Jade, a UCSF medical student, honoring one of the women inside at the opening reception at Commonweal
My aim in creating The Woman Inside Project is to shine a light on the beautiful woman that lies within each woman afflicted with breast cancer. The idea to create this project came to me when, in my work as an OB/GYN physician, I had to tell a woman who was pregnant that her biopsy was positive for breast cancer. Inspired to help her memorialize that moment in time, before she gave birth, lost her breasts, and everything changed, I offered to cast her body in plaster. The seed of an idea gestated, and five years later, I am giving birth to this exhibition as a way to honor the beauty within each woman, particularly those with breast cancer.
Jo
When I invite a woman to participate in this project, I invite her into my home, where I sculpt her torso using medical plaster bandages. After casting a woman’s figure, I hold up the sculpture and say, “So this is what the world sees. Now tell me about the rest of you.” I then listen for as long as it takes her to unveil the breathtaking woman inside. When she is done telling her story, I transcribe her story into a first person narrative of the beauty I see within her (and geez, are these women gorgeous!)
Some of the women I sculpted describe the process as a spiritual healing of sorts, during which I touch their bodies, place bandages over their wounds, then remove the bandages, leaving them feeling whole. For others, the process is traumatic, dredging up painful memories of surgical bandages and scars. Either way, the experiences are authentic, and I feel blessed to have been there, holding hands, holding space.
Lissa Rankin's The Woman Inside Project at Commonweal, Bolinas, CA
While traumas such as breast cancer crack us open and force us to grow, we all experience painful wounds that threaten to unravel us. It’s how we respond to our wounds that tests us and gives us the opportunity to blossom. When you experience The Woman Inside Project, my goal is that each of you not only sees the beauty within these women, but that you see the beauty within YOU.
While I chose as models breast cancer survivors because their wounds are so visible, I could have sculpted any group of survivors, and the stories would be equally riveting and awe-inspiring. When people have been to hell and back- and you invite them to tell their truth- what emerges is a slender green stalk that, with tending, blooms into full flower. The women who participated in this project have created a garden for which I can claim no credit. It has been an honor to be their witness.
SHE LIVES
After five years in the works, tonight is the first time The Woman Inside Project will be exhibited. I am honored and blessed to be showing this body of work with kick ass photographer and Pink Goddess Nancy Bellen, who has overcome breast cancer herself.
SHE LIVES: Photos by Nancy Bellen, sculptures by Lissa Rankin
Our statement about the show:
She lives through the words “You have cancer.” She lives without knowing what tomorrow will hold. She follows a path towards recovery, and rallies the troops to help her overcome. She is not defined by her illness. She transforms. She surrenders to the Universe. She loves fearlessly. She takes off the mask. She speaks her truth. She rides the open road, giggling at gas stations. She plants a garden and watches it grow. She dances with her arms held high and her head thrown back. Sometimes, she succumbs to the disease, but she lives on still, ever present. She cannot be broken because SHE LIVES.
SHE LIVES: Photos by Nancy Bellen, sculptures by Lissa Rankin
About their show, Bellen and Rankin say, “This show is not about breast cancer. It’s about living. We aim to shine a light on the fact that we all experience and recover from loss over and over again in our lives. Whether we lose a job, a loved one, a marriage, a dream, or a breast, we live still. Not to diminish what anyone experiences, but we get to choose how we live in the face of loss. Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional. Joy is a choice. This show is about how people live in the face of adversity. It’s about the resiliency of the human condition.”
SHE LIVES: Sculptures by Lissa Rankin, Photos by Nancy Bellen
Our show SHE LIVES opens at Commonweal today
She Lives
A Collaborative Installation with
Lissa Rankin and Nancy BellenJanuary 24 – March 6, 2010
Opening Reception:
Sunday, January 24 from 3-5 PM
Commonweal Gallery
451 Mesa Road
Bolinas, CA
Lissa Rankin at the opening reception
Seeing the beauty within each one of you,
Lissa
Lissa Rankin & Nancy Bellen
Tags: body image, breast cancer, breast cancer art, encaustic, Lissa Rankin, nancy bellen, she lives, the woman inside project
WOW! Absolutely beautiful! Thank you for sharing your gift.
