Artists make marks with their bodies; in turn, art marks the body, and this reciprocal marking sometimes demands clinical and ethical responses. Some artists’ relationships with physically toxic media, for example, have health implications: a painter today might not use cadmium yellow, a screen printer might integrate routine rest to spare their shoulder a repetitive stress injury, or a book binder might learn to protect their hands from knife cuts. For artists who revel in the physicality of their creative processes, art practice can be a balm: a weaver meditates in repetition, a sculptor shapes a figure or a world, a performer feeds and is fed by live and asynchronous audience members’ collective energy. Art practices usually demand adaptation to how artists regard and accommodate growth and change in physical ability, aesthetic interest, and demands of their creative processes and media. This issue considers how art practices influence artists’ embodiment experiences and asks what health care might glean from these experiences that can be applied to cultivating better understandings of patienthood.

Background image by Delaina Doshi.