My artwork affirms that good things may come in small packages, often arriving through difficult passages. Intricacies of daily life, relationships, and spirituality are shared via a hodgepodge of myth, nature, and common experience. Individual images take shape through layering of color and text, collage and assemblage. The process yields miniature worlds which are transparent and complex, surprising and familiar, serious and fun. Each work represents a little prayer of gratitude for the fullness of life, embracing the beautiful and the ridiculous, the tragic and the sublime. Strange Gifts: Honoring the Journey reflects one artist’s response to the reality of cancer’s “wake up call.” This challenging shift in perspective set in motion a profound personal transformation, resulting in art made intentionally about healing, surviving and thriving. As an artist and a cancer survivor, I am privileged to express an enthusiastic “thank you” to life through art. The universe has responded in kind. In 2001, the creation of Strange Gifts: Honoring the Journey was facilitated by an ArtReach Individual Artist Project Grant of the Arts and Culture Alliance of Knoxville, Tennessee. In 2003, the project and its associated programs were honored to receive the Society for the Arts in Healthcare’s Blair L. Sadler International Healing Arts Award for Professional Visual Artists. Celebrating the creative and spiritual foundations of healing, my goal is to engage and encourage fellow travelers, affirming their beauty and their struggles through the language of art. My hope is that patients and survivors, loved ones and healing communities will share a vision of renewal and optimism that transcends outcomes. © 2001 Susan Wood Reider All rights reserved. No part of this site may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior permission in writing from the artist. Site design: Robin Easter Group