THE
TRANSFORMATION ART EXHIBIT
From an early age, I wanted to be an artist when I grew up. In elementary school, I excelled at drawing and painting. To say that I had a paintbrush in my hand more than a pencil is no stretch of the imagination.
My parents had an old piano bench that was my art studio. That bench was filled with scraps of paper, watercolor paints, brushes, glue, scissors, glitter, pipe cleaners, cotton balls, and lots of crayons. Whenever I could, I would make something with my hands. My little art studio was my happy place, my comfort zone of escape from verbal and emotional abuse.
In my early teens, I painted a gigantic mural on the side of a large shed on my parents’ farm. The shed faced a highly traveled road and received a lot of visibility. One by one, people would ask me to paint a mural for them.
As soon as I obtained my driver’s license at age sixteen, I became a professional muralist. I painted murals throughout the region in churches, schools, homes, and businesses—in the midst of finishing high school and then going to college.
I further developed my drawing and painting skills at Purdue University; specifically, under the watchful eye and tutelage of Al Pounders, now professor emeritus of painting. He was tough, but he instilled in me the desire and passion to create significant works of art.
Years later, I traveled to Italy and Greece to study the Renaissance. While there, I got to see incredible masterpieces, including The Creation of Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I was profoundly impacted.
I wrote the following in my journal at the tomb of Michelangelo:
I am different now.
I don’t know exactly how, but I am different.
My soul is at rest.
Undisturbed. Saturated.
Like film processing in a darkroom.
Silent. Hidden.
Like an unborn baby developing in a mother’s womb.
Perhaps in the days and years to come the unveiling will occur.
May 2006
I came back from that trip changed. I had seen some of the best art eyes could ever behold. Yet, deep inside of me, I felt uncomfortably incongruent.
At that time, I was carrying a hundred pounds of excess weight. I thought, Here I am, wanting to make significant works of art, yet desecrating the most significant masterpiece of all, my body.
Something had to change, and I was ready to do whatever it would take.
In May 2008, I was in the middle of my friend Audrey Riley’s art studio in Fort Wayne (I had met Audrey on that trip), when I had the following epiphany:
What would happen if I used food as an artistic medium? Just as a painter uses paint, or a sculptor uses metal, or a potter uses clay...to use food to make my body into the work of art that it was originally meant to be?
The idea seemed to me like divine inspiration. It was a catalyzing moment that lit a flame deep within me, and the clarity of vision was unstoppable.
Right there in Audrey’s studio, an art exhibit was born—an exhibit that would use food as the artistic medium and my obese body as the point of departure. I would name it Transformation.
I knew instantly that I would follow Dr. Fuhrman’s nutritional information as the impetus for change. Kurt and I had interacted with him via a phone consultation a few years earlier when we were seeking help for our son, who had just been diagnosed with Type I diabetes (juvenile diabetes). Out of desperation, I had Googled “reverse diabetes” and had discovered an article he had written on the topic.
Basically, by eating whole, high-nutrient plant food, our son’s diabetes could stabilize, and we would be able to reduce his insulin intake by half. But even more importantly, Dr. Fuhrman encouraged us that by eating this way, our son could have the best chance to live a fulfilling life, free of serious and life-threatening complications that eventually befall those with diabetes.
His logic made sense. Everything he said made sense, but we incorrectly assumed it would be too difficult to change our family’s eating habits. We chose to go the conventional route instead, which was eating the typical Standard American Diet and injecting high doses of insulin to cover the surges of glucose. Our local pediatric endocrinologist (who specialized in treating kids with Type I diabetes) supported and promoted the conventional way—so that was the route we chose to go instead.
However, by that May of 2008, my blood pressure was dangerously high. I had been diagnosed with coronary artery disease and prediabetes, and I had numerous other maladies developing in and on my body, such as cracked heels, painful boils, and chronic low back pain.
I knew diets didn’t work. I had tried every diet known on the planet, including weekly weight loss meetings, to no avail.
I knew I had an addiction to food—processed, sugary, salty, and high-fat foods—and I couldn’t get free no matter what I did.
Thankfully, by this time Eat to Live, Dr. Fuhrman’s classic work, was published. In it, he explained that, when the body is properly nourished, cravings for unhealthy foods dissipate, and then eventually go away.
I was all in.
I chose July 10, 2008, as the starting date for the art exhibit and created a rudimentary website to document it. I posted writings, pictures, and medical stats of my journey. I also posted a YouTube video of my changing body size set to music.
Little did I know that day of starting Transformation, that it would eventually inspire people from all over the world. I have received hundreds of notes throughout the years from people I have never met. For example, one day I received an email from a woman halfway around the globe. She wrote to tell me that one night, she was about to end her life by jumping off her high-rise apartment’s balcony. However, as she was holding onto the railing, she felt compelled to go inside her apartment and read my online art exhibit. As she was reading it, hope filled her heart, and she wanted to live again. Afterward, she slept peacefully for the first time in months. Today, she is a happy mother of a preschooler and grateful to be alive.
Even though nearly a decade has passed since I started the art exhibit, I have left it online, and anyone can still visit it to be inspired and motivated. (www.EmilyBoller.com—Transformation)
The following are journal entries and a few pictures from it. I invite you to peruse my online art exhibit and view the many changing images that I posted on it—a picture is worth a thousand words—and be inspired and motivated by seeing what food can do for the body!