SILVER WIRE

UNDERSTANDING SURGERY AND BIOETHICS THROUGH EMBROIDERY AND COMICS

TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE

Page 6 of Silver Wire. I decided to
use soft colors for a hard topic.
Author: Kriota Willberg

Since my artist residency at the New York Academy of Medicine Library, I have been thinking a lot about the way I tend to be more interested or open to an intimidating subject if I have a connection to it though previous experience or knowledge. One thing that researching the histories of domestic sewing and of sutures and ligatures has taught me is that sewing was a universal skill for millennia. These days it may not be as common a skill, but practically everyone understands what it is and the basic techniques and equipment used.

My new comic, Silver Wire, explores the histories of surgery, unethical research, and slavery, by using embroidery as the medium for gaining a little more understanding of these very intimidating subjects. In the narrative, I go to the park with my doctor-friend Mollie for a lesson about surgery and suturing techniques. As we wound and sew up fruit, we explore the histories of medical sewing and decorative sewing, gossiping and joking about the great surgeons of history. But the same techniques that Mollie uses with her patients to relieve their suffering have a dark history that affects us all. 

Yes – my interests in embroidery and history changed my life by giving me a way to wrap my head around the debt global modern medicine owes to the American enslaved! I tear up just thinking about it.

Making this book really honed my understanding of the need for studying history to reconcile ourselves with the present. The following appears on the inside back cover of the book:

Silver Wire page 16.
Author: Kriota Willberg

You know, the New York Academy of Medicine Library changed my life. One day in the Rare Book Room I was reading an introduction by Charles Bell to one of his books (I forget which one.) In it, he addressed the reader and praised them for their curiosity and interest in medicine. He was inspired by his patients and his students who were “young men of science” or something like that. The guy was truly devoted to education. His language was so enthusiastic and welcoming, I felt like he was talking to me, specifically. At the end of the page, he wrote that through a shared interest in science, we are all comrades. His signature began with “Your friend…” 

I am pretty sure that Charles Bell, at the end of the 18^thcentury, had no idea that a middle aged, childless, cis-gendered female, massage therapist, cartoonist(!) would read his words and then struggle to keep back her tears of gratitude, but that is what happened. I hope Bell would be pleased.

History is full of love, suffering, service, and cruelty, sometimes all coming from the same source. By weeding through the culture and politics of medicine of the past, we can understand and improve the state of public health today. 

We need voices like Bell, Boivin*, Trota**, yes, and even (that asshole***) Sim’s to be heard, discussed, and acted upon to help us understand the present with some anger and a lot of compassion for people suffering today. We need the past to make a better future.

If you made it through this book and all the crazy citations and comments, thank you! Please consider me…

…Your Friend,

Kriota

*You probably never heard of her, look her up!

**If you’re one of those people who say she didn’t exist, then replace her name with someone she may represent to you.

***J. Marion Sims was a gynecological surgeon who experimented on enslaved women in the 1840s. His work is a major component of the book. And he was an asshole. His memoir is a huge ego trip where he talks about how touching women’s reproductive organs is the last thing he ever wanted to do. Oh yeah, there’s also the unethical research!

Page 20 of Silver Wire.
Lace and embroidery over an illustration of
"the Sim's position" from a 1876
surgical textbook by Henry Savage.

Silver Wire is a 19-page comic book followed by a whopping 8 pages of citations, notes, and pictures of medically themed embroidery. 

You can read it on Medium.com (after July 8) and if you want your very own copy, order it from Birdcage Bottom Books or find it at Forbidden Planet or JHU Comics in New York City, or Chicago Comics or Quimby’s in Chicago. 

P.S. (Get your butt to the library!)

SAMPLE OF SAMPLERS

It’s been awhile since I posted any needlework images. Here is a smattering of pieces made in the last year or two…

FLOUNCE SLEEVE

Flounce Sleeve. Artist: Kriota Willberg

The late great Rozsika Parker, in her fabulous book, The Subversive Stitch, described the way Enlightenment philosophers and scientists introduced the notion that women were essentially biologically driven to sew. At the same time, women were physically associated with flowers in some anatomical texts by Casseri and Van de Speigel. I decided to up the fantasy a notch by re-designing a flounce sleeve embroidery pattern from an 1855 issue of Godey’s Lady’s Book using anatomical images from The surgery, surgical pathology and surgical anatomy of the female pelvic organs : in a series of coloured plates taken from nature, with commentaries, notes and cases,by Henry Savage (1876). You can find this book at the New York Academy of Medicine Historical Collection. 

