Copyright 2024

Art As Therapy

I got very sick a decade ago, and spent about 5 years trying to get back to something that resembled normal life.  I have recently realized that my artwork focuses on my ordeal, and I would like to formally face it, to purge as much of the fear and anger as I can to move forward.  

Acceptable Risk

I faced the microbiological images of Papillary Carcinoma of the Thyroid.  I contacted doctors until two let me use their images from their practice.  Working the raw images with my fingers for months allowed me to make peace with the images from my nightmares.  Finding other artists who have faced difficult subjects, and faced their own demons while engaging audiences with comforting materials has become the current focus of my thesis.  Justine Merrit’s description of her experience while making her quilt project The Ribbon mirrored my feelings exactly.  “I found that as I thread my needle, I was confronting the fear, confronting the grief and terror of living in a nuclear age.  As I drew the needle up through the cloth, I was praying for peace, and the prayer became an affirmation of life.  The very task of creating my panel helped empower me to face the reality of living in a nuclear age…I felt less grief-stricken, less afraid, less angry, and more committed than ever to working for peace…I felt a great sense of healing.”  -From Bodylore edited by Katharine Young

Chernobyl 

In my research about nuclear power, I found an article saying that tours are now offered of the Chernobyl Power Plant.  I was stunned, and knew immediately I had to go.  It was difficult to try to explain to family and friends, that I did not want to go, I had to go: to face my demons.  The compulsion took over my life, and I was willing to give up a relationship, use money from my retirement, and put all my belongings in storage to do it.  I felt that if I went and saw it for myself, it would force me into an active role in raising awareness of the dangers of nuclear power.   “The only clearly demonstrated cancer incidence increase that can be attributed to radiation from the Chernobyl accident is thyroid carcinoma in patients exposed during childhood or adolescence. Significant increases in thyroid disease were observed as soon as 4 years after the accident. The solid/follicular subtype of papillary carcinoma predominated in the early period after the accident. Morphological diagnosis of cancer in such cases, if no infiltrative growth is clearly visible, depends mainly on the nuclear criteria. Outdated equipment and insufficient quality of histological specimens impeded reliable evaluation of the nuclear criteria. The concluding point is that since post-Chernobyl cancers tend on average to be in a later stage of tumor progression, some published data on molecular or immunohistochemical characteristics of Chernobyl-related cancers require reevaluation.”    Papillary Carcinoma of the thyroid In the United States, no new nuclear reactors were brought online from 1996 to 2003 due to concerns following the explosions at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl.  But President George W. Bush signed the 2005 Energy Policy Act to provide financial and tax incentives for building new nuclear reactors besides the 104 already in use.  The United States has more nuclear reactors than any country on Earth.  France comes in second at 59.  Geneticists state that it will take 3 or 4 generations to show all the mutations, deaths, and sterility related to the radiation poisoning that extends far past the boundaries of the exclusion zone.  I have read articles and books about the Chernobyl disaster for the past two years.  

some of the hundreds of facts that trouble me about the Chernobyl catastrophe.  

For years I have been using wax as a primary medium when I create objects.  For more than a decade, I worked in the lost wax method of metal casting.  My work shifted from using wax as a tool to create the final product in bronze or aluminum.  The wax forms became the final product.  Eva Hesse’s statement, “‘the materials I use are really casting materials, but I don’t want to use them as casting materials. I want to use them directly, eliminating making molds and casts ... I am interested in the process, a very direct kind of connection.”  I began using wax for my larger installations because of my familiarity with the medium.  

The Alphabet 

There is a layer of wax beneath the colored fabric.  The wax is what holds the hair in place.  Layering wax on styrofoam became a metaphor for my journey.  Styrofoam is a material that is not natural, and does not break down when buried, but vaporizes with high heat.  The layers of wax on the surface can be melted, colored, sculpted and injected with hair.  An average Texas summer day will destroy the surface of my installations, but not the core.   I like the mix of delicate balance of permanent and ephemeral.  The translucence of the wax I use reminds me of funerary encaustic paintings of Fayum from the 2nd century AD.  Those vivid encaustic portraits of the deceased are preserved beautifully as the physical embodiment of a memory.

I am haunted by the information and images I have seen in the years of desperate searching through medical journals, and my trip to Pripyat, the town where the workers from Chernobyl had lived.  Incorporating the videos and still images from my trip into my installations seemed like the next logical step.  Mixing horrifying facts and surreal toy-like organisms satisfies my compulsion to seduce and repel, and still leave room for the viewer’s imagination.  I hope to use my art as therapy, and hopefully to spark others’ interest in how radiation affects all of us.