Last Week

78 x 68 inches, colored pencil and graphite on paper,

Drawing depicting an individual's consumption of 6 serial killer's last meals. Some of my notes are below. 1. Aileen Wuornos: serial killer; executed in Florida in 2002 – lethal injection 2. John Wayne Gacy: Serial murderer; executed in Illinois in 1994 – lethal injection 3. Ted Bundy: Serial killer; executed in Florida in 1989 – electrocution 4. Timothy McVeigh: domestic terrorist/mass murder; executed in Oklahoma, in 2001 – lethal injection 5. Velma Barfield: murder, executed in North Carolina in 1984 – lethal injection 6. Gary Carl Simmons, Jr.: 1996 murderer; executed in Mississippi in 2012 – Lethal injection I thought of the meals as a recipe list or diet plan, ending with the same fate as the killers. I also thought that the foods are so specific and common that it's a way for us to connect to them as human beings... funny and sad, very tragic, actually. They were also influenced by advertising and junk food's chemical effects. That brought the idea of nature vs. nurture to mind for me... could any of us have ended up like them depending on chance (where we were born, how we were brought up, who influenced our thinking, etc.)? That's part of the reason that I alternated black and white... positive and negative.