FIA presents Dana Boylan

TAP into creativity 🎭🎨 

This month we are featuring the  Friends in Art 2026 FIA scholarship recipient, Dana Boylan.

She is a passionate and talented visual artist, credentialed as  an architect before losing her sight and is now pursuing a career in art therapy.

FIA: Describe your art medium and how it began.

 

DB: My primary medium is mixed media, although drawing has always been at the heart of how I think. My background is in architecture, specifically facade restoration and historic preservation. I first connected with architecture in high school and was fascinated by the relationship between the mind, the hand, and materials, how drawing could be used to analyze, solve problems, and imagine something before it exists or is built.

 

Throughout my career, drawing became my sixth sense. I used it to document existing conditions, communicate repair strategies, and solve complex architectural problems. One primary responsibility of the architect is to ensure that what is built remains faithful to the project’s design intent, preserving the connection between an idea, the drawing, and the finished product. I loved translating what I observed into something others could understand and build.

 

In 2025, I lost vision in both eyes, five months apart, due to bilateral NAION. After losing vision in my right eye, I found myself drawing again, not buildings, but my own visual experience. I became fascinated by my visual field test results. Over time, they became much more than medical records. They became maps that helped me understand what I could and could not see while allowing me to track the changes in my vision over time.

 

As an architect, I couldn’t help but read the visual field images like architectural drawings. In architectural plans, light and dark communicate space, depth, boundaries, and physical form. My visual field diagrams did something remarkably similar. The shaded areas represented places I could no longer access visually, while the lighter areas represented what remained. For the first time, I had something tangible that validated an experience no one else could truly see through my eyes. From the outside, I appeared entirely the same.

 

Making art became a lifeline between my inner experience and the outside world. It gave me a safe way to challenge the boundaries of my abilities, process grief, adapt, and communicate experiences that were difficult to explain with words.

 

After I lost vision in my second eye, a friend told me about Claude Monet’s experience with vision loss. Learning that one of history’s greatest artists continued creating despite profound changes in his vision deeply inspired me. It also planted the seed that eventually led me toward art therapy as an evolution of my career path. I realized I wanted to encourage people experiencing major life changes and challenges, such as blindness, to continue making art, not because they are artists, but because creativity is a powerful way to understand we, communicate authentically, explore the unknown, remain connected to others, and ultimately build a way back to feeling whole.

 

FIA: Title of your individual works or project(s).

 

DB: I’m currently developing a body of work with a working title of Interfaces.  Recently, I’ve become fascinated with masks. To me, a mask represents the threshold between our inner and outer worlds, how we identify ourselves, relate to our surroundings, and share ourselves externally.

 

Since losing much of my vision, I’ve begun imagining masks that explore perception itself. I’m interested in creating masks that translate how I now experience faces, spaces, and objects, as well as masks that can function as visual filters or screens that allow a sighted viewer to experience some of the many variations of blindness and low vision.

 

It’s a project that is still evolving, but one I’m excited to continue developing.

 

FIA: Describe the tools and supplies used in your work.

 

DB: I enjoy materials that invite exploration and change throughout the creative process. Clay, charcoal, graphite, collage, watercolor pencils, and wax pencils are some of my favorites because they allow me to build, erase, layer, and respond as I work.

 

Collage especially interests me because it allows unrelated images and materials to coexist and relate. I’m drawn to layering, texture, transparency, and the way different materials can transform one another.

 

As my vision has changed, so have my tools. I tend to choose bold materials that are easier for me to see and trace. I often use vellum with a light source to check my work while developing layers, and recently a fellow blind artist Emilie Louise Gossiaux introduced me to the technique of drawing with a rubber mat beneath the paper, which creates a tactile impression beneath each pencil line. Being able to feel what I draw has expanded my understanding of the drawing process and reminds me that art is more than what is seen; it can be experienced through a variety of senses.

 

FIA: Is any of your work on view to the public?

 

DB: At the moment, I don’t have artwork on public display. About fifteen years ago, I exhibited and sold a series of woodblock prints in a small gallery exhibition hosted in a friend’s Greenpoint, Brooklyn apartment. Since then, much of my work has been shared more personally through gifts or with friends and family.

