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New Mexico Whiptails

New Mexico Whiptails are an all-female species of lizard which is able to reproduce through parthenoenesis.  Despite the species ability to reproduce asexually, New Mexico Whiptail lizards will still engage in mating rituals, and are nicknamed,”lesbian lizards.”

This etching is a reproduction of a graphite drawing I made and decided to make into an etching after-the-fact.  This essentially meant I had to re-draw it three times.

Black Salve

Black Salve is a controversial topical cancer treatment marketed as an alternative to surgery or radiation.  As an escharotic, it burns through skin tissue and is used to target conditions such as melanoma.  The effectiveness of this treatment is questionable, due to the inability to guarantee that all of the cancerous cells have been removed.  Additionally, use of black salve has been documented to cause serious scarring, burns, and open wounds.

One of the ingredients in black salve is extract from the plant Bloodroot, a poisonous emetic.  The flower gets its name from the red color of its juices, and the seeds are spread by ants.

Milk and Oleander

Both this etching and the previous etching, Black Salve, are part of a series of prints and drawings I’ve been working on this year entitled, “Poetics of Blood and Milk.”  I will provide a more in depth description once I release the series of drawings, but it is based on the antiquated idea that damage to the breast from cancer, or removal of breast tissue from mastectomies and lumpectomies also caused breast milk to go rancid or pass the cancer to the nursing infant.

Oleander is one of the most poisonous, commonly grown plants and damages the central nervous system, the heart, and the gastrointestinal system.  Extracts from Oleander were once used in experimental cancer treatments, where it was proven ineffectual on cancer cells while causing serious adverse side effects to the patients.  The plant can become unruly if not pruned and is tolerant of poor soil quality as well as frost.  It was the first plant to bloom on the site of Hiroshima after it was bombed in 1945.

This etching is printed in three earth tones:  The first is a pale yellowish brown in the area of the breast, the second is a warm reddish brown where the breast and flowers are drawn, and the final plate is a cool dark brown where the hair and heavier shadows fall.

More coming soon