Beefranck’s Emporium – Lindsay Joy’s Anxiety Series

Lindsay Joy, aka forestine, caught my attention with her Anxiety Series.

I can really relate to what she’s saying with the pieces she’s created. I asked her to tell me more about it.

The Anxiety Series is an ongoing project consisting of small embroidered and appliquéd works about my own experience.

Social anxiety can be defined by unrelenting self-deprecating thoughts about what might happen, and worrying incessantly about the opinion of others. It has always been a part of my personality – I’ve never called a cab or ordered takeout over the phone for fear of disaster; I never really made friends after moving away for college, and in first and second year my relationships were one conversation long.

I don’t have much of a social life, and if people invite me to things, I come up with excuses not to go until they stop inviting me.

My work in the Anxiety Series originally acted as a confession, because I was afraid to tell people how I was feeling; but the more I shared, the more people told me that they could relate.

I use found text and image as well as those from my own head. I often make fun of myself, because I feel like an outsider watching myself be completely unreasonable and out of control.

I often self-diagnose based on shoddy research, and am interested more recently in the ridiculously booming self-help movement, as I have personally become sucked in to much of it.

For an upcoming show in December, I will combine my current Anxiety Series with small works based more directly on self-help and bad advice, creating a dialogue between them.

You can see the rest of the Anxiety Series here. To see other great work from Lindsay, check out her Flickr photostream.