it’s all coming together now, found object sculpture, 202
How do we turn our collective full-bodied intelligence towards collaboration, if that is the way we will survive?
adrienne maree brown, Emergent Strategy
Accessing my feelings has never been an issue. However, searching for a way to convey expression has always been a struggle. As a neurodiverse kid, I would spend h o u r s drawing, creating, and expressing. It wasn’t important how other people perceived the work I made, and their judgements (good or bad) didn’t feel necessary, but rather, vulnerable. For me, creating brings alive an inner world where I’m able to express, make sense of, complicate, and communicate.
![many mixed media symbol-images are organized in the structure of a grid. From left to right there is a light green abstract looped flower, an orange carrot-like shape surrounded by deep blue and purple. The head of a water spray jug that is green and pink with a yellow and black background. Many blue J hooks dance atop an orange background. A red partial circle sits next to a bright mint green. A close-up of a clock’s numbers 12, 1, 2 and 3 in graphite. A mess of pink, cream, and orange blobs connect and crash into each other. The top of an exaggerated yellow question mark with a black scribbled background. An abstract chubby snake that is pink and muted orange with purple, sticks its black tongue out surrounded by bright lime green background. A close-up of a purple, blue, black, and cream doodle-stylised eye with long lashes and reddened white space. A big pink bubble letter H is outlined in black with a yellow background. A close-up of a blue water bottle with cream and purple wings against a black background. From the bottom right corner spreading across and up is red scribbles making their way into each individual image.]](https://syncleadership.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Picture-1.png)
what i’m saying is 18” x 24”, mixed media, 2022
Nest is a feeling as much as it is a language and its purpose for me continued to transform as it came to life.
Fern Di Rossi-Bird
During my time at Sync, we explored metaphor. Metaphor became a tangible way to express experience, skill and passion. As someone who finds communicating needs/experience/feelings verbally especially challenging, talking through metaphor made a lot of sense as an accessible tool to hold conversation. A metaphor, ‘Nest,’ surfaced immediately. Unknowingly, I had been building it for the duration of my life, selecting components meticulously, learning, unlearning, integrating, assessing, always tending. I didn’t know until the second week of the program that the Nest is not only a metaphor to describe my own creative practice, but a way to celebrate the integral fact that creative practice is participatory with community. That the Nest is a place to rest, imagine, dream, heal, grow, regulate with self, and with community. Nest is a feeling as much as it is a language and its purpose for me continued to transform as it came to life.
In the forest, I walked until I found a mossy clearing with light pouring in between the branches. I sat against a tree and wrote about everything and everything and everything, communicating to, and with, the deepest parts of myself that lay hidden. The metaphor needed to become realised and so I built a physical nest. Weaving in dried fern and branches, tucking in cedar, pine and moss–bits to fill the gaps. As the weather turned, my nest and I were rained on. It didn’t feel finished, but I had to make the trek home. Holding the nest against my chest, I hoped for feathers and when looking down, a scattering of duck feathers was there. A surprising amount of duck feathers. Feathers that made me wonder if the duck was okay. I selected some of the feathers, including one that had a splash of blue-green, and arranged them around the nest. The Nest felt done, but I had to figure out how to activate it.
it’s all coming together now, found object sculpture, 2022
The Sync program itself felt like a Nest. It centred and prioritised the myriad of access needs…
Fern Di Rossi_Bird
The Sync program itself felt like a Nest. It centred and prioritised the myriad of access needs: there was a captioner, two ASL interpreters, designated breaks, time to blink away from the screen, transcription, recorded sessions, notes and slides provided, encouragement to show up in whatever way felt right, in whatever way we could. This meant removing shame associated with being in bed. Nest as bed became a place to show up sleepily, in pain, or just because. It gave me permission to extend grace to my own needs. In the second week of the program, when I met with a client over Zoom I said, “today I need to be here in my Nest. I’m in a great deal of pain; I have my heating pad, some tea, and art materials, I hope that’s okay” and it was more than okay. It gave her permission to extend the same comfortability to herself. We had the most vulnerable session we had had thus far, uncovering, and exploring needs, the ways we ignore bits of ourselves that ask to be listened to.
giving, altered photograph, 8.5” x 11”, 2022
The metaphor of Nest existed in my life long before I started interacting with it. My Mum called my brother and I her chicks, and she reminded us often that in turmoil, disease, agony, you can always come to the nest for respite. During recess in elementary school, I would weave blades of grass and weeds, adding mud for strength, and would leave the tiny nest sculptures throughout the playground for others to stumble upon. Building physical spaces, objects and installations became places to pause. Space to catch breath, come into body, rest, imagine, and dream. During Sync, I was able to uncover my leadership style and discover the ways they weave in with my values. In this way, feelings about how I am in the world now had language that could be accessed to describe the way the work comes to fruition. One of the most exciting parts about the program was the encouragement to look between, merge, and make new. There were many leadership styles I resonated with, and with support from the cohort and the Sync coaches, I found out my leadership style is Nest. Broadly, Nest is collaborative leadership impacted largely by the environment.
The project Nest Stop became an experiential way of tending to self and community. When I would tend to the Nest – sensory experience, regulation, journaling, processing, making art, decorating, moving around furniture, making the space feel depths of comfort. Nest Stop gives permission to reflect on disability experiences, neurodiversity, non-linear time, and celebrate the ways these nuances impact being a leader-learner with others. I found safe housing in October 2021 and since then I’ve been building Nest, learning more about the qualities of leadership that it has, holds, and what is possible. Layers of comfort in every room. Safety, security, and warmth for us, and as an offering to those who come to create in the space. When the home-Nest feels good, space for other creatives to come in, create, and reset.
Outside my apartment, I smoke and am soothed. Inhale: I think about how the Nest came together so easily. Exhale: it was years of preparation. I walk and notice the world. The birds are building a nest in the space within the roof. There is a gap large enough that a block’s worth of starlings coo through the open window. One morning a starling sat on the open window and sang right into my space. Inside there are bits of comfort and the bird neighbours notice my Nest too.
Fern Di Rossi-Bird is a multi-modal artist and writer, expressive arts therapist, grief worker, and reclaiming Tessitore Magico. They operate Fioritura Expressive Arts Therapy, which delivers 1:1 online and in person sliding-scale sessions for queer, trans, disabled, neurodivergent, and chronically ill people as well as community arts-based workshops that support people in establishing connection with their creativity and imagination, to reactive the magic of collective dreaming. With their three cats Burt, Etta, and Babydoll, Fern lives and works on the unceded ancestral lands of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and Səl̓ílwətaʔ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations in so-called Burnaby, BC, Canada. To find out more about Fern’s practice or to inquire about collaboration, please visit www.fioritura.ca or follow @hello.fioritura on Instagram