Sal Marx (CHRONIC IS FOREVER) and Dr. James George (ART HEALS) in Conversation

Sal Marx is a visual artist, creative director, and chronic illness patient advocate based in Brooklyn, NY.  They have a M.S. in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University, where they completed a multimedia capstone exploring the intersection between visual co-creation and disability justice. 

As with many people who have ever been asked the question, Please Rate Your Pain on a Scale of 1-10: I know deeply the frustration and inadequacy of expressing one’s body/mind through the languages of boxes and binaries by way of numbers and words.  My artwork explores how invisible experiences can be transformed through visual mediums, especially amidst reductive ways of thinking: sick/healthy, man/woman, visible/invisible. My complementary practices in graphic medicine, and gender and disability justice are deeply connected to an urgency in image-making, and to allow for unseen experiences to be brought to life and wrestled with. 

I work across multimedia as both a practical and creative choice. As a person with chronic illness, my access needs change daily: jumping from acrylic to oil paint, to wire sculpture and typewritten text allows me to start and stop in a medium and on a timeline that my body dictates. Moreover, the limited color palette I work in mirrors the limitations that language offers for subject matter about pain and gender expression. I build visual constraints into my practice to allow for the act of creation itself to become expansive and liberatory. 

My collaborative work combines oral history, visual world-building, and narrative medicine practices of co-authorship. Above all, I aim to center patient voices and translate lived experiences as a means to restore agency that is far-too commonly erased in the medical industrial complex. 

James E. George, MD, JD is a highly accomplished doctor and lawyer who experienced a brain and spinal cord injury after a fall in his home, resulting in a coma and quadriplegia. He spent six months in rehab, where he discovered great joy and healing in creating art.

I have been involved in emergency medicine for nearly 50 years of my life, but healthcare wasn’t my only interest. I studied medicine and law simultaneously and served as a captain in the U.S. Army Reserves Medical Corps.

After receiving my undergraduate degree from Columbia University, I simultaneously enrolled in the University of Louisville Medical School and Law School. Attending medical school during the day and law school at night, I completed the programs in four years, receiving both degrees – with honors – in 1970.

One of my proudest accomplishments in the field of emergency medicine was being an early adopter of emergency medicine as a specialty. I served on the Board of the American College of Emergency Physicians (ACEP), and I am a past member of several professional organizations for physicians and attorneys. I authored several books on the topic as well.

I am a founding member of TeamHealth, an association of more than 20,000 clinicians throughout the United States. I served as a division president for the TeamHealth East region until 2014 when I made the transition to the position of Strategic Advisor to the CEO of TeamHealth. I was also a founding member of George & Korin, a healthcare law firm representing physicians, nurses, and other healthcare providers.

In 2016, I suffered a brain and spinal cord injury after a fall in my home, resulting in a coma and quadriplegia. I spent six months at Magee Rehabilitation Hospital in Philadelphia, where I discovered great joy in art therapy and painting – ultimately contributing several pieces of my artwork now on display throughout the hospital.