During her Project Space residency, Kathy Hettinga will continue the Cancer & Love series and collaborate with VSW Press to publish a new book. Cancer & Love traces parallel, paradoxical stories—one a tale of terror of cancer/chemotherapy, and the other a love story between patient and her surgeon/oncologist, and the conflicted and dangerous space of surgeons/men with power and patients/women at their most vulnerable. Working from hundreds of photos of the parade of health care workers, microscopic photos from personal pathology slides, plus seven journals, Cancer & Love combines social commentary and personal narrative, including: the Me-Too Movement; The Emperor of All Maladies’ contention that women’s cancers have been over-treated, and patented drugs at exorbitant costs.

Kathy Hettinga is an artist/designer, specializing in artist books and digital images/prints. She has received numerous awards, grants, and residencies—Yale Research Fellow, WSW Artist’s Book Residency, Pyramid Atlantic, exhibition award 2017+2020 CBAA, American Photography selected from 10,000 entries by Kathy Ryan of NYT. She has had a portfolio in Afterimage, and her work features in permanent collections from UCLA to Fogg Museum of Harvard.

Kathy Hettinga’s residency was cancelled due to Covid 19. VSW has been working with Kathy on her upcoming publication Cancer & Love to be published by VSW Press in the near future.

Funds for this residency came from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; the Max and Marian Farash Foundation; and Joy of Giving Something.