ABSTRACT

The author began as a patient and an artist, identities which persist to this day. At seventeen, while a freshman art student, the author was struck down with the autoimmune disorder Guillain-Barre syndrome, which took a year from him and ravaged his body into total quadriplegia. After a year of inpatient rehab, the author's nerve synapses finally began to fire againenough so that he could begin to move. Then at home, he was no longer situated in a protective hospital, but became just a fragile being, whose psyche was not prepared to deal with life 'outside' his hospital bed. To allay his anxieties, the author worked out almost compulsively, with physical therapy that began by trying to smile, flicker his eyelids and crush a paper cup. From his standpoint, being a 'helper' first and foremost, then an aesthete, hopefully mitigates the passion he bring to his subjects—one that sometimes borders on hyperbole.