Glynnis Reed is an accomplished visual artist, art educator, and emerging scholar. She is currently a fourth-semester doctoral candidate in Art Education & Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the Pennsylvania State University.
“My First Mask Was a White Coat,” a poem by Lauren Field from the Spring 2021 issue of Intima, brings to mind the empathetic relationship that I have with my own psychiatrist. The speaker of the poem struggles to connect to patients while understanding the disconnect that often occurs between patients and medical staff. Fields’ bio states that she is going into psychiatry after graduating from Colombia University’s medical school. I relate Fields’ poem to my own journey of attaining adequate health care and learning how best to employ self-care while living with a mental health diagnosis. My psychiatrist, whom I have worked with for over 10 years, has been a crucial part of my attainment and maintenance of wellness largely because of the degree of sensitivity she has for me, understanding me as an achieving, capable person and not a faceless number.
My series of photodrawings called “The Beheld Beings” was published in the Fall 2022 issue of Intima. The gestures I employ in making the photodrawings reveal my body as a visceral element in the creative process. Traces of my body, my movement, and presence linger in these drawings while the tactile strokes of India ink brush pens disrupt the surface of the smooth photographic paper. I depart from and follow the traces of the photo image fragments that underlie the drawings to reveal a new being emerging from the artistic meditation. The photodrawings convey my shifting emotions during a formative period of my life. I have found that through a range of difficult times, my doctor has consistently supported me. In her poem, Fields’ narrator speaks about people she “desperately” wants to trust. Her poem is a testimony to the importance of doctors forming authentic human relationship bonds with patients, which is essential for them in earning patients’ trust.
Glynnis Reed is an accomplished visual artist, art educator, and emerging scholar. She is currently a fourth-semester doctoral candidate in Art Education & Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. Her scholarly activities weave multiple strands of study that include artmaking practices, African diasporic spirituality, and neurodivergence to produce art education curriculum and pedagogy from Black feminist perspectives. Her studio art practice has moved from exploration of the urban landscape to natural environments that become settings for figurative compositions and lyrical portraits. She composes narratives of love and loss, fulfillment and emptiness and shadow and light through the mediums of photography, digital collage, analog collage, drawing, painting and poetry. View her art at glynnisreed.com.