How Cannabis and Crypto are Helping This Artist Survive Terminal Cancer, with Arabella Proffer

Arabella Proffer

Arabella Proffer is a visual artist based in Cleveland. Born in Ann Arbor, Michigan and bred in Southern California, she has a BFA from CalArts. Her loose narrative themes revolve around the history of medicine, psychedelic visions, and biomorphic organisms. She delves into the practice of oil painting, tying together its relationships to nature, biology, and emerging sciences.

Arabella’s work appears in over 80 private collections and she participates in solo and group exhibitions throughout the world.

Her work has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, SF Weekly, The Plain Dealer, Hi-Fructose, Juxtapoz, The Harvard Gazette, NPR, Hektoen International Medical Journal, The Portland Review and more.

Her achievements have been recognized by the Ohio House and Senate. She has received grants from Ohio Arts Council, Akron Soul Train residency, Rauschenberg Award, Andy Warhol Foundation Satellite Award, and ArtsCleveland.

She balances a studio practice of commissions, transcendental painting, drawing crude comics for cheap laughs, all while living with terminal cancer.