Susan Michael

During my days as a Registered Nurse and later years as a volunteer within Intensive Care and palliative care settings, I witnessed the dramatic effects that medical procedures presented, the deeply emotional vigils experienced, and the constant challenges that required both patients, relatives, and staff alike, to be grounded.

After attending to the end-of-life care for both my parents, I understood that gatherings around a bedside, could be occupied with art activities, whilst sharing stories, and providing even a slither of respite that a little laughter brought.  By changing the physical and atmospheric surroundings, with motifs and colour, it could concurrently provide a way to express emotions and be ‘more useful’ in such situations. Art could be a precious tool. Art that was outward-looking, gentle in its approach, with aims of drawing from and potentially making representations of ‘the good life’.

In earlier times, my primary school activities included full wall murals, illustrated booklets made by the class, or three-dimensional paper creatures and objects to send home for holiday celebrations. School Arts Magazines, dating from the early 20th century, provide me with great inspiration, for children often had to draw quirky designs in freehand, rather than using the ‘easier’ photocopies of our present times. As adults, why can we not embrace paper crafts, as well? Something magical happens when we (clumsily) make things with our hands.

Festooning paper garlands, Japanese stye vertical banners fastened to coat hangers, paper bracelets that carry hidden messages on their underside, self-standing paper whippets in their coats, small cottonwool and glue dioramas of seaside views made to nestle into packing boxes, miniaturised drawings or stamps of mountain roads made for gluing next to writing journal entries. And home-made hand-colouring pages made from family photographs, fabric designs made from shards of available papers, air dried clay made into your sleepy old dog. All these objects can be made using readily available, low cost, and non-toxic supplies. I have made them at the hospital bedside, causing much interest from the nursing staff!

Communal collaborations may support those who are also enduring illness or other situations, alone in their own rooms. Geographic thought may assist such efforts, for often there are people confined and unable to easily visit the outdoors. Helpers can talk about what has been missed during these confinements and this embraces the philosophical complexities of place studies. Places are full of personal meaning that can be emphasised through art. Felt atmospheres can be reproduced through art. And enduring outreach, over history and distance, can be supported through art.

My work brings place studies, with often metaphoric messengers from the plant world or animal kingdom, to heath care settings. It is a fresh theme to arts in health, and also highlights the need for art at the bedside, rather than in the corridors. My activities encourage longitudinal studies, the appreciation of local histories and the poetics of ‘everyday’ lived experience, and a refreshed outlook, not so much seeped in sentimentality, but reaffirming of the shaping forces of place. Tobogganing in the snow on plastic bags or standing in ‘boiling’ seas as the weather turns; we are shaped by places, and we can remind ourselves how we were, indeed, shaped by nature’s presence.

Image: Susan Michael, Wildflower Garland from my Father’s Hospital Room Refashioned to Grace his Coffin, 2025, photocopies of gouache paintings, and ribbon.

 

Image: Susan Michael, Paper Components for a Garland, 2025, gouache on Canson watercolour paper.

 

Featured Image: Susan Michael, Paper Bracelets, 2023, collaged vintage books decorated papers , magazines on card stock.

 

Posted and edited by Elyssa Sykes-Smith

  • Susan Michael holds a Degree Visual Art and Applied Design, Diploma Photo Imaging, Degree Visual Art 1st Class Honours, and PhD Visual Art, and Registered Nurse qualification. She plans to publish her first book Paper Crafts for Astronauts in 2026. Susan is available for commissions and collaborations using painting, printmaking, collage, art photography, textile design, videography and paper crafts. She lives in Adelaide, on Kaurna land.
  • Elyssa Sykes-Smith is a multidisciplinary artist, educator and climate psychology researcher, and Media Officer at AHNNA.