The mellow upbeat rhythm of Jason Mraz is streaming from the TV in Jamie Kushner Blicher’s home art studio in Bethesda. An untouched sheet of white paper lies flat on a paint-stained workbench in front of a large double window. Golden afternoon sun drenches the room, casting light upon dozens of small ink bottles lined up like nail polishes at a salon. The 39-year-old artist reaches not for a brush but for a needle.
Blicher works primarily with sterile, unused in vitro fertilization (IVF) needles to create her artwork. Needles just like these, which are painful and can cause bruising, are used throughout the IVF process to administer medications, including hormones. Most of the injections are done by patients themselves at home due to the frequency and specificity of timing. Blicher has piles of boxes and drawers full of unused needles that have been donated by individuals—carefully wrapped and shipped to her. The number of needles used per patient varies greatly, so patients often end up with more than necessary.
In 2015, Blicher and her husband, both of whom grew up in Potomac, were living in New York City and decided to move back to Maryland, hoping to immediately start a family. They ended up on a three-year infertility journey, which included two miscarriages, two egg retrievals and four embryo transfers.
Throughout the IVF process, Blicher found herself surrounded by needles, often injecting herself with medications per her doctors’ orders. “I’m afraid of blood, had no experience with needles, and had never looked closely at them,” Blicher says. One day in 2016, the artist within her wondered, What would happen if I put paint in there?
She experimented for a few weeks and learned which methods worked, including how to paint with the needles effectively. She now uses a needle to dispense rubbing alcohol and ink onto synthetic paper, then uses her breath, a blow-dryer or an airbrush to methodically move the ink before it dries. “Inks are hard to control. I always have a basic idea of what I want to do, but I’m problem-solving when I’m in it,” she says. Blicher’s art has a contemporary abstract look and is filled with bright colors and “joyous accents.”
In 2016, Blicher created a new Instagram account to get away from the “doom scrolling” of her other account, which was featuring too much pregnancy content. “I made an Instagram of things that brought me joy,” she says. She named the account Glitter Enthusiast.
“Glitter means ‘happy place’ to me,” says Blicher, who incorporates glitter ink in many of her pieces. “Glitter and sparkles and shine are things that take me out of whatever is going on.”
Blicher started sharing her story and artwork on her new account, connecting online with others and discussing infertility. “It’s powerful to use art to talk about hard things,” she says. As a self-taught artist who majored in merchandising at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City, she had always been creative (her mother and grandmother were artists) and believed in the power of art therapy. It wasn’t long before she started receiving commission inquiries.
“She is brilliant in repurposing sterile IVF needles—that can bring so much pain both emotionally and physically—through an arduous process to create something beautiful,” says Rachael Silvey of Los Angeles via email. Silvey, who says she had 253 injections during her IVF journey, commissioned artwork by Blicher that now hangs in her son’s nursery.
Although the cause of Blicher’s infertility was inconclusive, she was determined to have a baby and continued to seek treatment from doctors. She gave birth to twin boys in 2018, after three years and four rounds of treatments.
Glitter Enthusiast took off in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, after her twins turned 2 and it became a little easier to find time to paint. She was also connecting online with more women whose IVF cycles had been canceled or paused due to the pandemic. By 2023, Blicher decided to leave her job as a buyer at Total Wine & More in Bethesda to work on her art. “I’m Glitter full time now,” she says.
Although most painting is done at her studio, Blicher “live paints” at events around the country and hosts virtual painting events, demonstrating how she uses the needles to make her inky artwork.
About 80% of Blicher’s work is commission-based, she says. When planning a commissioned project, she’ll ask clients about the music and colors they like, the art’s future display location, and about their IVF experiences. She listens to their favorite music while working to “channel into their vibe so the painting tells their story.”
To Nena Glass, a customer in Kannapolis, North Carolina, whose infertility journey lasted five years and who now has sons ages 2 and 6, “The [artwork] Jamie painted for us is a reminder that our pain turned into something so beautiful,” she says via email.
IVF isn’t always successful, and Blicher often creates artwork for couples who are closing that chapter after years of treatments. “It’s symbolic and a way to commemorate what they’ve been through,” Blicher says.
One of Blicher’s favorite pieces is at Shady Grove Fertility in Rockville, where she was a patient. April Hatton, senior manager of planning design and construction at US Fertility (the parent company of Shady Grove Fertility), has designed Shady Grove Fertility projects for 20-plus years and is constantly “incorporating local artists and stories like Blicher’s [that make] our spaces that much more meaningful,” she says via email.
Hatton first learned about Blicher via a Shady Grove Fertility social media post. Hatton commissioned artwork on the theme of “creating beauty out of pain.” It is an abstract diptych (side-by-side 26-inch-by-40-inch pieces) featuring shades of blues, pinks and gold. It reflects Blicher’s philosophy of “finding a hard, sad, touchy subject and talking about it through art in an approachable and meaningful way,” Blicher says.
Blicher hopes to eventually have her art displayed in most of the fertility clinics in the U.S. She has created artwork for numerous fertility doctors, and even for Elizabeth Jordan Carr, who in 1981 became the first IVF baby born in the U.S. After following Blicher on Instagram for a while, Carr says she sent her a message “[thanking] her for creating something so beautiful out of something that is so hard and often ugly for people to navigate.” Carr, who’s in the process of moving, has “already picked out the perfect spot where her art will be visible as soon as you walk into our home,” she says via email.
Blicher, who has 9,000-plus followers on Instagram, donates a portion of her proceeds to infertility-related charities. She believes “IVF needs to be more accessible” and “infertility is a medical condition that should be fully covered by medical insurance.”
In addition to commissioned pieces, Blicher sells art prints, pillows and more. Her art can be found at glitterenthusiast.com, on Instagram @glitterenthusiast, at The Jam art gallery in Bethesda’s Westfield Montgomery mall, and at Urban Country in Bethesda.
This story appears in the November/December 2024 issue of Bethesda Magazine.
