Nervous Systems

Hudgens Art Center

Duluth GA

June 8 - Sep 7 2013

Double Bind (Let me tell you about an idea that will make you money and help others!) is a large freestanding video screen aimed at addressing contradictions of care and profit in healthcare. The United States provides some of the best care in the world to a portion of its population, but adequate coverage doesn’t reach everyone. Medical research for less common diseases is not profitable and not well funded. To fill these voids, many ill people turn to superstition, dietary restrictions and herbal medicine for personal control. Unfortunately, the health food and supplement industry is also rife with similar contradictions. The title piece in the show Nervous System is a linear connection of wires drawn around a motor, feather and prescription drug container, inspired by Jean Tinguely.

On two small screens, Market Behaviors depicts a strawberry walking through a supermarket pushing a cart. The fruit is doubled, cloned, to represent current research and practices by companies cloning meat & seeds and using hormones in the food supply. In a similar fashion, biologics, which are a class of drugs created from the isolated tissue or cells from living beings (instead of chemically synthesized), have become massively profitable for pharmaceutical companies. So the market behaviors continue and demand increases in an ongoing chain of events with companies and consumers in a game of supply and demand.

PICC’d Fruit refers to a PICC line, which is typically used to administer food and/or drugs directly to a patient’s heart. The wood and yellow enamel reference IKEA - a successful example of the modern-grid-factory administering clean design to the "Heartland," like a PICC line. The attached fruit stickers are digital prints lit by a black light and altered just as our food has been altered to grow with less disease and higher yield. The last two pieces titled, Shop Till You Droop and Genetically Modified, are paintings oozing with illness and disease through vibrant, lively colors. They represent the final combination of a chaotic form of cleanliness in the body. They represent a nervous existence.