Jamie Kushner Blicher has always been creative.
The Bethesda, Md., native began painting as a child, and that passion continued through high school, where she worked on a variety of mixed media projects.
In 2015, art took on a new meaning in her life. During this time, she and her husband, Brian, embarked on their own fertility journey. But after trying naturally for a year without success, she went through two IVFs, four IVF transfers – two of which were unsuccessful – and two miscarriages.
“I really started painting a lot because it got me through all that pain, stress, frustration, anger, all those emotions,” Kushner Blicher told PEOPLE exclusively in an interview. “I was kind of venting through work.”
Jamie Blicher with his artwork.
Ashley Fisher
After her second miscarriage in 2015, Kushner Blicher found herself in her art studio, feeling helpless. It was there, amidst her stack of IVF needles, that inspiration struck. She asked herself, “What would happen if I painted with a needle? What would come out?”
So she took a sterile needle and started experimenting.
“I suddenly thought, ‘Oh my God, this is a living metaphor for me trying to control the uncontrollable, creating beauty out of chaos,'” she adds. “What was coming out was so beautiful.”
From that moment on, Kushner Blicher devoted herself to daily painting with her needles. She eventually started an Instagram and TikTok account, Glitter Enthusiast, to share her work and tell her infertility story.
“When I first posted, I got 40 messages from people who were going through the same thing,” she says. “It was so fulfilling that other people would find what I find beautiful and find a common experience and what I do.”
In March 2016, Kushner Blicher turned her social media account into an official business one. Last year, she quit her job in marketing to devote herself to painting full-time.
Each year, she says, she completes about 60 orders using other people’s sterile, unused IVF needles. In addition, she makes prints of her artwork for fertility clinics and turns them into fabric for headbands and towels.
He adds that some of the profits go to various fertility organizations, including those that provide grants to people who can’t afford IVF.
“I’ve had people walk into a house and see a Glitter Enthusiast piece on their wall and ask the owner how the art came to be,” she says. “The owner will share i [the] the person who comes to their house will tell them that I also went through IVF.”
“Then they talk and share their stories and comfort each other. And that conversation wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t looked at the art,” she continues.
One particularly significant work Kushner Blicher created was for a couple in Arizona who had struggled with infertility for five years. When she first connected with the couple, they sat on the phone and cried for 45 minutes.
“She told me she had seen my art online and it made her feel like she was part of something,” he recalls. – I took a picture for her, and I gave the picture to her for free because she needed a life belt.
“They got the picture, and then two months later they got pregnant and now they have two children,” she adds.
In 2018, Kushner Blicher and Brian experienced their own miracle when they became parents to two boys, Ethan and Bennett, using leftover embryos from IVF treatment.
She says she passed her love of art on to her twins, involving them in her work and teaching them about her creative process.
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“If you ask guys ‘What is IVF?’ they say it’s just a different way to make a baby,” says Kushner Blicher. “They don’t understand the scientific concept of it because they’re only five years old.”
She continues: “But they would tell you that mom always wanted to be a mom. She had the help of a doctor, and now she’s helping other people become moms through her art.”
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Source: HIS Education