The Story Behind The Woman Inside Project

by Lissa Rankin, MD

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.

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.

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.

The Process: Encaustic Sculpture

To create this art project of encaustic sculpture, I reinforced the backs of the plaster casts with two-part resin and painted the surface with the skin-like encaustic medium (molten pigmented beeswax). The encaustic paint, which is applied with a brush at 200 degrees and then fused with a blow torch, is applied in many layers and then scraped back with ceramic tools. The stories are then handwritten with ink on Kozo paper and coated with encaustic on a heated aluminum plate. An encaustic monotype technique is then used to visually enhance the appearance of the scrolls.