Juliet, an Oxford-based artist and graphic designer, explores themes of illness, disease, and disability through a unique blend of fairy tales, historical figures, and personal experiences. Her work, which incorporates photography, graphic design, and a mix of found and created objects, delves into the surreal and the dark to uncover personal truths.
Juliet showcased her work on FOP at our conference in May 2024 for our community to share.
Juliet tells us:
“My creative practice looks at illness, disease, and disability through the lens of stories, historic and literary figures, and my own creative practice. I use photography, graphic design, found and made objects to communicate an idea, that is personal, autobiographical, and surreal to express the darkness of my tales.
I am an artist with a BA in Fine Art, a first-class BA in Graphic Design and a MA in Communication Design from Central St Martin.
I am also an artist who just happens to be disabled. I broke my neck, aged 13 in a riding accident, when I was thrown from a horse into a post and rail fence. I fractured my cervical vertebrae C4/5 and suffered paralysis from the neck down. I did not recover all my bodily movement or senses but live a normal and full life.
At the age of 13, I had two younger brothers and parents who ran a livery yard and a business supplying horses and carriages for weddings, fetes, festivals, and films. James was born with a hole in the heart and at age 4 had open-heart surgery. Chris was 4 years younger than me and was born with crooked big toes – the first sign of a bone disease called Fibrodysplasia Ossificans Progressiva.
Chris (1970 to 2008) lived with FOP. A surgeon’s brutal intervention to straighten Chris’s toes triggered a flare up that made the surgeon realise his mistake. His words “Oh my god, what have I done?” resonated in my mother’s ears. The genetic mutation present in every cell of the body is triggered, in a way not completely understood, by the body’s own immune system, causing a flare up. Slowly, over the years, Chris’s body became distorted and encased in bone.
I tell you this so you can understand the manner of my upbringing. My mother became, through the events of having three children with life-threatening disabilities and accidents, very pragmatic. The family situation gave us no opportunity to feel sorry for ourselves but instead taught us that we simply just had to get on with life – that we must live in the present – and if there was a scale of unfairness, we were certainly not at the bottom.
Chris was an intelligent, inquisitive brother who loved his pets, rabbits, tortoises, cats, geese and ponies. We still have 2 of his geese. His schooling was as a weekly boarder at Lord Mayor Treloar’s school for disabled children in Hampshire. Not his choice, and today I would hope local schools adapt to all children’s needs. Chris was very good at computers and worked using his skills for some time in Malmesbury. He taught my mum most of what she knows in her computer prowess. He collected antique glass and clay bottles that one might dig up from Victorian rubbish pits and joined a club to pursue this. I once saw him balanced on the edge of a pit directing a club member on where to dig!
We went camping to attend a Bottle Fair and, such was his determination, he propelled himself around in his wheel chair with a broom handle across the grass and spent the night on the back seat of the car. We also visited Lindow Man (Bog man) at the British Museum and had the privilege of driving up to the front door to park and enjoyed an excellent exhibition in a fully accessible museum.
Eventually, he and my mother moved to a small farm in Somerset with an adapted house, a flat concrete yard, and a sloping path to the front door. The space and fresh air were life-enhancing and his pet geese were his focus. They sold family heirlooms to buy a Balder wheelchair that allowed him to traverse rougher ground, and an adapted car allowed for trips out to the supermarket or places of interest.
I could tell you all the hard, awful, and heart-breaking bits in his life but in some way it’s the bandwidth of determination, love and care from my mother and Chris that allowed him to live a life. He lived and that’s an important mark to have left behind.
Exhibiting my work
The art piece I created was part of the Pitt River Museums ‘Nothing Without Us – Experiences of Disability’ trail.
It was a way of engaging conversation in a rare disease who’s first significant sign is ‘Bent Big Toes’. Its rarity allowed Chris’s surgeon to make a mistake and my personal journey and experience pushed me to record and create a piece that might stop one medical person think before acting. It does not offer a cure but engaging an audience does open-up and allow for reflection. I am delighted the pieces I have created are now part of the permanent collection at the Pitt River Museum and are available to be part of the handling collection that offers a narrative of a lived experience of disability.”
If you would like to learn more about Juliet’s work, or upcoming shows, you can follow her on instagram: @evetuesday
