148 toronto life December 2018My Beautiful Death
I spent 15 years sanding and grinding mussel shells to create my art.
I had no idea they were slowly killing me
by gillian genserWhen you’re an artist, the work often becomes more important
than you. Sadly, that’s always been the case for me. I started
sculpting in 1991, working only with natural materials. At first,
I sold small sculptures made of eggshells at the One of a Kind
Show. Later, I created larger pieces modelled after the human
anatomy using bones, coral and dried plants. My studio housed
a collection of dead things.
In 1998, I finished a sculpture of Lilith—the first woman,
according to Jewish folklore—made from eggshells. I began
using blue mussel shells to create her counterpart: Adam, the
first man. The shells came from Atlantic Canada, and I’d buy
them in bulk in Chinatown, so that I could sort through the
bins and choose shells in the shapes I wanted.
I spent up to 12 hours a day grinding and
sanding the shells to fit into the shape of Adam’s
body. They beautifully replicated the striations
in his muscle fibres. I sifted through thousands
of mussels and served them to friends and family
two or three times a week.
After a few months working on Adam, I began
to feel unwell. I was agitated all of the time. I had
constant headaches, and I vomited often, some-
times a few times a day. I visited a never-ending
assortment of specialists—neurologists,
rheumatologists, endocrinologists—hoping to
figure out what was wrong with me. When they
asked me if I worked with anything toxic, I said
no, that I only used natural materials.
The symptoms worsened. After a few hours
of grinding mussel shells, I would become immo-
bilized. My muscles ached. My hands would
cramp when I held my tools. I became combative and fatalistic,
declaring that my life was over. My husband was afraid to the
leave the house, worried he’d come home and find me hanging
from the chandelier. He found friends to babysit me. These symp-
toms continued, on and off, for 15 years.
One day in 2013, I cleaned out my ventilation system, which
had trapped years of fine dust. As I swept out the particles, I
suddenly felt weak and unable to stand. For the next week, I
lay in bed, my mind in a fog. I couldn’t string full sentences
together, and my speech was slurred. My whole body was in
excruciating, paralyzing pain—my neck, abdomen, arms—and
I had suddenly lost all hearing in my left ear.
My hearing didn’t return after that, and my short-term
memory became badly impaired. I developed spatial disorienta-
tion, confusing up with down, right with left. I couldn’t recognize
people I had known most of my life. At the peak of my mental
distress, I would walk up and down the street, muttering and
shouting profanities to no one in particular. I saw a psychiatrist,but he had no idea why I was so erratic. We tried everything:
antidepressants, antipsychotics, tranquilizers. Nothing helped.
Painfully aware of my deteriorating mental health, I began to
withdraw from the world.
It was nearly impossible to create art in this state. My brain
was no longer capable of conjuring up anything except anger
and misery. But I believed I was dying, and I wanted to finish
the sculpture of Adam before I was gone. I had no idea he was
the thing that was killing me.
One day, I visited the ROM, where I met a curator of inver-
tebrates. He mentioned that bones and shells accumulate
toxins in their environment. Upon further research, I discov-
ered that common blue mussels are filter feed-
ers. They pump several litres of water per hour
and concentrate chemicals in their tissues. In
some countries, mussels are used to read tox-
icity levels in the water. Suddenly, everything
clicked into place.
In 2015, I was diagnosed with heavy-metal
poisoning. Doctors found high levels of arsenic
and lead in my blood, the result of chronic expo-
sure. The water where the mussels grew was
likely contaminated from industrial waste, and
the mussel shells I’d been working with for
decades were toxic. Metals can be absorbed
through consumption, air or skin. I’d been
exposed in every way.
I will never fully recover, and I continue to
live with many neurological and metabolic
symptoms. I have difficulty holding a thought.
I’ll pick up a tool to work on a piece and forget
why I chose it. I struggle with autoimmune disorders, and
there are many foods I can’t eat without becoming ill. I’m at a
high risk for developing Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. Heavy
metals have an affinity for the tissues of the nervous system,
particularly the ones in the brain.
I’m now 59 years old, and my quality of life is poor. But while
I continue to work, even though it’s more difficult every day, I
feel a terrible sadness now. I’ve experienced the suffering of so
many creatures trapped in their polluted habitats. I keep mak-
ing art now, so I can give them a voice—one that makes people
aware of our connection to our ecosystem.
I finished Adam in 2015. If I had left him unfinished, this all
would have been for nothing. When I look at him, I feel grief—both
for myself and our planet. But I also feel joy because he is mag-
nificent. That’s how I find my hope. I call him my beautiful death.After a few
hours working
with the shells,
I would become
completely
immobilized
memoir
Gillian Genser is a sculptor in Toronto.
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