Arts Archives - Spectrum Women

Arts

‘What I (Don’t) Know About Autism’ – Interview with Jody O’Neill

October 27, 2021 Spectrum Women

Interview by Maura Campbell, Spectrum Women Features Writer. When writer and actor Jody O’Neill reached out to Spectrum Women about ‘What I (Don’t) Know About Autism’, I couldn’t resist getting in touch with her to find out more about the woman behind this groundbreaking Irish theatre production (soon to be available on demand). Performed by a cast of autistic and non-autistic actors and inspired by Jody’s own experiences, the play takes the audience on a journey that celebrates autistic identity and offers deeper insights to those less familiar with autism, smashing some tired old myths along the way. […]

Arts

Representation Matters by Yenn Purkis

January 27, 2021 Spectrum Women

Musician Sia recently released a film called Music which caused controversy in the autism / neurodiversity community as it features an allistic actor playing an autistic character. Sia caused further offence by talking about levels of functioning and at one point called an autistic actor who said they would have liked to have been cast in the film as ‘a bad actor.’ This post isn’t going to be all about ‘what Sia did’ but the situation does highlight a big issue in the autism community and the disability community more broadly – that of representation in media and representation generally. […]

Arts

What I like by Jenny Snyder

July 6, 2019 Spectrum Women

People make autism out to be scary and pitiable. But there are lots of things I LIKE about being autistic. Focus: Focusing on an activity is incredibly energizing. You could say I have a one-track mind. I am good at certain kinds of things because it’s easy to totally commit myself to some drive and I am pretty much single minded. Thoughts are like drugs to me. A few times in my life people have commented, “You think too much,” like my focus was weird, but I love the non-stop inner deliberations. My mind is not a bad place to […]

Arts

Anxiety and Autism Art by Dr Holly Priddis

December 21, 2018 Spectrum Women

I have always loved to create since I was quite young. I dreamt of being a writer and loved immersing myself in fantasy plot-lines, tapping furiously on my old school typewriter, or drawing abstract images on my art pad as a teen. In my early twenties once I became a mother I did not have much time to be creative while raising our 4 children, and slowly all my creative outlets slipped neglected to the wayside. However, over the past year, rediscovering art has been a saviour to me. On and off over my life I have experienced anxiety, however […]

Arts

Tempus Fugit! The Aspergers Girl Becomes the Spectrum Woman by Kimberly Gerry-Tucker

March 3, 2018 Spectrum Women

Painting by Kimberly Gerry Tucker, superhero interpretation of ‘The Last Supper’. Is life not an elaborate Goldberg Machine; like the old game MouseTrap? A complex state of affairs in which a series of actions are linked together to produce a domino effect in which activating one device triggers the next device in the sequence? Tempus Fugit! (Time is wasting). Making and keeping friends growing up was like the Goldberg Machine. I knew that just one accepted invitation, (like the Goldberg) would trigger more invites, would lead to chit-chatty parties, and (gasp) sleepovers with Dads who made gross things for breakfast and Moms who would ask […]

Arts

Meaning of Life—an over-thinker’s guide to the universe by Barb Cook

October 2, 2017 Barb Cook

I have elevated over-thinking to an art form. Ever since I was a small girl, I often wondered what life meant, right down to the atom level of existence. I have always felt compelled to believe that there was some higher meaning or bigger picture to this existence on planet earth and I want to know why, in detail, from every aspect and angle. In my pre-autistically identified younger days, I was often found lost in my head. The world inside often gave me a source of wonderment as well as a place to try and analyse all that I […]

Arts

Creativity – Yenn Purkis

August 12, 2017 Spectrum Women

It is 2011 in the psychiatric ward at Canberra Hospital, the dingy and oppressive and thankfully now long-closed ‘PSU.’ There is a new patient, a woman who doesn’t say much, looks agitated and scared and who wanders around all night looking at the linoleum tiles which have sparkles in them. She constantly listens to music on a tiny green iPod. Her diagnosis is indeterminate at this point – Asperger’s syndrome and some kind of psychosis. Doctors say she is hard to place diagnostically. The other patients remember her coming in a few days previously, wearing a suit, nice jewellery and […]