 

Interestingly, my most public creative work may actually be from my years as an architect. Many of the buildings I helped restore and preserve make up the fabric of New York City. Although architecture and art are different disciplines, both offer pathways to create something meaningful that contributes to the communities we live in.

 

FIA: What is the first finished piece or project you can remember and how did you feel about it?

 

DB: Rather than my earliest work ever, I’ll focus on the first piece I completed after losing my vision, a small clay floral cluster.

 

It was much harder to make than I expected. I found myself relearning material I had loved as a child. I experimented with basic forms like spheres, discs, and small vessels, scoring and joining pieces together, sometimes starting over several times before something finally stuck, literally. As the piece grew, it reminded me of floating lily pads or clustered flowers.

 

The experience taught me that although my vision had changed, my ability to create had not disappeared. I simply needed to discover new ways of working and reconnect with my lived, embodied experience of art making.

 

{FIA}: What motivates you in your work? What draws you to ideas?

 

DB: I’m motivated by curiosity and communication.

 

I’m fascinated by materiality, process, perception, memory, and the ways people make meaning from their experiences. Increasingly, I find myself interested in how art can translate lived experience into something another person can encounter and understand. I’m drawn to layers, organic forms, texture, clusters, and work that explores and expresses the relationship between our inner and outer realities.

 

Whether through architecture, art, or eventually art therapy, I’ve always been interested in understanding how people experience the world and how creativity can help us better understand ourselves and one another.

 

FIA: Describe your process when beginning a new project or piece, for example, journaling or planning.

 

DB: I usually begin with a challenge or question rather than a finished idea. Often, I don’t fully understand what I’m thinking until I begin drawing or working with materials. Similar to my experience in architecture, making something tangible allows me to explore ideas that aren’t yet fully formed.

 

Sometimes a project begins with a sketch, sometimes with material, an image, or a question that stays with me. I enjoy experimenting and allowing the process to inform the work rather than trying to control the outcome from the start. The creative process itself often teaches me what I was trying to understand.

 

FIA: Who are the artists you admire?

 

DB: Leonardo da Vinci has always been one of my greatest inspirations. What fascinates me most isn’t simply his artwork, but his relentless curiosity and investigative process. He seemed driven to understand how everything worked, light, anatomy, movement, engineering, and nature. When I experience his work, I feel like I can follow his thinking.

 

Claude Monet has also become deeply meaningful to me after learning about his experience with vision loss. His perseverance reminded me that changes in vision don’t have to end an artist’s creative spirit.

 

I also admire Alberto Giacometti for his exploration of perception and materiality. Emilie Louise Gossiaux, mentioned earlier, is another incredible fellow blind artist who I’ve been lucky to connect with after learning that we had both become legally blind and that our time at The Cooper Union had overlapped. The way they embrace blindness within their artistic practice and share their internal world, lived experience, and process through their art has been the perfect gift during this year of transition. I also have to mention architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Marcel Breuer, and Le Corbusier, whose work continues to influence how I think about space, scale, form, materiality, and human experience in time and space.

 

FIA: What is the most oddly interesting item in your studio and why?

 

DB: Probably my visual field test printouts from my neuro-ophthalmology appointments.

 

Most people would see them as medical records, but to me they are maps of perception. They helped me understand what my eyes could and could not see at a time when I desperately wanted others to understand my experience.

 

As an architect, I naturally began reading visual field tests like architectural drawings. The areas of light and darkness translated into space, form, and absence, helping me understand my vision in a way that words never could. They continue to remind me that perception itself can become material for art.

 

FIA: Do you listen to music while you work? If yes, what would your playlist include?

 

DB: Although my husband is a professional DJ, I rarely listen to music while I’m creating. Instead, I almost always listen to audiobooks.

 

Over the past year I’ve built a long listening list that includes books on cave art, anthropology, psychology, art therapy, blindness and disability studies, neuroscience, philosophy, and the history of human creativity. I love learning about how people have understood themselves throughout history and how creativity, through curiosity, has always been part of being human.

 

FIA: What are you most proud of?

 

DB: Without question, my family.

 

My husband and our two sons are my greatest joy, my greatest teachers, and the people who ground me every single day. Becoming legally blind challenged many parts of my identity, but it also reminded me of the importance of love, humor, adaptability, prioritizing my values, staying present, and building community.

