J. Sybylla Smith, In Conversation with Elizabeth Clark Libert
“There is no courage without vulnerability. Courage requires the willingness to lean into uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure.”
Episode #64, Summary
Boy Crazy captures in image and text the tender and terrifying emotional awakening and breaking of generational trauma.
Episode Notes
Elizabeth Clark Libert's bold diaristic conversation with herself is a reckoning with a twenty years old sexual trauma and its impact on raising her school-age sons. Boy Crazy is a masterfully designed melange of self-portraits, environmental portraits, seasonal landscapes and family photos. Interspersed in a searingly honest staccato manner are intimate musings, email correspondence with her perpetrator and snippets of pointed conversation with her sons.
In this conversation, Elizabeth discusses, among other things:
Art as process
Reclaiming agency following sexual trauma
Shooting through ambivalence
Lyricism and raw emotion
Giving context
Collaboration
Being in conversation with your work
Wasabi writing
Finding the structure of the book
Experimenting and refining
Asymmetry
Visualizing
Generating change and opening hard conversations
Being brave together
Referenced in the episode:
Statistics on the scope of sexual trauma
Who Is Changed and Who Is Dead by Parlato
Jess Dugan - Look At Me Like You Love Me
Melanie McWhorter - Grenade in A Jar
Somatic Experience - Waking The Tiger by Peter Levine
The Griffin Museum of Photography
Published by Workshop Arts