In 2019, I was asked by the University of Colorado Anschutz to exhibit artwork in their Center for Bioethics and Humanities. This building includes the Fulginiti Pavilion and Gallery which are intended to bridge “the worlds of artistic expression and healthcare through thoughtfully curated exhibitions and programming.” From December 2019 until March 2020, my work was exhibited in the pavilion. My artist’s statement for the show is below.  

Doctors, in general, don’t want to read emails.

That’s understandable, but nonetheless, sending them weekly bulletins describing (often trivial, sometimes significant) changes to the Epic electronic health record software they use every day is a significant part of my job at Denver Health. The work in this show was created as an attempt to persuade my audience to read what I send them. I can’t promise riveting content in every email, but there will always be something interesting to look at.

Initially, I simply added photos pulled from the internet. Next, I started altering old magazine ads, movie posters and album art to include the word Epic. This gave me more creative freedom, but I still thought my visuals needed to directly connect with the software updates I was communicating about so as not to confuse my audience. Over time, I started creating my own book covers and posters, no longer relating them to the Epic software, but still basing them on real people, well-known literature, and historical events. The work became stranger, darker, and more varied, but was still grounded in concrete references I thought the audience would either recognize or benefit from learning about.

Eventually, I began to create digital collages untethered to clear referents, neither satire nor homage. While I stopped concerning myself with whether anyone could easily interpret my work, these pieces were also the most influenced by my experience of the hospital itself. Ambiguity, simultaneity, fragility, and the tension between pattern and chaos are all recurring elements. This is how I think of Denver Health: a place daily bursting with the full range of our human condition, countervailing entropy, held together by the tireless labor of devoted staff. I made this work for these people, and doing so has been a real privilege.