 

I’m also proud that I chose to redefine my path rather than allow someone else to define it for me. After one of my doctors wrote “Never as architect” as my expected return-to-work date for disability leave, I had to ask myself what remained true about who I was. The answer wasn’t architecture alone, it was curiosity, creativity, and a desire to understand and help others. Those values ultimately led me to pursue a master’s degree in art therapy.

 

FIA: What do you still want to accomplish?

 

DB: This fall I’ll begin graduate school to become an art therapist, and my goal is to become a licensed clinician who helps people use creativity to better understand, trust, define, and rebuild their lives and meaningful relationships.

 

I’m especially interested in working with individuals who are blind, have low vision, or have other disabilities or are neurodivergent. I hope to encourage people to continue making art regardless of ability and to challenge public assumptions about what blindness or disability looks like. I believe creativity gives people an authentic voice, and I hope to help others discover that voice through creative means.

 

FIA: What would you say are the key themes of your work?

 

DB: The themes that continue to emerge in my work are perception, process, curiosity, memory, identity, resilience, and connection. I’m interested in the relationship between our inner and outer worlds, how we experience ourselves, how we communicate with those experiences, and how creativity can make the unseen visible.

 

I also find myself returning to nature, organic forms, layering, texture, and materiality. More than creating finished objects, I’m interested in exploring ideas and inviting others into that process of discovery.

 

FIA: Why is it important to create? How does being creative influence your life and those close to you?

 

DB: To create is to be curious about life. It means paying attention, asking questions, and not taking our experiences for granted.

 

I believe creative expression is one of the most fundamental human needs. Long before written language, people made marks and images to communicate, understand, remember, plan, and connect. In many ways, which hasn’t changed.

 

For me, creating is a way of examining and validating existence. It allows me to make the unseen seen and to give form to thoughts and experiences that don’t always have words. I hope my creative practice encourages my children and those around me to remain curious, to embrace challenges, and to understand that creativity isn’t about making perfect art, it’s about remaining engaged with life.

 

FIA: How do you think your art informs or influences others?

 

DB: I hope my work gives people permission to slow down, embrace wonder, and become comfortable with the unknown.

 

If someone leaves a piece asking a new question, seeing blindness or disability differently, or feeling more connected to their own experiences, then I feel the work has done its job.

 

More than anything, I hope it encourages conversation. Art has a unique ability to communicate experiences that can be difficult to explain, and I believe everyone deserves the opportunity to have an authentic voice, regardless of ability or circumstance.

 

FIA: What was the moment you felt ththis really happenednd you felt your art was being noticed and appreciated?

 

DB: Being accepted into graduate school for art therapy was that moment for me.

 

Preparing a portfolio after becoming legally blind was both exciting and intimidating. I questioned whether I still belonged in the creative world. Receiving acceptance letters reminded me that my vision loss hadn’t ended my creative journey but had redirected it.

 

More importantly, it affirmed that others could see the potential in both my work and my desire to help people through art. That gave me the confidence to move forward with this new chapter.

 

FIA: Give us one fun fact or event that made it all worthwhile, the inspiration for a piece of your work, an encounter with an artist you admire or an appreciator of your work, etc. What makes it all worthwhile?

 

DB: Some of my greatest inspiration comes from watching my two sons and sharing this journey with them. I want them to know that their life is theirs to shape and own. Challenges don’t have to be limiting. If we can remain creative and curious, we can find freedom and a voice.

 

My goal is to remain teachable throughout my life. Curiosity has always been one of my greatest strengths, and I hope I never stop learning.

 

FIA: Do you want to add anything we might have missed?

 

DB: One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned is that seeing and vision are not the same. Vision is biological; seeing is deeply human. It draws on memory, touch, imagination, emotion, curiosity, and our relationships with one another.

 

Losing much of my eyesight changed how I navigate the world, but it also deepened my appreciation for perception, memory, imagination, touch, and human connection. It reinforced my belief that creativity belongs to everyone, through all stages of life.

 

Whether through architecture, art, or art therapy, my hope has always been the same, to better understand people’s lived experiences and to help create spaces, physical or conceptual, where individuals feel seen, heard, understood, and empowered to share authentically.

 

Thank you to Friends in Art for the opportunity to share my experience and work process. It’s an honor to be part of this community.

We are excited to be working with and supporting Dana during her acaademic training and wish her all the best!