About Us
Hi, I’m Janna Kimel, the founder of the Chronic Pain Project.
I've been thinking about chronic pain for most of my life—I just didn't have the language for it until recently.
My pain journey started at age 10 with a gym class fall that led to a decade of unexplained ankle pain. That eventually faded, only to be replaced by knee pain, debilitating low back pain, shoulder pain that comes and goes without warning, and chronic migraines that began at 25 and continue today—even after brain surgery to remove an Arachnoid Cyst that we hoped was the cause.
Decades of invisible pain taught me something crucial: there's a profound gap between living with chronic pain and understanding it from the outside. No cast, no crutches, no visual proof—just the exhausting work of trying to explain what's happening inside your body to people who have no frame of reference.
My first outing, post-brain surgery. The hope was that getting rid of a benign cyst would get rid of the migraines, but it didn’t.
That's when the pieces started coming together: what if I could build something that connected this community and gave us a platform to be truly seen?
That gap became impossible to ignore when I was working as a UX Research Manager at Hinge Health. I wanted to create a project where our customers—people living with chronic pain—could make art that would help other employees understand what chronic pain actually feels like. I imagined their artwork displayed around the office, creating empathy through authentic lived experience rather than clinical descriptions or second-hand research.
We were a growing startup without the resources to take on a project like that. But I couldn't let the idea go.
When I left Hinge Health, I started scrolling Instagram to assuage my own loneliness with chronic pain—and discovered something unexpected. There was a huge community of people talking about exactly what I was experiencing. For the first time, I realized I wasn't alone, even on days when leaving the house felt impossible. That's when the pieces started coming together: what if I could build something that connected this community and gave us a platform to be truly seen?
Through our exhibitions and programming, I've witnessed the power of art to reduce pain in the moment and ease the isolation that comes with invisible illness.
I took that vision and decided to build it myself. After 20+ years in UX research—and an earlier career running Accessible Threads Design Studio designing clothing for people with disabilities—I'd always approached problems creatively. I've been crafty and creative my whole life, though I wouldn't call myself a fine artist. But starting this project pushed me to try different media to share my own story, and I discovered something powerful: you don't need formal training to use art as a language for experiences that words can't quite capture. That's why we don't jury the art at CPP—everyone living with chronic pain is welcome to participate and share their story.
That's how the Chronic Pain Project was born. What started as an office empathy-building exercise became something bigger: a platform where artists living with chronic pain tell their own stories through their creative work. Through our exhibitions and programming, I've witnessed the power of art to reduce pain in the moment and ease the isolation that comes with invisible illness. When we create and share our work, we're not just making art—we're making ourselves visible to each other and to the world. Our authenticity matters more than our productivity, and our community's wisdom is valued as expertise.
Today, I spend my weekends hiking the Pacific Northwest trails I call home (when my body allows it), doing yoga and being creative. The rest of my time I spend building the community I wish had existed all along—one that proves invisible doesn't mean imaginary, and chronic pain doesn't erase creativity. Sometimes it deepens it.
“That was exactly what Molly’s arthritis was like: as if some big old cow had got into her house and wouldn’t go away. It just sat there, taking up space in her life and making everything more difficult, mooing loudly from time to time and making cow pies.”
—from the book “The Last Resort” by Alison Lurie.
This project aims to bring visibility to the invisible by promoting and normalizing these conversations about pain.