I didn't bother to fix the semi-shitty image above, but it's a detail of a wall piece I have up at a show at Project 4 now until April 21. It's a conglomerate of things that are supposed to be like demoid cysts, which are mutated ovary cells, or something -- I've heard that the outer layer of an egg cell is the area responsible for the development of skin, teeth, hair, and nails, so when that shit mutates and goes haywire -- when it tries to turn into a spermless baby -- the dermoid cyst is the result. When I was in high school, one of my teachers took some time off to get a tumor removed, and when she came back to school it somehow got out that it was one of these, and really large. Chock full of hair and teeth, this thing grew inside of this really sweet lady for, what, like years probably. The human body's weird enough without anything going 'wrong', but stuff like this blows my mind. I know places like the Mutter Museum in Philly have a preservative bent, and historically we've been capable of maintaining soft tissue samples for thousands of years, but let's get honest -- I can never get close enough, what with the 'glass vitrines' and 'museum rules' standing in my way. Although it might make me puke, I want to handle this stuff, pick it up, maybe even cut it up. At least when I make this shit out of clay I can pretend it's real for a minute.
On the living-vicariously tip, though, there's a great special on Discovery Health now that is about a young boy from Pakistan (I think) who was born with a fully-enclosed parasitic twin. Unlike the cases where, say, a baby is born with an extra set of legs jutting out of its torso, this kid went undiagnosed for years because he just looked like a pregnant baby. That's fucked-up imagery I guess, but anyway, he underwent surgery and this monster was pulled out of his thoracic cavity. The best part of the show, by FAR, was when they brought in a pathologist and set up a sterile lab for her and she did a step-by-step autopsy of the parasitic twin. She fully cut it in half and everything. I think it's safe to say that I have the extreme desire to jump inside the TV on a daily basis. Sad but true, sad but true...however, this moment was probably the most intensely I have ever felt this totally first-world emotion. What a moment.
