Liverwurst

"The process of transplantation is a grueling one- demanding physical participation in a battery
of tests and procedures as well as an emotional commitment to oneself and acceptance of the unknown.

This is a beautiful catalogue of stories, photographs and drawings that tell Ella's story of chronic illness and her journey towards transplant. Throughout this process she demonstrates a remarkable spirit and strength despite loss, illness and ever present chance of dying. Through her art and words she provides a window into her soul as she faces her own mortality with grace, maturity and humor."

---Ariana Rose, Nurse Practitioner


"The remarkable hospital sketchbook of artist Ella Watson chronicles her two year crisis battling
end-stage liver failure. A young woman in need of an organ transplant, with no insurance, no
money, no parents, no safety net: in drawing after luminous drawing she tells the story. It is a
graphic tour de force. Her body inside and out, breached and cut open, perforated with tubes and
pumps, fever dreams in emergency rooms, portraits of fellow patients, life-giving nurses, latex-
gloved hands, monitors, pills, syringes, clocks (above all clocks): a gurney-eye tour of intensive
care. She wins passage through the disintegrating U.S. social welfare system, through the veil
of pain and time, doing the thing she knows best: drawing and writing for her life. Her eye and
steady hand miss nothing. Ella captures -- for her doctors, for her brother and sisters, for us, and
for art -- the misery and triumph of the life urge."

---Elizabeth King, Sculpture Department, Virginia Commonwealth University