I worked up the pattern in cotton floss on linen. Then I accidentally burnt it with an iron when I had a migraine. It took two months to make.

Oophorectomy. Try saying that 5 times, fast! Artist: Kriota Willberg

OOPHORECTOMY

An oophorectomy is a surgery where an ovary is removed. This is a free-hand image of a (somewhat cartoonish) uterus, fallopian tubes, and one ovary. I darned yarn into a torn lace…doily? Then stitched the uterus in darker yarn. I imagine the darned doily as a representation of the broad ligament. I pulled and puckered the yarn in the area of the missing ovary to represent scarring that might occur after an oophorectomy. 

CATGUT TISSUE SLIDE

Tissue slide cross stitch pattern
made in Photoshop. Kriota Willberg

Catgut tissue slide cross stitch. There's a typo in there! I'm not saying where-
find it yourself! Artist: Kriota Willberg

I thought you might be curious as to what a pattern for one of my cross stitches looks like.

The top image is a counted cross-stitch pattern, assembled in photoshop. It's a photomicrograph of catgut imbedded in dog tissue from Textbook on Sutures(1942) by Paul F. Ziegler, and is supplemented by images from The Gentleman’s Dog, his Rearing, Training, and Treatment(1909) by C.A. Bryce, and Trichologia mammalium; or, A treatise on the organization, properties and uses of hair and wool, together with an essay upon the raising and breeding of sheep. You can access these books at the Academy Historical Collection. The text forming the border of the images is liberally excerpted from the textbook on sutures and says,

 “…catgut is made from the first 6-8 yards of the stomach-end of the small intestine of sheep. The absorption rates of catgut sutures are regularly checked by suture implantations in muscle of laboratory animals (dogs and rabbits). Following implantation, the surrounding tissue reacts to wall off and digest this foreign body. A disintegration occurs, small fragments are phagocytosed by macrophages and are thus digested.” The delineation of the dog and sheep image have been redrawn to mimic clumps of macrophages, which white blood cells.

The catgut and macrophages are made with cross-stitch. The dog tissue is tinted by using a half tent stitch, and the areas absent of stitching are the forming granulation tissue.

This piece took about 4 months to make! (Okay, yeah, because I had to work and do other things at the same time, but still!)

MEDICAL IMAGERY THROUGH EMBROIDERY WORKSHOP

This spring (2019) I traveled up to the Rochester Institute of Technology, spoke about graphic medicine, and lead workshops on injury prevention and Medical Imagery through Embroidery! Yup! The workshop was a blast. I presented a slide show on cultural and aesthetic messages that we can interpret from educational anatomical and medical imagery. We discussed anatomical symbolism used by artists in their non-medical work. Then I introduced the students (from the medical illustration, art, and English departments) to some basic embroidery stitches, gave them fabric with pre-printed historical anatomical images, embroidery supplies, fabric pens, and fabric, and let them transform the “academic” “professional” imagery into something more personal. They did some great work! I don’t have any examples of student work, but I can show you a piece I worked up using the image of a child’s skull from William Cheselden’s Osteographia, fabric pens, tulle, and embroidery.

TOM’S TUMOR AND THYMUS

My friend Tom had a thymectomy. His surgeon took a photo of Tom’s thymus with it’s (benign!) tumors and gave it to him. Tom knew I’d love to turn it into a needlepoint piece, so he gave me a copy of the photo and permission to work it up. I made it on monocanvas with wool yarn. One thing I like about many decorative projects is the way they label or name their subjects in the context of the piece, be it a painting, needlepoint, or a tattoo. So I did it too. 

Tom's Tumor and Thymus.
Artist: Kriota Willberg

This is not Tom's favorite of my work. (He is a little squeamish about it. Who can blame him?)

EMBROIDERY LAB!

THE MEDICAL HISTORY NERD'S INTRODUCTION TO DECORATIVE NEEDLEWORK
Who is going to want an introduction to embroidery that uses historical medical imagery for its patterns? Us! And here it is!

