Channeling Chronic Pain Into Art

When Sienna Morell-Grant BA ’26 thinks back on her fall 2025 internship with the Chronic Pain Project (CPP), she remembers one piece of art in particular. In “The Battle Within,” a mixed-media piece, red yarn spills out of a simple white background. The canvas appears almost punctured, and the fibers almost bloodied. The artist, Nez S., describes her battle with arthritis and dermatitis in a recorded interview that accompanies the work: “I don’t want it to overtake me,” she says.

Sienna Morell-Grant BA ’26 (second from the left) with Chronic Pain Project staff.

CPP, a nonprofit based in Portland, provides a platform for artists living with chronic pain to tell their own stories in creative works, such as paintings, sculptures, collages, installations, and poems. The organization’s exhibitions and programming create spaces for connection, allowing artists to share their work with the public while normalizing conversations about pain and discomfort. In 2025-26, Lewis & Clark’s Center for Community and Global Health funded two student internships with the CPP.

Sienna Morell-Grant BA ’26During the internship, students edited the artist interviews—each about an hour—into two-to-four minute videos intended to capture the essence of their work, mastering editing software like Canva. “One of the things I noticed, as someone who does not live with chronic pain, is that people struggle to be believed,” says Morell-Grant. “The project is giving these artists the structure to make that pain into a sculpture, or to put it on the page. For artists like Nez, it has enabled them to show what it feels like inside.”

This was a sentiment Morell-Grant identified across the interviews. The invisible nature of chronic pain can add a mental burden onto what might already be an unbearable physical experience. Janna Kimel, the founder of the Chronic Pain Project, describes this as central to the organization’s mission: “When we create and share our work, we’re not just making art—we’re making ourselves visible to each other and to the world.”

EJ Bock BA ’29Both Morell-Grant and EJ Bock BA ’29, who is interning with the CPP in spring 2026, believe that art can provide a unique—and powerful—form of healing. “I’m excited to serve the CPP and advocate for its participants by helping them share their stories and artwork in ways that are accurate and meaningful,” says Bock. For Morell-Grant, working with personal, sensitive materials during the internship affirmed her interest in pursuing a career in social work, where she plans to focus on at-risk and marginalized communities.

The partnership between the Center for Community and Global Health and the CPP builds on L&C’s growing investment in narrative medicine and preparation for health-related careers. In recent years, the center has facilitated student internships with Fora Health, a substance abuse treatment center, and the Northwest Narrative Medicine Collaborative, a group of health care professionals, patients, and artists working to advance the practice of narrative medicine in the region.

“We have so much to learn about how to care for pain,” says Alexis Rehrmann, program manager of narrative medicine and community partnerships at the Center for Community and Global Health. “By offering their focused attention and time to these stories, I hope that our students will take these lessons into their future work in health care and healing. I’m proud that this is a reciprocal relationship. L&C and our students are able to offer a small nonprofit real, tangible help in moving their mission forward: to change chronic pain from invisible to visible.”

The Chronic Pain Project’s upcoming exhibit, Illuminating the Invisible, runs from March 1 to May 29 at Taborspace.

Health Studies Narrative Medicine @ LC
Center for Community and Global Health Pre-Med