Surface Area has commissioned Cara’s energy drawings to be projected into Newcastle Contemporary Art Gallery on the 8th of March 2025 for Newcastle’s first-ever DeafRave.
To learn more, we asked Cara about her practice and process.
Click to book tickets to experience Cara’s work at DeafRave
How does your creative process engage with adaptation?
I have to wait and rest until I feel I have enough capacity to work, as I only have 7 hours on average per week due to my health, I have to be very focused. Having a deep experiential understanding of how my illness affects me is key. It takes a lot of patience and letting go of the want to have ‘normal’ capacity. If I don’t time it right I risk not being able to do any work that week at all. I also sometimes have to stop much sooner than I anticipate, again, it’s all about being in touch with my body and respecting and accepting my limitations. It’s not only a tender act of great self care but also one of resistance and resilience.
What’s one tool or method that has transformed the way you work?
Allowing my spiritual / ritual practice to inform my art and using automatism as my process. This allows the space for pure unfiltered creation, allowing for every mark to have its place in the work, if it goes down, it stays there, it is a visual expression of societal inclusion. This means that in the very short and precious hours of creation time I have per week, I create work that is meaningful to me. It is a sacred time, from within my space which is a sanctuary.
Additionally, allowing what is classed as my disability to become a force. Living with such intense constraints on all parts of my life for the last 19 years has made me very focused. I meditated for 10 years prior to starting to create, which I now know was the very first step towards this opening of the creative expression within, interconnected with the energetic force that surrounds us all.
Can you share a moment when access and creativity came together in an unexpected way?
During my DYCP, I consulted a group of artists with broad lived experience of physical and learning disability, visual/hearing impairments or neurodivergence. Using the research from these interviews, I created digital works that don’t overwhelm, disorientate or cause pain. Bringing all these together in one creative piece, I wasn’t sure I could do it, but I did. I also had an idea of wanting to understand how to compose vibrational soundscapes to accompany the digital work, accessed through a haptic vest.
I met Tim Baker who was working at Sense at the time. He had Subpacs there. Talking to Tim about this, he said that he’d composed a piece and he could play it for me when Jennifer and I went there. To be honest it almost brought me to tears as it was so beautiful, exactly what I’d envisioned and more. Also incredibly innovative. Bringing access and creativity together through this, has informed an innovative way for everyone to experience the work through the equality of subtly embedded access.
The last step to turn all this R&D into a project, was getting access to Subpacs, this was really hard, but fate intervened and I saw Surface Area Dance were running a workshop with Subpacs at the Lowry, so I went along to learn more about the use of the technology. The team were so lovely and we connected, and then you agreed to support us by loaning the Subpacs for the project. Without this I wouldn’t have a project at all. One thing I’ve learnt is that access takes collaboration, it takes passion and it takes open-heartedness. It’s a really exciting art movement being driven by those of us with access requirements. I have much gratitude that I keep meeting people like this on my artistic journey.