Copy Editor's Notes:

Body of Work is a semi-regular column series, where we sit down with the most interesting creatives here in Shanghai. Photographers, artists, models, creators, you name it. Shanghai has art and culture galore, and we'd love to share the gems we find.

Fiber and digital media artist Vanessa Vanek's works deal in venerated images, pattern association and re-creation, and textures and erasures in grainy photographs, ghostly black and white medical x-rays, and dyed and re-dyed raw silks.

There is a spiritual questing at the center of Vanek's pieces in "My Normal;" an attempt to bring whatever the truth of the inside is out for everyone to see. Perhaps that's a pretty common goal for artists. The result of her 20-odd years of explorations on loss, conventional beauty and power, however, is unique to her perspective: the revelation of just how normal she is.

Originally from Lawrence, Kansas, and now based in Shanghai, Vanessa lives with spina bifida (a birth defect in which the spine and spinal cord don't form properly) and uses a wheelchair, which profoundly influences her artistic everything. With over 20 years of teaching art and design in the US, Thailand, South Korea, Tanzania and China, Vanessa currently teaches art at Concordia. Her solo exhibition "My Normal," now on at La Cava de Laoma, encapsulates her literal and spiritual journey to an empowered place of individual acceptance and "normalcy," engaging viewers to reflect on their own journeys and what that destination might look like for them.

CNS: Teacher and exhibiting artist, have the worlds ever collided?

Vanessa: Yeah, well, I had my opening party last Saturday, and one of my art students – he's graduating, and he's an incredible designer. Like, he's going places with his skills. He decided to show up.

The students weren't supposed to be there. The two worlds are apart, I guess, (because of the alcohol at the exhibition opening) and all that. But he just literally walked in, like it was like a runway for him, and he was like, I'm legal.

He literally announced it when he walked in. It was really funny.

CNS: How did you get connected with La Cava De Laoma?

Vanessa: Yeah, so art teachers in Shanghai, it's a network, I guess. A friend at SAS Puxi did a workshop I organized with this amazing guy – Mr G – he does a lot of the framing for a lot of the galleries and museums here in Shanghai.

Anyway, so we had a workshop with him for screen printing. So she came, and we were just talking, and she mentioned shows at this particular space. At the same time, I have a good friend, actually, who is a Shanghai-based artist, Bi Rongrong, and she's become a mentor in a way, encouraging me to start looking into getting my stuff seen in galleries in Shanghai. Just because of the story, my perspective is different, perhaps unique.

The point being I was looking at galleries for this collection of work, which has really been a 20-year project. (It took me a while to get comfortable... with the idea of exhibiting).

CNS: So this is a culmination show of stuff you've been working on for decades. Maybe we can start from the beginning. Can you introduce yourself and tell us where you're from?

Vanessa: My name is Vanessa Vanek. I'm originally from the US, from the Midwest. I call Lawrence, Kansas, my home. I, basically, taught high school art in Kansas for five years and then decided to strike out.

I was married to a gentleman at the time who was actually from the UK And just through that experience of having that international exposure, we made the decision to move to Bangkok. I got a job teaching art there.

CNS: And this was 20 years ago? You've been on the road for 20 years?

Vanessa: Yeah, literally. Yeah. Since 2007. A long time. So I started teaching there and then got an opportunity to be a part of a new school, an actual prep school out of Los Angeles called Chadwick in South Korea.

So, I started out there teaching art, and I got a divorce the second year there. We parted ways, and so I decided to want something just completely different and fresh, and East Africa came up.

So I was at the International School at Tanganyika in Tanzania, driving an SUV around East Africa.

CNS: Oh yeah, they like their big trucks out there.

Vanessa: I also had my wheelchair. So I'd whip my wheelchair out, and people would just be shocked, or I'd use my cane.

I'm using the wheelchair more as I've gotten older for safety reasons. When you age with a condition like spina bifida, you know, it's better sometimes to just be safer.

CNS: And what brought you to Shanghai?

Vanessa: So, yeah. It has always been a dream. I had family that lived in Shanghai over 100 years ago.

CNS: Oh, really?

Vanessa: Yeah, they were missionaries. Actually, they lived in Suzhou and Shanghai. Some of my cousins were in boarding school here in Shanghai. So it had always been a dream that I wanted to come to Shanghai to explore that.

CNS: Did you try to trace your family roots?

Vanessa: Oh yeah, yeah. One of the three cousins that were here in Shanghai, he became a religious studies professor at Berkeley in California. So yeah, I know exactly where they lived and went to school and all that.

I'd actually come in 2011 for an art teachers conference that was held at Concordia, and in the classroom that I was in for one of the workshops, I remember thinking, I would love to be able to work here at this school one day. And lo and behold, I got a position in Qingpu at Western International School of Shanghai, teaching IB.

And then a position opened up at Concordia, and I'm in Jinqiao now.

CNS: How are you liking Concordia, after first wanting to work there 10 years ago?

Vanessa: Concordia, I have to say, has fully embraced my many differences. I just want to mention that. And we also have a student who's in a wheelchair. And we're very visible, and we're not tokens. I really have to commend them. When they say they truly believe in a holistic education, they're living it, and that's the truth.

It's one of the reasons I want to stay there. And we have a very vibrant arts program, which is amazing.

CNS: How are you liking Shanghai?

Vanessa: I love, I love Shanghai. I love it for the art deco, the architecture...

CNS: What's your favorite building?

Vanessa: The "Old Millfun" 1933 hands down… the Gothic deco. Amazing.

As a matter of fact, this piece here, a couple of my pieces, were actual photographs I've taken there. This one involves MRIs and CAT scans that I got at Jiahui Hospital a year ago. The doctor announced to me in the waiting room that I had a ticking time bomb in my abdomen.

