Anna Jeter shares how she works through accessibility and adapting to changing energy levels to continue making a variety of art and expressing her creativity while living with pulmonary hypertension and after a heart-lung transplant.
Transcript
My name is Anna Jeter, and I live in Excelsior, Minnesota. I have my whole life. I was diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension when I was 4 years old in 1999, and at the age of 23, I underwent a heart-lung transplant.
And for most of my life, I’ve been involved in some form of arts or another. And now through my 20s, I’m now 30, I’ve definitely invested in it as a career path and a passion.
So my mom is a very artistic person, so I was always surrounded with small artistic interests when I was growing up. So knitting and crafts were kind of always available to me, and I definitely had a lot of interest in those. But the first art form that I really interacted with was dance.
My sister was a dancer, and so I took up dance, following in her footsteps. And I loved dance so much. It’s still something I try to consume a lot of content regarding and interact with a lot, but I did have to stop dancing my junior year of high school due to the progression of my illness, and that definitely left kind of a creative void in my life.
And then when I went to college, I pursued nursing. So I was very science-based, did not have a lot of, like, creative thinking, but I got very sick my sophomore year of college over winter break. I was pretty much in bed the whole time, and I began to take up calligraphy.
And so that was the first kind of intentional, like, paper-based medium, I guess you’d say, that I really developed, and that just spiraled over the years into what I now pursue, which is painting, mainly, and other mediums of art.
Whatever art I’m interacting with, I feel like definitely relates to my level of health. And something I appreciate about myself is that I’ve picked up a lot of different types of art, so when I have more energy, I’m doing oil paintings and things that take a little bit more endurance and even, like, preparation and cleanup, things that you’re investing a little bit more into.
But one of the things that I spend a lot of time doing is watercolor, which for me is very low-energy. Everything is always very accessible to me. It’s easy clean up, it’s low-endurance.
So it’s something that I always feel like I have access to, and then even at lower points of energy, I can be writing or finding different ways of thinking through art, interacting with art, even if it’s not fully creating art.
I think the biggest thing is that most of my art is done sitting. I have a really capable rolling swivel chair in my studio, and it gets a pretty big workout.
Also, I think just acknowledging that I’ll always have an ebb and flow of capability. I definitely do go through cycles of creation.
If I become sicker and I’m not creating, I know that it’s going to take me a while to get back into that place of confidence. It’s sort of a tiptoe game sometimes, of getting myself to go back to creating after I’ve fallen out of it.
It’s also so much payoff when I’m able to be back making art, and it’s a frustrating cycle, but it can also be really beautiful. When I’m at those peaks, it’s really worthwhile.
I think as far as practical tips for other artists, never be afraid of utilizing tools for accessibility, whatever that means for you. Like I said, for me, it’s usually sitting, resting, like those aspects, but I know it’s different for everyone.
Whatever your barrier is, work hard to find what can get you past it, because art and creation is such a healing thing to be participating in, and it’s worth trying to find that access.
