THE PERFECT PATIENT
Gallery installation for The Perfect Patient, first iteration, January 1992, Lake Tahoe Gallery, Incline Village, Nevada.
“Cocktail Animals,” early version (1992).
The first and most important questions are, “Why do this and what do I have to offer?” The world already has plenty of good stories, pretty pictures, as well as wonderful paintings, sculptures and other manner of creative expression. If you read on, you’ll encounter my experience with the transformative power of art and writing and I want to refine it, show it and change people’s lives with it, at whatever level, grand or humble, I can manage. The point and purpose of this project was and is to transform lives through visual and written creativity, to show and express experience in ways that are unique, expressive and skillful.
The links below lead to images from my graduate degree project, “The Perfect Patient.” The title stems from a comment made to me by the psychiatrist I was working with at the time. She once told me, in session, that I didn’t have to be the perfect patient. I didn’t have to try so hard to please.
When I first authored this project, I was challenged by the demand of deep personal exploration in the pursuit of higher learning. In this process, things came up that were really difficult to deal with and, in the evolution of this project, I began to understand my personal experience in ways that transformed my life. Rather than a confessional obsession on my trauma, I decided to utilize my creativity, insight, technical skill and (on occasion) sense of humor to investigate the nature of meaning. I conceptualized a project that would integrate my interests in writing, literature, philosophy, art, photography and personal exploration.
My faculty advisors were more than supportive, encouraging me to explore and experiment. In my writing, I tried to incorporate influences from writers as disparate as Thomas Pynchon, Anne Sexton, Ray Carver, Sylvia Plath and W. S. Merwin, among others. Visually, I began with inspiration from artists as varied as Max Ernst, William Blake, Jerry Uelsmann and Francis Bacon. To achieve the look I wanted, I invented techniques with multiple masking with a dye destruct process that had never been ventured before. The last component was my creative exploration of emerging digital art technologies and I used my MacPlus to bring the elements together into an artist-made book. The finished work consisted of fourteen segments, each segment being two 16x20 inch boards, hinged together to unfold for display. The layout graphics were done on my Mac Plus, using first generation layout and design software from Aldus and Macromedia. The photographic images are printed as Cibachrome prints, a process now outlawed because of its toxicity. The dyes in Cibachrome are also transitory, losing quality with exposure to light, which is strong reason I’ve kept them boxed up. With newer technology I can replicate the image ideas with more permanent color agents.
I showed the book or parts of it on a number of occasions and the look impressed all who saw it at the time. Its creation and execution opened doors for me in commercial design and higher education. When shown, when people got into the stories and connected the narrative to the images, the unsettling results made me feel awkward and vulnerable. The fact that so many were unsettled by the content prompted me to put it away and it’s been boxed up and in one closet or another for close to thirty years.
At the prompting of a friend, I got out the work and began to review and discuss it. That suggestion sparked my long-lingering desire to refine it for more effective presentation. After getting it out and looking it over, I intend to update it and show it in the best way possible. A sample of my revision process is found below.
“Cocktail Animals,” current revision (2023). Mixed media, 64x20 inches.
I’d like you to read, connect and comment on this work. When my revision is completed, I want to show it in the most effective way possible and, after that, create workshops so others can create personal work that is as transformative as The Perfect Patient has been for me.
Chapters