Embroidery Lab! is a component of my “Embroidering Medicine” workshop at the New York Academy ofMedicine Library. In this book are the basics of hands-on embroidery skills and stitches. The patterns in this book range from very simple to moderately labor intensive. The images come from the Academy’s Historical Collection. These pictures represent the evolution of the pursuit of biological knowledge. Yes, even a basilisk is a part of that evolution!

As an experiment, I had some embroidery patterns printed up on fabric. Here's one of the gravid uterus all stitched up.

You can find this little tome at comics stores like Forbidden Planet in NYC, and Chicago Comics. Birdcage Bottom Books will be selling it soon. You can also find it at the Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo (MICE) October 21-22, 2017. Find me at table B81.

SPX 2017 COMICS DEBUT - STITCHIN' TIME!

NEWEST MINICOMIC

How do I process research as I work on a large project? By making small snippets to help me process narrative priorities, explore media, and transform vast amounts of data into digestible pieces. One of these pieces has been transformed into my mini comic, Stitchin' Time!

Was Galen really bossy? Maybe not, but historians 

consider him a bit of a "showman." 

(Buy the book if you want this citation! - I am shameless!)

Stitchin' Time! is a ridiculous historical fiction based on factual medical history. Aulus Cornelius Celsus (c. 25 BCE – c. 50 CE) was a Roman writer of De Medicina, an important medical text.  Aelius (or Claudius) Galenus (129  – c. 200 CE) was a famous surgeon and one of the most influential writers in the history of medicine. In this minicomic, for the first time ever, Celsus and Galen team up to stitch a disemboweled gladiator back together! Could these men have ever met? Heck no! Would this type of surgery have taken place in the 2^nd century? Heck yes!

Yes, Celsus wrote about a double-handed suture! 

Who needs robotic surgery when you can get so fancy with a needle?

RIGOROUS RESEARCH

Yeah, it's a pretty silly story and I'm giving you links in this post to Wikipedia, but the historical research is sound! This is the first comic resulting directly from my residency at the New York Academy of Medicine Library. There are notes about each panel and a citations list at the back. You don't have to read them if you don't want to, but they may help you get a joke or two.

A surgery panel inspired by a 17th century anatomical 

illustration from the Academy Library Historical Collection.

SPX TABLE H13A

The mini will be debuting at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda Maryland, September 15-16.

OTHER PLACES TO BUY
After SPX you will be able to purchase this tome (and more!) at Birdcage Bottom Books.

UPCOMING WORKSHOP: EMBROIDERING MEDICINE

EMBROIDERY, MEDICINE, HISTORY, GENDER

Interesting reading from my own collection.

I am excited to announce that at the end of my artist's residency at the New York Academy of Medicine Library I will be offering the Embroidering Medicine workshop! This four week course is open to participants with all levels of needle working skills.

Embroidery adapted from an anatomical image from

Hieronymus Brunschwig's Liber de arte distillandi de compositis.

Using the Library’s historical collections we will focus on the areas of the collection invoking the ideals of femininity, domesticity, and women's health, as well as the medical practice of needlework (stitching of the body).

One of the texts we will use.

Using the collections we will:

• Explore some historical concepts of femininity and domesticity
• Examine images of female anatomy and fetal development 
• Each select an image from a natural history, botanical, or anatomical text to use as an embroidery template
• Examine diagrams and descriptions of how to perform basic suture techniques

An illustration from the Bernard book, above.

We will also:

• Transfer an image onto fabric for embroidering
• Learn and practice basic embroidery stitches
• Learn and practice historical suture stitches, on fabric
• Discuss relationships between medicine, needlework, and gender.
• Discuss the differences between sewing the body, sewing clothing, and decorative stitching.
• Have some fun (yes, fun!)

The natural history books have some adorable animals to embroider, too!

Why all the "discussion"? Embroidery takes time. A lot of time. We could sit in stony silence, but why not have some interesting conversations facilitated by a couple short presentations? 

The workshop will be held-
Thursdays, September 14 - October 5, 2017
6:30-8:30 PM
1216 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street, New York, NY 10029
$290 General Public | $250 Friends, Fellows, Members, Seniors, Students with ID
Supplies will be provided, but you are welcome to bring your own.
Click HERE to be directed to the Academy workshop description and link to register.