So I took the MRIs and CAT scans from that diagnosis, and I put them and my spine around this photo of a door.

It's kind of my way of taking back control of something that felt, you know, impenetrable, and I don't know.

CNS: Thinking back, how did you start getting interested in art and creating art? What were your early inspirations and epiphanies?

Vanessa: I started out; I have my BFA in textile design with my concentration actually in Japanese dye techniques. Believe it or not, Lawrence, Kansas, the University of Kansas has a very strong Asian studies program.

And so I was exposed to that and got into that at that time. I had no intention of actually being an art teacher per se. I was going to be a designer.

CNS: More into, like, the fashion world?

Vanessa: Yes, and I actually went to New York City and had an interview with Ralph Lauren and also Perry Ellis. I have a friend who worked for another fashion design company – they had a big party, and I got to meet all the beautiful people.

And I just couldn't connect.

And I just, it made me come back and rethink. I wanted to be able to… I really believe that art brings life. It has that potential. And I wanted to be able to inspire others to explore their creative strengths. And so that's what made me decide to go back, and I got a master's, and I got into visual art education.

I wanted, you know, the same desires and feelings and drive that art had inspired in me were something that I wanted to espouse to my students.

CNS: Can you introduce the show "My Normal"?

Vanessa: It's my story. It's my experience. It's my story of using a fighting spirit to bring beauty out of my experience. It's about embracing my story and not apologizing for my normal anymore.

I think that one thing I have seen living in the various cultures that I've lived in is that people who are differently abled tend to get stripped of their humanity in a way – probably one of the most harmful things that we can do to each other.

And I just felt that it was important that I share with people my normal and that my normal is okay. It's kind of shocking when I say this, but medical procedure-wise, I've had 50, well, 51, and I will have my 52nd surgery at Mayo Clinic this year.

CNS: Oh wow.

Vanessa: Yeah. So, and that's par for the course of having spina bifida. But with this show, I mentioned my friend Bi Rongrong. I'd shown her some of my pieces – she's come and done a lot of really cool workshops with our portfolio students at our school – and I've gotten to see her process and the way she thinks, and it really got me thinking, you know, just about my processes and my own thinking.

CNS: Can you discuss what materials and techniques you are using to translate your experience to the pieces?

Vanessa: I'm constantly traveling and taking photographs, and I love Photoshop and Illustrator, so a lot comes from photography and layering –building up layers – and patterns.

Also, I'm adding and removing dye from raw silk. So I started doing raw silk because that was something that was actually prevalent in Japanese textiles. It does have a roughness that makes me think of canvas.

Another reason why I like it is that the Greek word for dyeing fabric is "baptismal." There's a spiritual element to it. And the concept of, like, when you baptize someone, you know, there's that idea of changing that person. It's like a recognition of the changing of the inside of the person. And so when you dye fabric, you're actually altering the structure of the color of the fiber on a molecular level.

So for me, it's this idea of the internal, this inside part coming out, and that sort of thing. I do screen printing as well. I do hand drawings as well.

A lot of source material is biology books. "Grey's Anatomy." I would do sketches based on what I was seeing.

CNS: Do you want to choose one piece and sort of walk us through it?

Vanessa: I do have these two in; we're calling it the "ladies room" because it's all these women's figures in here.

This one's called "Milagros for Lulu." And this one's "Spina Complexity of My Mind." Okay. And they're inspired by the retablos of Mexico, the venerated images of the Virgin Mary that are done everywhere, even on pieces of cardboard.

And so it's got kind of like this holy sort of like radiation kind of idea. And of course I've taken body parts and I've reconfigured them, hand-painted, screen-printed, applying dye, removing dye – a lot of layers.

And the gold frame kind of harkens back to almost like early Catholic images that you see. So it's like a holy, holy moment in a way for me.

These are probably my most well-known, or at least the ones that I get a response to.

This one here explores the feeling that I get every time I have to have surgery.

CNS: What did you say you were at? 50, 51?

Vanessa: Yeah. Yeah. And that's another reason why I also wanted to do this show, just to refer back. My surgery I'm having is actually going to be pretty major. And this is like a crescendo for that for me.

But this one is a feeling that I would get when I was a child, especially when I would try to make sense of what was happening with the surgeries. These things on the sides actually represent rib cages, and I've altered them to make them almost look like palm tree fronds.

So it's a floating, almost disassociating feeling. When I was little, before I had to have surgeries, the bed was like tilting, and I was going to fall or float away. So, and again, this is raw silk, screen printing, and just lots of layers of hand painting, and yeah.

CNS: What's been the reception to the show?

Vanessa: Can I share a story?

CNS: Absolutely.

Vanessa: Because I think this is really significant. So at my opening, probably one of the most poignant moments was when the artist that had her show before was talking to a friend, and some people had read about the show, and at one point during the evening, they brought a gentleman by the name of Eric who has muscular dystrophy and he has a chariot as well.

I call my wheelchair my chariot.

Anyways, the group that came through are Shanghainese. One of them is a corporate lawyer by day. But they're on a mission to find ways to bring communities together with people, like, for example, hearing impaired and have them involved in street dancing and hip hop dancing.

But what was so poignant, and this is what I was really truly hoping that this show would do, is that it brought people whose stories don't necessarily get out there.

People don't know about Eric, and he's thriving. And their mission, this group, is to really educate and raise awareness of how we can bring in people who would be marginalized.

And I think that was, and it was because of the work, the artwork, that that conversation, I got to be a part of that, and that was really special.

Check out Vanessa's Exhibition. It runs until the end of this month.

"My Normal: A Body of Work by Vanessa Vanek"

Date: Through May 31, 5pm-9pm

Venue: La Cava de Laoma

Address: 1156 Kangding Rd

康定路1156号