art Archives - Nina Paley

Illustrating The SSDI Blue Book

I just applied for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). I don’t expect to get it. Although I have at least 3 qualifying conditions — Crohn’s Disease, Bronchiectasis, and Major Depression (treated) — I haven’t been hospitalized over 48 hours for any of them.

The application process was worthwhile anyway, because it brought me to the SSDI Blue Book. This lists all the ailments that may qualify you for Social Security monies doled out in modest increments prior to retirement age. They are a reminder of the many things that go wrong with the human body: Vision loss. Hearing loss. Amputation. Heart disease. Neurological degeneration.

In addition to broad categories like Musculoskeletal Disorders (1.00), Digestive Disorders (5.00), Hematological Disorders (7.00), and so on, the Social Security Administration maintains a list of Compassionate Allowances Conditions. These are almost all fatal, and bypass the often years-long application process for a merely months-long one that may or may not outlast the applicant. Reading it gave me a sense of perspective, as well as discomfort, fear and sadness: Heart Transplant Graft Failure, Lymphoma, ALS, Hydranencephaly, Mixed Dementias, Cancer, Cancer, and more Cancer, all terminal. Kinda makes Crohn’s and bronchiectasis seem less dire.

We’re all gonna get here sooner or later, unless we die suddenly (accident, homicide, etc.). Covid brought me here to Disability Land sooner. It left me with a permanent low fever and ever-expanding autoimmune conditions I never had before. It took away what I thought were another decade or two of active mid-to-latish life. At 57 I am accumulating conditions more common to those in their 70’s or 80’s. Still, I got off easy compared to many. Crohn’s, for example, is often diagnosed in adolescents; I didn’t get it until I was 55. Many disabilities are invisible, and we have no idea what everyone is struggling with.

Plus, my pulmonologist says 57 is Old. So it’s time for me to make some art about being Old:

I’m going to illustrate (parts of) the SSDI Blue Book.
Maybe I’ll make another playing card deck with them: The SSDI Qualifying Impairments Deck.
But to start I’m just illustrating.

If there’s a specific ailment you want me to include, you can commission one here. Be sure to name the condition and let me know it’s for this project. I can also make its sufferer resemble you or another victim of your choice.

I have felt a lot better since starting this project, so even if it’s in terrible taste and everyone hates it, I’m doing it anyway.

Why can’t I Be Sick Like A Normal Person?

In March 2023 I got COVID which kept me in bed for 6 weeks. The following month it kept me in bed every other day. After that I got back to normal, except my body temperature remained a degree-and-a-half higher than before and, unbeknownst to me at the time, I developed Crohn’s Disease. I was diagnosed by the end of that year, and the first few months of 2024 I spent with worsening symptoms while getting infusions of Skyrizi, a monoclonal antibody treatment. It kicked in after about 4 months and I stabilized by Summer 2024.

Skyrizi is an immunosuppressant. I took extra care avoiding exposure to communicable diseases, wearing a mask at the grocery store, not flying, avoiding crowds. I got through 2024 without so much as a cold.

A little over a month ago, I got what I think was RSV. It nailed me in bed for close to a week; then I thought I was recovering, with “just” a lingering cough. Then it got worse, then a little better, then worse, then to “Convenient Care” where I got my first chest X-Ray (seemingly normal) and tested negative for COVID and Flu A & B. Then back in bed for a several days.

I couldn’t talk without coughing, so I stopped talking. I canceled what few plans I had. I rested, and rested some more. I watched more TeeVee than I did in the previous decade. I played a lot of Lexulous with the Level 8 practice robot, which I now beat more often than not.

I think I am finally recovering. Although I am still coughing, I am able to speak again. Yesterday I bicycled, albeit slowly. My brain is coming back online. Cori and I recorded a Heterodorx last night, first in weeks. Unfortunately, all I had to talk about was how sick I have been because I have nothing else going on. (Cori’s adventures make up for my lack.)

I just drew “Cough Monsters,”above, from a sketch I made near the nadir of my illness. The last drawing I made was still on the scanner — it was called “Exiting Winter,” which I drew the very day my cough started. Hilariously I thought the worst of 2025 might be behind me. Boy was I wrong.

Reality & Mystery

I listened to a 2-hour video of this academic saying that Reality isn’t real, there is no reality without someone to perceive it, while I attempted to hand-animate a fat Earth goddess I called “Reality,” because that morning I had imagined praying to Reality, who doesn’t care about my feelings, and also to Mystery, who might. Reality and Mystery, sisters. Systery. My animation failed but I still wanted to draw Them. Is Mystery the snake that twines around the Goddess? Is Mystery Reality’s backside? Is Reality that which can be illuminated but seldom is, while Mystery cannot be illuminated at all? Is Mystery just the parts of Reality we can’t see, or is She something else entirely?

