien Executive Producer and Host, Dr. Chris Stout. To learn more, stop by our website A lifeinfull for show notes and please recommend us to your friends and subscribe on your favorite platform. And as for the obligatory disclaimer, this podcast is for general information uses only and does not constitute the practice of psychology, medicine, nutrition or other professional health care services, including the giving of medical or psychological advice. No doctor patient relationship is formed. Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I take conflicts of interest seriously. For all of my disclosures as well as show notes, please see livingalifeinfull.org podcast and my LinkedIn profile. Thanks. And until next time,