You are invited to A Community Meal on November 24

by Earthwalker | Nov 22, 2014 | Art, ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT, Chemical Sensitivity News, Featured, NEWS | 1 comment

Paige preparing the meal with another student On Monday, November 24, 2014, Paige Landesberg, Laura Campuzano and Erica Moran will be creating a performance for Trevor Martin’s Social Practice class at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. As the basis of the performance, the three are hosting a shared meal for about thirty people in a private home. They have asked seven women from the Environmental Illness (EI) community to share their particular dietary restrictions and tendencies, and will be creating a dish that follows these guidelines as a way of embracing each of the women’s personal relationship with food since becoming environmentally ill. Sharing the very specialized dishes with the public is a way of reflecting on and creating empathy between the EI community’s lifestyles and their own, while spreading awareness of the issue of environmental illness to the broader community.

Paige preparing the meal with other students Since the meal occurs right before Thanksgiving, the team has been thinking about themes of meal sharing and would like to invite you to join in sharing this meal with us at 6:30pm CST on November 24th from whatever location you are at with whatever food is safe for you. The guests coming to the Chicago event are, also, invited to bring their own meals that represent their personal experiences with food, and will be asked to participate in writing a response during the meal. Lastly, Paige, Laura and Erica will be creating some form of book or document to archive all of the recipes, stories, and photos or whatever else remains from the meal. Any and all participation would be warmly welcomed and appreciated!

The idea came about during Trevor Martin’s Social Practice performance class at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The desire behind the project is to create a performance art piece in an effort to bring the students and the EI community together in some way. The students are learning about socially engaged art-making and working with a variety of artists including, Julie Laffin, an EI who spends summers in the Snowflake, AZ EI community.

read about the other performance pieces:
Part 1 Community Tea Party
Part 2 Unifying Walk

photos: © Liz Housewright

Author

Earthwalker

Earthwalker is the username that PT founder Julie Genser created for her online interactions so many years ago when first creating Planet Thrive.

Julie's (Earthwalker's) life was derailed over twenty years ago when she had a very large organic mercury exposure after she naively used a mouth thermometer to measure the temperature of just-boiled milk while making her very first pizza at home. The mercury instantly expanded into a gas form and exploded out the back of the thermometer right into her face. Unaware that mercury was the third most neurotoxic element on Earth, Julie had no idea she had just received a very high dose of a poisonous substance.

A series of subsequent toxic exposures over the next few years -- to smoke from two fires (including 9/11), toxic mold, lyme disease, and chemical injuries -- caused catastrophic damage to her health. While figuring out how to survive day-to-day, and often minute-to-minute, she created Planet Thrive to help others avoid some of the misdiagnoses and struggles she had experienced.

She has clawed her way over many health mountains to get to where she is today. She is excited to bring the latest iteration of Planet Thrive to the chronic illness community.

In 2019, Julie published her very first cookbook e-book called Low Lectin Lunches (+ Dinners, Too!) after discovering how a low lectin, gluten free diet was helping manage her chronic fascia/muscle pain.
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