Fall 2008 Caramic Work

This is the work from the Fall 2008 Semester in ceramics. My statement and images are listed bellow (the images are not the best and will work on getting some better ones soon).

Chronic pain sufferers often times battle with medications and limitations. Unfortunately, not every illness can be solved with a quick regiment of medications and/or surgery. Many different doctors have to be seen to get multiple opinions that will hopefully render pain free results. The same is true with medications, numerous ones have to be tried to ease the pain. These medications can leave someone feeling trapped due to the unavoidable and unwanted side effects. There are physical limitations created by the pain that can leave suffers feeling trapped as well. The combination of these things forces sufferers to navigate through an obstacle course of pain not only in body but in mind.

"This will not turn on any diffrent"

"Morning Ritual"

"Daily Routine"

"Hard to Swallow"

"Breaking The Cycle"

Body Grip Trap - take one

One of my pieces is a body grip trap covered in ceramic bones to illustrate how I feel trapped in my own body due to the pain. The bait is a pill bottle, that will be ceramic, and is connected to a string which is in turn connected to the trigger. The viewer is tempted by the bait and goes for it and in turn sets the trap off, the bones shatter, and they drop the bottle and it too shatteres.

This has been a experimental and very dangerous thing so if you want to try it be careful. There are a few hick ups that I need to work out. You will see that I pull the trap off the ground but it wasn't suppose to come off the ground when I pulled the bait. I have since figured out the problems but this was the first take...

Last Semester's ceramic work

This is my artist statement from last semester and the images of the work:

With the two pieces I have created I am illustrating the five shoulder surgeries I have had. These pieces also illustrate the chronic pain I have endured through them all and even the limitations they have created on my life.
The first piece is and exaggerated medical model of my shoulder that appears almost bionic. There are screws and wire appearing to hold the shoulder together, an exaggeration of the current status of my shoulder. This is concealed by a representation of the exterior of my shoulder and its eleven scars. The shoulder casing is connected to a pulley system allowing the viewer to reveal the bionic shoulder encased underneath. The counterweight is a representation of a twenty-five pound dumb bell, signifying how I am no longer able to lift anything heaver then that. This piece puts the viewer in the position of the doctors and forces him or her to expose the pain and damage done underneath.
The second piece is a magnified view of a synapse. These are located at the ends of one’s nerves. They send neurotransmitters, pain signals, to the rest of one’s body. Replacing the neurotransmitters are pain pills marked with the doctors names on them who performed my surgeries. These doctors and pills are supposed to help people with pain but in some cases they fall short, thus, leaving certain individuals in a state of chronic pain. This is illustrated through the pills being piled up and never making it to the dendrite of the synapse signifying an incomplete cycle.

This with it closed. It is hard to see but there are 11 scars on the right side to mimic the ones I have.

After opening you can see the shoulder model.

This is a bad image but you can see how it is opened.

The pills are relatively close to actual pill size and each one had one of the doctors names on them.

The back story on why/what I do...

My story:

I have had 5 surgeries on my right shoulder, 1 on my left ankle, and nerve damage on my right ankle.

The right ankle injury was caused by playing mud volleyball in 6th grade and I twisted my ankle to the outside and slightly tore a nerve. Unlike tearing a ligament or something muscular a nerve is hard to repair because you can’t just open it up and sow it back together. I had to undergo 7 nerve blocks in the back in attempts to “rebut” my nerves. Imagine it to be a computer and when it is acting up you restart it and you hope when it comes back on it will correct itself. This is what they were hoping for because the nerve block shuts down the signals to that nerve in the ankle which makes it numb and when I regained feeling they were hoping the pain would decrease or go away all together. It ended up working overtime but as you can imagine it was very hard for someone at that age to go through because of the amount of pain involved. To this day I will occasionally have pain in that ankle.

The right shoulder injury was caused by a couple different things but it all started at the age of 15 playing softball. My first surgery was to remove a “tea spoon” size of my bursa sack because the swelling wouldn’t go away. The second one was to fix a torn ligament and remove a bone spur. The third was another torn ligament. I was finally getting better and then I was hit by a car walking through a parking lot. I had two surgeries to try and fix the same problem, a SLAP tear. The first surgery, or should I say fourth, didn’t work because the dissolvable nail placed in my shoulder broke somehow so they had to go back in again and fix it. The fifth surgery left me with two screws and metal wire/rope stuff in there to keep that ligament together and attached to my bone. Throughout all of this I had A LOT of physical therapy and way too many cortisone shots, which are a large reason to why I can’t lift anything more than 25lbs. While cortisone helps with some things like capsulitis (aka frozen shoulder) which is very painful, it weakens the muscles and if I lift anything more then that I risk tearing my bicep muscle completely off and it be curled up at my elbow. My right shoulder will forever hurt and I was told it is just something I will have to deal with since it has undergone so much but I try and manage it with limiting myself and medication.

My left ankle was injured from a motorcycle wreck were I was thrown 15 feet and suffered a concussion, road rash, slightly dislocated right hip, and left ankle pain. I have had surgery on that ankle to remove a ligament that got stuck between my two joints as well as a torn tendon. I have also had joint replacement injections in attempts to regain more cartilage lost from the injury and surgery to fix it. I have since suffered another injury to that same ankle and have been told I need surgery but I have decided to hold off and hope time will heal it because as you can imagine I’m so very tired of having surgeries.
Throughout all of these things I have gone through the range of emotions, especially depression. These things have not just affected me but my friends and family as well. I have to live every day as it comes and just try and manage pain. I have gotten better with this and emotionally it doesn’t get to me as much but is physically exhausting.


My Art:

My art work concentrates on chronic pain. I like to analyze how it affects the person plagued by this as well as the effects it has on the people around them. I am attempting to make this a more universal topic and not let my personal experience be the only thing showing through, even though that is very hard. I like to make my work interactive as well forcing to the viewer to participate in some way to reveal all of the aspects of the work.