Lissa, I am speechless, thank you. Is there a way to get there by public transportation? I don’t have a car but really want to come to the show.
Thanks,
Caren
Maybe the West Marin Stagecoach, Caren- I saw some around there…Would LOVE to meet you!
OH Lissa, it looks so very lovely. I can’t wait to see it next month! Have fun today, breathe deep and hop in your LOVE BUBBLE.
xoxox
Love, Light and Blessings
~Dana
Lissa, this is one of your most beautiful and meaningful projects to date, and that says a lot because your work always excels. Thank you.
Thank you all so much! It means a lot to me. I put my heart and soul into this project. Really- it’s Owning Pink, come to life.
xoxo
Beautiful job. Thanks for bringing it to life.
So lovely! Thanks so much for honoring these women (really, all women) and creating this incredible project!
I’ve told all my friends in the Bay Area to see it and spread the world!
Pure love and complete reverence is what I sense in this space.
Lissa – great project!
I particularly liked the sentence: When people have been to hell and back- and you invite them to tell their truth- what emerges is a slender green stalk that, with tending, blooms into full flower.
Thanks so much for this Lissa, you are awesome to collect these awesome women in this way.
Wow, what beautiful work Lissa…. absolutely amazing!
This looks so powerful and inspiring – Lissa and Nancy, thanks for doing, and for posting it for those of us who regrettably can’t see it in person.
As a breast cancer survivor, I am thoroughly impressed that you seem to have captured the essence of those of us who live with and survive with breast cancer. Thank you for your heartfelt contribution.
Touring the show by email, your beautiful writing made me cry. I am also especially touched by your writing that when you invite survivors who “have been to hell and back” to tell their truth “what emerges is a slender green stalk that, with tending, blooms into flower.”
Often, what I experience in the Western medical world is a daily hell that denies the spirit. Thank you for the naked truth of the beauty of the feminine soul, power and grace and bringing that into your art, your heart and your medical practice.
Perhaps the truth that comes with dealing with pain and facing death is a gift only those of fierce courage fully embrace to blossom. Bless you for sculpting these women embodied. For me, it is the caress of divine love that in spite of the body in pain, tenderly evokes the heart to blossom. Daily also, come by endurance and grace, the twin angels of deepening peace in accepting death and heightened ecstasy in embracing the gift of life; the bliss of pain and rapture.
“Pain is the touch of our Mother teaching us how to bear and grow in rapture. She has three stages of her schooling, endurance first, next equality of soul, last ecstasy.” Sri Aurobindo
Bless you, Elizabeth. Your words mean SO much to me. Thank you, sister.
Dear Lissa,
Initially I was disappointed that I could not attend, but now thrilled that through this virtual exhibit I have indeed attended. Thank you for making that possible.
That very process that you have opened up when after applying the cast you said, ” this is how the world sees you now tell me the rest of you” heals at so many levels – it heals perceptions either from self to outer world or outer world to self – it heals the historic objectification of the patient that the field of medicine has operated under. Most importantly, you step boldly into a public realm and through art, as a physician, and are helping to evolve that split of separation, reunifing the places where the soul of medicine needs repair. No longer practicing surgically on the womb of the woman as an OB/Gyn – you are surgically repairing the torn edges of the womb of a woman’s soul.
BRAVO – yours in admiration, Jacqueline
Oh, Jacqueline- you have no idea how healing your words are for me- and coming from another physician. Thank you. I began this project 6 years ago when I was so fed up with the broken health care system that I was ready to abandon it altogether. This project was my own personal attempt to heal myself and maybe mend some of what was broken in how I was being forced to practice medicine. Only now can I look back and smile, because the project has healed ME.