"Be gentle with yourself. And play." — Kathryn Vercillo
Creative Dialogue #12
Creative Dialogues is an ongoing project to learn from fellow artists. I’ve interviewed an astonishingly wonderful variety of creative individuals about their art, creative practices, and how they make it all work. I send every participant a list of questions about creativity and the creative practice. They respond to the five questions that resonate most, so every interview reflects the artist’s own curiosities and interests.
Today’s interview is with artist and pattern designer
, author of .
Kathryn Vercillo is a San Francisco-based writer/artist with a passion for researching the complex relationship between art and mental health. She came to this niche through her own experience of crocheting through life-threatening depression, a story she told in part in her book Crochet Saved My Life. She went on to spend over a decade researching the mental and physical health benefits of crochet and crafting while obtaining her Masters Degree in Psychological Studies.
She has since expanded to an exploration of all creativity and wellness with an emphasis not only on art as therapy but also on the many nuanced ways that mental health symptoms impact creative process, content, medium, productivity, self-perception and reception by others. She writes about this topic on . She hopes that by sharing what she learns, she can help other artists and writers better understand the way that their personal challenges may impact their art. In addition to understanding, she hopes this work offers validation, encouragement for gentleness with yourself and others, a strengths-based and trauma-informed approach to creativity in all industries, and the beginning of a conversation about the many ways that art and mental health are linked.
She, herself, continues to live with chronic recurring bouts of major depression that impact her own work in varied ways.
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If you were a piece of creative work, such as a book, song or painting, what would you be? Why?
“You’re Aging Well” by Dar Williams
I chose this song because mental health challenges, trauma, life, and youth made my teens and twenties really hard, and sometimes I didn’t think that I’d even make it. I’ve done so much work to get in touch with the truest parts of myself, be gentle with those parts, and share them authentically. This has made my thirties and forties so much better than the years before.
But one voice got through, caught her up by surprise
It said, "Don't hold us back, we're the story you tell, "
And no sooner than spoken, a spell had been broken
And the voices before her were trumpets and tympani
Violins, basses and woodwinds and cellos, singing
"We're so glad that you finally made it here
You thought nobody cared, but we did, we could tell
And now you'll dance through the days while the orchestra plays
And oh, you're aging well.
Crochet reminded me of the simple beauty of color... Before I knew it I was noticing the blue in the sky, the blue in my boyfriend’s eyes, in a way that I simply hadn’t noticed in a very, very long time.
Have there been times when you felt out of touch with your creative self? If so, how did you rediscover your creativity?
Depression stole my sense of creativity in my mid-twenties. I kept trying desperately to pull myself up out of sluggish numbness but I couldn’t. I was technically creating — writing, mostly — but none of it felt like it was actually coming from a heartful place, from anything real, because I was so out of touch with myself.
I read or heard somewhere to try doing things you loved when you were eight or ten years old. For whatever reason, I remembered crochet, even though it was something I had done only briefly in a childhood filled with crafts. I got a hook and yarn and a children’s crochet book and re-taught myself. It was something that I could do from my bed, with limited cost, and I could completely follow someone else’s pattern which meant I didn’t have to make any decisions (something that was critical because depression left me immensely indecisive). As time went on, I could change yarn colors, adapt patterns, and begin to express myself more creatively.
From the intro to Crochet Saved My Life:
Crochet requires some decisions but they felt manageable in large part because I didn’t know enough about crochet to know just how many decisions there were to be made… so I just bought what I liked. And the fact that I could fairly easily decide what I liked was a really big deal for me at that time. I’ll probably never know why choosing blue yarn felt easy when choosing between Ramen noodles and macaroni felt hard but it did.
And how it literally brought color back into my world:
I saw grey everywhere I turned until I didn’t want to bother turning anymore. Crochet reminded me of the simple beauty of color... I didn’t consciously understand the healing power of color but something inside of me yearned to infuse my life with color to erase the grayness of emotion that pervaded every corner of my days…
Before I knew it I was noticing the blue in the sky, the blue in my boyfriend’s eyes, in a way that I simply hadn’t noticed in a very, very long time.
What encouragement would you give to someone who’s struggling to get in touch with their creative self?
Be gentle with yourself. And play.
My research digs deeper into this shadow side of the relationship between art and mental health, without hyperbolizing it into some story about how “artists are crazy.”
Which artists do you return to again and again? What do you love about their work?
Writers on writing and creativity that bring playfulness, exploration, and intuition to the creative process but also some structure — Julia Cameron, SARK, Anne Lamott, Natalie Goldberg.
When I need reminders of the bigger picture of silver linings in our world, I also turn to Hope in the Dark and A Paradise Built in Hell by Rebecca Solnit.
(I acknowledge that these are all white women. I discovered their work decades ago, and they hit a special part of my creative growing heart that I keep coming back to the way that you keep coming back to the music you loved as a teen. These days, I recommend many other diverse writers on writing, creativity, and life, but I return to these roots again and again.)
I operate from the belief that it’s my job to put out the most authentic work that I can, and it will find the people who are meant to find it.
What makes your research unique?
Artists, culture makers, psychologists and other professionals have long agreed that there is a relationship between art and mental health. Despite this, the way that this relationship has been studied is both limited and limiting. Art therapy programs look almost solely at how art can provide catharsis, emphasizing the benefits of art without considering a more nuanced shadow side to the relationship. Art and culture, on the other hand, magnify a perceived negative relationship best exemplified by the tired trope of the “mad genius” or “crazy artist.” Having spent nearly two decades researching this relationship, I find that the truth is much more complex. Art can be highly therapeutic for many people, but the symptoms of mental health conditions often negatively impact the creative process, medium, content, productivity, identity, and business of artists. Yet most artists persist in their creativity in spite of this.
My research digs deeper into this shadow side of the relationship between art and mental health, without hyperbolizing it into some story about how “artists are crazy.” I explore this complex relationship through lived experience, interviews with artists across different genres, and, where relevant, drawing from the history of art and psychology. My hope is that better understanding can help us uncover common problems in the relationship and therefore identify solutions. This has the potential to improve holistic wellness (mental, physical, financial, relational) for artists working across diverse mediums.
Be gentle with yourself. And play.
What is one thing this community can do to support you and your work?
Honestly, financial support is the number one thing that keeps this work going. I try to make that as easy as possible by offering a Sliding Scale annual Substack subscription rate from $10 - $100. People can pick the rate that’s right for them.
I believe in moving away from a model where artists and writers are paid per item that they produce. It’s a system that has created unsustainable machine-like productivity requirements for creatives who often need time, space, energy to dream and daydream and soak in inspiration and let ideas marinate and revise work. I want to change this.
I work towards that change in a deep way, through this work and research, through support of programs like basic income for artists and healthcare for creatives. I hope it changes on a deep systemic level, but in the meantime, it’s also important to consider what we can do right now. Where we put our money reflects our values and priorities.
Sharing the work with others is nice too. I operate from the belief that it’s my job to put out the most authentic work that I can, and it will find the people who are meant to find it. Those who share help facilitate that process.
Any final thoughts on creativity you’d care to leave us with?
My favorite Martha Graham quote:
There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to decide how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.
–Martha Graham, quoted in Dance to the Piper by Agnes de Mille
More ways to support Kathryn:
 | A guest post by
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Beautiful and deep words to read and think about.