Jessica Hulslander

I no longer underestimate the power of artistic expression to aid in the recovery and reflection of personal turmoil and conflict.  As a child it was often much more acceptable and expected to be expressive and open with my emotions.  However, as I grew older I no longer felt as though I could exhibit my inner demons, so I did the only thing that I felt would help-I turned inward and released the dark shadows, using eating disorders as my attempt to control, conceal, and understand the personal inner trauma with which I was overwhelmed.  Eating disorders are a distorted attempt to “gain control,” when in actuality, the eating disorder patient has truly nothing to hold onto.

In 2003 I was admitted to an eating disorders hospital after nearly six years of slowly killing myself.  It was there that I was introduced to ‘art therapy,’ which I admittedly for years thought of as a hokey concept. However, it was during those two hour a week scheduled sessions that I truly began to deal with the issues I had attempted to ignore by using artistic expression to understand them, facing my inner conflicts.  After I was discharged from the hospital, I unintentionally drifted away from my creating personal expressive art, but rather focused on technical and objective pieces such as architectural designs and interior models.  Although I enjoyed these artistic fields as well, my eating disorder still continued to lurk in the shadows and I no longer had an outlet to channel my emotional struggles.

Slowly over the past several years I’ve realized the incredible power that my artistic expression has given me in terms of freeing me from the constrained trappings of an eating disorder. Although I have always consciously attempted to have intent and meaning to most of my art, this work has been the most challenging and intimate because it was used as more than just a finished product of expression, but rather a true process of personal recovery.  For someone who is in recovery of an eating disorder, I have realized that it isn’t a “concrete” or “physical” illness, but rather a complex monster that has many emotional components to it.  This installation piece is representative of the multi-faceted mindset of a person suffering with an eating disorder in contrast to the individual without a distorted vision.