Grief is a complicated process only made more complicated by people trying to simplify it into 5 neat steps: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. The reality is vastly different. For everyone. For one, it’s less linear and more like 2 steps forward, 1 step back, jump to 5, pivot to 4, have a good cry then take it from the top.
But somewhere between the crying, raging, laughing, rinse + repeating this sketch was made, then used to raise money for causes such as lung cancer research and clean drinking water projects. So, it seems some good can come out of grief.
The original sketch came from a time helping some lovely artists at the Jan Van Eyck Academie with their installation (see below), a lot of feelings (duh), and an astonishing amount of confidence after an Adobe crash course back in 2018 (I made an animation via artboards in illustrator? Huh?) Even though there’s a lot I would improve in the design today, the concept is still close to me.
The sketch was then turned into a shirt and sold on Everpress for a limited time campaign. It ended up raising 542.10€, all of which was donated to the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer as it's one of the most underfunded yet fatal forms of cancers (and yes, the original source of my grief).
A year later, the art work was featured in the outdoor Waterhouse Gallery in Groningen. Prints were sold to raise money for clean drinking water projects in collaboration with Viva Con Agua.
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