Lands

Week 1 of SciArt September 2025

Sep 07, 2025

I’ve been participating in SciArt September for a few years and this is year five! Liz Butler and Lucy Gem came up with some excellent prompts. The main theme is Conservation with each week on a different theme: lands, species, water, people, and a shared future. Most of my artwork is anatomy-based so I'll be playing with the themes, but I have a number of ecological-themed poems so there will be more poetry in what I share this year.

A banner image promoting the month-long art challenge, SciArt September 2025. The banner features an bison illustration plus text describing a monthly theme, weekly themes, and daily prompt words. The month-long theme is conservation. In order, the weekly themes are: Week 1:Lands, species, water, people, and a shared future. Finally, the list of daily words is as follows. Week one: Islet, canopy, jewel, riverbank, corridor, prairie, boreal. Week 2: Niche, vanishing, tawny, venomous, wandering, bottleneck, mimic. Week 3: Spawning, rift, trawl, cenote, depths, glacial, reef. Week 4: Fellowship, scouting, numbered, tireless, forage, bounded, harvest. Week 5: Foresight, dream. The event is hosted by LizLagomorph and LucyGemArt.

Week 1: Lands

Day 1: islet

This embroidery imagines a diagram of a cell as a map—with some islets—with poetry about two people meeting in the landscape: cell map (2020). You can read more about this piece here.

Cell Map (2020). An embroidery of the diagram of a cell on blue linen. the details are in whites, blues, turquoise, burgundy, green, and deep orange. The labels are poetic text instead of scientific terms. From bottom right around to bottom left it reads: Pair of pleases. Chance it some. Chromatic & new to us (carries us some of the way) New to us. Chromatic nets. Please remember. Vacant. Reticent about apparent goals. The centre. Where sometimes we met. Two of us. Sector illustrating the firm approach to pleasure. Caring pleases. New to us. Remember. True newness (pleasure). Sector illustrating sides to where time ran and had pleasure.

Day 2: canopy

The brain-like snarl representing my fatigue in neuraesthenia (2017) resembles the canopy of a tree.

neuraesthenia (2017). An embroidery on pale natural linen. The pale outline of a woman’s lower legs and feet, heels together, toes apart is centered. From the soles of the feet, thick red/orange lines coil beneath. From the big toes moving upwards, thick blue and off-white lines rise up through the inner calves and branch off at the knees. These lines coil and intertwine in a navy brain-like shape, and then move back down in wavy lines like a wide skirt around the ankles.

Day 3: jewel

For this embroidery I visualized my fibroids, endometrial cancer, and ovarian cyst as bejeweled growths: Bleeding Vessel (2022). You can read more about this piece here.

Bleeding Vessel (2022). An embroidery of a uterus, Fallopian tubes, & ovaries, in black thread on white linen textured like a woodcut. The endometrium is in thick bright red & burgundy. Two fibroids are beaded in red, pink, & cream. A cyst on the right ovary is in clear, purple, & red beads. A polyp in dark red & purple beads is inside the uterus. Long burgundy strings with red beads hang from the bottom.

Day 4: riverbank

Here’s a selection from my poem The River Speaks, imagining what the river running through my city might have to teach us. You can read and hear the entire poem at Epistemic Lit.

A screenshot of part of Lia’s poem, The River Speaks. It reads:The riverbank might say being (human). is grounding. waiting. catch glimpses of what is beneath water (life). Hold these stones. The riverbank might say being (human). is fertile. Grow the green. to make what is (beautiful). Love the decay. the shift of seasons so short-lived & wild restless with change. Learn.

Day 5: corridor

When someone has a broken pelvis, the point through which they put the screw is called a corridor. This is a close up photograph of one of the skeletal models I have in my studio.

A black and white photo of a plaster model of a pelvis and spine. The back right side of the pelvis, most of the sacrum, and some of the lumbar vertebrae are visible. There is a screw in almost the middle of the hip bone connecting it to the sacrum.

Day 6: prairie

Another excerpt from a poem—a sound escapes me—with a verse about the prairie. You can read the entire poem here.

A screenshot of part of Lia’s poem, a sound escapes me. It reads: I used to think estuaries were where all the birds lived. but here, on the wide open prairie, the air is alive with their calls. Each sparrow a small mosaic. the subtly painted greys and blues of thrushes and juncos. how does such bright-beaked loudness come forth from a tiny syrinx? each stuttering from my throat a metallic twang.

Day 7: boreal

An excerpt from my poem rain . forest, written while sitting in a park of pine trees on a rainy day. You can read—and hear—the entire poem at Epistemic Lit.

A screenshot of part of Lia’s poem, rain.forest. It reads: large pines, branches heavy with needles & cones. wait in their weightiness. hang in the wetness. branched, each one like bronchi. each tip a lymphatic round cone. the heaviness, stillness. the reaching up. & hanging down so I am draped beneath. sharp scent. each drop of rain a small weight. sweetness on the tongues of needles. each cone a filled vase. each branch an arm.

Next week’s theme is Species

The Slowest Thread

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