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Art Monographs

All Sky, Mirror Ocean

A Healing Manifesto

by (author) Brad Necyk

Publisher
The University of Alberta Press
Initial publish date
Jan 2024
Category
Monographs, Mental Health, Personal Memoirs
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781772126778
    Publish Date
    Jan 2024
    List Price
    $49.99
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781772127188
    Publish Date
    Apr 2024
    List Price
    $49.99

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Description

All Sky, Mirror Ocean is for everyone looking to understand the complex issues around mental illness and healing. Combining autobiography, research-creation, poetry, and creative philosophy, Brad Necyk uses art and words to uncover and tell new stories about trauma and recovery. Necyk weaves his own histories with bipolar affective disorder and childhood medical trauma with those of other people dealing with grief and loss: head and neck cancer patients in Edmonton, psychiatric inpatients in Toronto, and communities in Iqaluit stricken by suicide. Punctuated with art, these lived experiences intertwine with scholarship on arts-based research, neuroscience, collaboration, and psychedelic altered states to reveal the understanding and acceptance that comes from acknowledging our deep connections—to ideas and emotions, to our environments, to art, and to each other. Showing great compassion and wisdom, All Sky, Mirror Ocean is a model for research-creation and artistic fieldwork.

About the author

Brad Necyk is a visual artist and writer whose practice focuses on mental illness, empathy, consciousness, and flourishing. He is a Postdoctoral Fellow at York University. He lives near Victoria, BC.

Brad Necyk's profile page

Excerpt: All Sky, Mirror Ocean: A Healing Manifesto (by (author) Brad Necyk)

“Weaving elegantly—and alchemically—through anecdote, memory, vignette, and story, Brad’s All Sky, Mirror Ocean models research-creation at its aesthetic and political best.” Natalie Loveless, Foreword

Editorial Reviews

"All Sky, Mirror Ocean is beautifully written, invitingly complex, heartbreakingly real. This visionary work is not so much a contribution as a live wire. It is unbearably important." Erin Manning, Concordia University