Abstract: In 1996, while at a conference in New York City, I happened upon an art exhibit that changed the trajectory of my academic career. In this article, I recount part of my experience of engaging with the installation art of Edward and Nancy Reddin Kienholz and its transformative impact on my scholarly work. I reflect on some of the ways in which that chance moment unleashed my latent frustrations about the hegemonic conventions of academic research and inspired a path of possibilities for how social science research could be more meaningful in the lives of individuals and communities. I conclude with a note on the importance of open-mindedness, imagination, and a respect for serendipity in inspiring creativity, informing and, possibly, transforming research.

Abstract: Infusing the arts in scholarly work offers rich insights as well as personal and professional benefits.

Abstract: In this short, invited piece for the journal’s 10th anniversary issue, co- founding editors of Art/Research International, Diane Conrad and Patricia Leavy, reflect upon their experiences of envisioning an open access online journal for the publication of creative scholarly research. The journal that evolved realized the inclusive forum they sought to showcase through international and transdisciplinary scholarship that embraced the myriads of creative forms and provocative themes authors were exploring. They are honoured to have played a role in bringing Art/Research to life.

Art/Re-search (T)here is a SSHRC-funded project that creates new understandings of art, research and decolonized processes amongst theories of knowledge. The relational mail art of Art/Re-search (T)here unfolds through post theories of the (post)qualitative posthumanist philosophies and decolonized practices. These disruptive co-compositions happen by getting lost through thing-power, and through the decolonial project of re-turning to the dynamic whole. (T)here, co-conspirators collaborate through art to reimagine re-search. The project’s initial research questions change alongside co-conspirators in transit as binary knowledge is (un)learned and disrupted. As the mail art travels to entangled spaces, processes are risky, glitchy, (un)known, and trans-formed. In letting go of research questions, art/re-search creates trans-formations. The authors put a call to action for re-searchers to work together through art in ways that question the structure of academia and how we come to know/be. Through relational (un)learning and risk-taking, some-thing lost is getting (t)here.

Mount Myoko, Japan; Alogopoiesis and climbing mountains. A mixed media artwork by Kendrea Rhodes, comprising charcoal, oil paint, digital art, and photography.

After 14 complex years, I message him: “I keep saving you and losing me.” M hangs himself. Numbly I sit holding M’s cold dead hand in my warm shaking one. I’m 33. A widow. Twenty years on, and now a creative arts therapist/educator/researcher, I launched an arts-based autoethnographic (abr+a) quest to exhume and frankly face my role within my husband’s suicide. Naively, I imagined cultivating an ecotone where self-care and care-for-other intra-act. Lured by this poietic methodological experiment, Scarcity-Gargoyle, however, sloped in— an inner-alter symbolising a trauma-response that had outlived its usefulness. Leading a motley crew of author, animangels, Darwin, and new material/posthumanists, it incited a gyroscopically-circling contemplation of trauma and scarcity, now folded into this Exquisite Corpse game. As this game unfurls, the question lingers within creases and crevices: What might these critters speak/sing/growl/howl/whisper/rasp to the lofty aspiration of crafting capacity for simultaneous compassionate becoming-with self and other?

This review explores entanglements of the theoretical and affective impacts of an art exhibition called Caring Futures which was part of an interdisciplinary research project. The review is a qualitative analysis of the exhibition, and is interspersed with our experiential, affective, and creative reflections and responses to the exhibition. Creative and imaginative approaches inspire us as researchers and supported our interactions with this exhibition in ways that opened new spaces for knowledge production. Our experiences highlight the value of arts-based methodologies for exploring questions of vulnerability and care. Foregrounding subjective and affective responses is risky in scientific work and confronts conventional boundaries for academic knowledge production. Honoring meetings between art and research(ers) can productively challenge taken-for-granted norms involved in undertaking academic research.

The resilience and retention of nurses is a complex and urgently compelling phenomenon in the global context, made even more critical given the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic. This study explored the stories of nursing resilience told from the perspective of four public health nurses who worked during the COVID-19 pandemic, utilizing narrative inquiry and arts-based research underpinned by the feminist theoretical framework. The stories of nursing resilience were shared in group discussions, one-on-one conversations, and artistic collages with artist statements; these articulated the nurses’ thoughts and feelings about resilience while working during the pandemic. Elucidated are the impacts of the institutional power structure in nursing, thoughts on using artistic expression, and images of a black cloud to express nursing resilience. Further research is implicated on the use of art in nursing education, the power structure in health care, and nurses feeling valued by the healthcare institution.