Anyway Mr. Academic says There Is No Reality, only consciousness, and “science” backs that up. Dude, I read The Doors of Perception when I was 17. Sure, “reality” is some informational plasma that doesn’t take shape (as we know it) until we interpret it through our senses. But that plasma triggers multiple flesh-instruments the same way; it can be measured, even if measurements of Reality aren’t Reality itself. He sounded to my ears like a freshman in a late-night dorm room, however:

I do love the idea that nothing is in fact real, that everything is an illusion, because it takes a huge load off. All my pain, search for meaning, criticism, loneliness, frustration, fears: they’re just artifacts of my mind, which is itself an illusion as well as a generator of illusion. My mind isn’t real, my thoughts aren’t real, reality isn’t real. Ohm.

On the same day I saw a video of a young mother who regrets motherhood. She’d always wanted a baby girl; now she has one, and while she loves her daughter infinitely, she hates the experience of motherhood, the physical and psychic changes, the long stretches of boredom and meaninglessness, the absence of fulfillment, becoming a lifelong host for a parasite, the pain and suffering and emptiness despite the love. The disappointment.

And I think: I feel the same way about having been born! What a colossal disappointment.

She urges women to consider not becoming mothers: it’s not worth it. And I encourage ethereal souls to not become incarnated on the human plane: that’s not worth it either. Spare a mother, spare a child, solve multiple problems at once.

Luckily, none of this is real.

Ohm.

New Drawings for 2025

Original Drawings are now available through my Store.

The Limits of Automation

Despite my desire to have my art gloves “stolen,” it’s possible – actually it’s likely – they can’t be mass-produced. Conforming the stitching to the printed image isn’t the only technical challenge. Precisely matching up the 2 sides of each glove is even trickier, and maybe impossible to automate. Pattern-matching takes the most time in my own making, using a backlight to align the prints as accurately as I can and pinning them together.

I don’t know how that process would be automated, especially on a stretchy knit fabric which would distort further if stabilized in a frame.

It is possible to print on garments after stitching, and this is done on some mass-produced gloves:

Notice the design does not extend into the seams. That’s because there is always a gap on the seam of dye-sublimated finished garments, and even though this gap can be as small as 1mm each side, it would ruin the look of my own gloves, adding a white stripe all around the hand.

This is probably why there are no super-cool looking mass-produced art gloves. Although I could design something cooler than reflexology patterns for dye-sublimated finished ones, they wouldn’t be as beautiful as the ones I sew on my dining room table.

Maybe my gloves are more special than I reckoned. Maybe they are worth $25 a pair. Some say I should charge even more, but I designed them to help dermatillomania sufferers, not to become a luxury fashion brand. I really wish they could be cheaper and more accessible. You can still buy your own fabric and sew them yourself. Other than that, handmade-by-the-artist-for-subsistence-income is the best I can do.

“Steal” my Gloves!

Copyright zealots insist every good idea will be “stolen” if not “protected”. If only that were true! In case it is, I’m putting this out there: PLEASE “STEAL” MY GLOVE DESIGNS AND MASS PRODUCE THEM MORE CHEAPLY AND EFFICIENTLY THAN I EVER COULD. I put the high-resolution artwork at archive.org. If you want me to modify it, just contact me (but only if you can actually mass produce them, don’t waste my time otherwise). I can make new designs too. Usually “knock-offs” are inferior imitations of the real thing, but I am offering you the real thing! For Free! Because I want the copies to be as good as the original.

Sewing hour after hour at my dining room table is fun and all, especially in this cold weather, but really I’d prefer my gloves to be mass produced. They would be much cheaper and easier to get into and on the hands that need them. I appreciate some people are willing to pay $25 a pair for the ones I sew myself but let’s face it, that’s unsustainable: I can’t keep sewing them for a subsistence income, the price is beyond what most people can afford, the novelty of being a one-woman glove factory is wearing off fast, and the tiny market of friends and followers demanding them will be fully saturated soon.

I could invest in having them produced overseas, but I don’t have $25,000+ lying around. Nor do I want the responsibility of storing and distributing the product. I would much prefer someone already in the business to produce these designs. Admittedly they might require some custom production architecture; most mass-produced gloves don’t conform precisely to a print as these must. I’m sure the technology to sew and cut using automated visual feedback exists, but not in my backyard.

20 Talk To Me, Baby