Placebos and Panaceas Nicholas F. Bisbee July 2025 Director of Thesis: James R Tisnado Major Department: School of Art and Design, Ceramics This body of work, Placebos and Panaceas was created as an educational tool to expose the public to the kind of treatments that claim to help or cure everything from obesity to cancer. Rather than just get upset at the ways these companies swindle those with illnesses, I turned that passion into comedy to get others to really want to interact with my work, rather than see it as just another dour piece of art screaming into the void. I’ve found that it’s easier for someone to enjoy learning about something angering or depressing if you reframe the problem as comedic and ridiculous. The goal of the work isn’t to insult those who use the products and practices, it’s to point out the ridiculousness of the products themselves, exaggerating the intended effects or unintended harmful effects from each treatment. Placebos and Panaceas Presented to the Faculty of the School of Art and Design East Carolina University In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts by Nicholas F. Bisbee July 2025 Director of Thesis: Jim Tisnado, MFA Thesis Committee Members: Lisa Beth Robinson, MFA Tim Lazure, MFA Michael Tracy, MFA Andrew Shaw, MFA © Nicholas F. Bisbee, 2025 DEDICATION I dedicate this work to my mother, Angela, father, Jeff, and brother, Daniel. If a joke landed with you guys, I knew it was good enough for a museum. And to my aunt, Stephanie, if a joke or topic made you cringe there’s no way I could leave it out. Thank you for being there. It means everything. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Thank you to my family and friends. Especially Martina Litty, Mike Tracey, Tyler King, and Ronson Shultz, who supported me through everything. Without you I genuinely wouldn’t be here today. And to these and to my friends, Ashlyn Disney, Lacey Caldwell, and Lilly Fowler, who are still the best thing I got from eight years of college. Thank you to my committee, Jim Tisnado, Mike Tracy, Lisa Beth Robinson, and Tim Lazure, as well as Mark Rasdorf, Gerald Weckesser, and Jeb Hedgecock, who endured endless questions, procrastinated work, and at least one breakdown apiece. I came back to school specifically for people like you and you didn’t disappoint. Thank you especially to Dr. Sydnee McElroy and Justin McElroy who inspired my love of this subject to begin with. TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES.......................................................................................................................vi LIST OF PLATES.........................................................................................................................vii INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1 HISTORY........................................................................................................................................2 METHODOLOGY..........................................................................................................................5 HUMOR..........................................................................................................................................8 WORKS........................................................................................................................................13 At Least the Arthritis is Gone............................................................................................13 Shit Yourself Skinny..........................................................................................................16 The Best Part of Waking Up..............................................................................................20 Adjustment From the Top Rope.........................................................................................25 Blowing Smoke..................................................................................................................29 Winking At God.................................................................................................................32 Better Dead Than Different...............................................................................................36 The Closet..........................................................................................................................40 It’s Fine, It’s Natural..........................................................................................................43 Trickshot............................................................................................................................47 This Week on Dr. Oz..........................................................................................................51 Goop and Gravel................................................................................................................54 CONCLUSION.............................................................................................................................57 REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................61 LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Peter Popoff Ministries peterpopoff.org/donate/. Accessed 17 Apr. 2025......................4 Figure 2: Sam & Max: This Time It’s Virtual ©2021 HappyGiant LLC........................................5 Figure 3: Keith Haring solo exhibition opens at Tony Shafrazi Gallery in SoHo © ALLAN TANNENBAUM...............................................................................................6 Figure 4: Pharmacy leech jar, ornate blue gilt earthenware, Science Museum Group, © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum.....................................................44 LIST OF PLATES Plate 1: At Least the Arthritis is Gone..........................................................................................14 Plate 2: At Least the Arthritis is Gone (Detail)...................................................................................15 Plate 3: Shit Yourself Skinny..........................................................................................................18 Plate 4: Shit Yourself Skinny (Detail)............................................................................................19 Plate 5: The Best Part of Waking Up.............................................................................................21 Plate 6: The Best Part of Waking Up (Detail)...............................................................................22 Plate 7: The Best Part of Waking Up (Detail)...............................................................................23 Plate 8: The Best Part of Waking Up (Detail)...............................................................................24 Plate 9: Adjustment From the Top Rope........................................................................................27 Plate 10: Adjustment From the Top Rope (Detail)........................................................................28 Plate 11: Blowing Smoke...............................................................................................................30 Plate 12: Blowing Smoke (Detail).................................................................................................31 Plate 13: Winking At God..............................................................................................................34 Plate 14: Winking At God (Detail)................................................................................................35 Plate 15: Better Dead Than Different...........................................................................................38 Plate 16: Better Dead Than Different (Detail)..............................................................................39 Plate 17: The Closet................................................................................................................10, 41 Plate 18: The Closet (Detail)........................................................................................................42 Plate 19: It’s Fine, It’s Natural......................................................................................................45 Plate 20: It’s Fine, It’s Natural (Detail)........................................................................................46 Plate 21: Trickshot........................................................................................................................48 Plate 22: Trickshot (Detail)...........................................................................................................49 Plate 23: Trickshot (Detail)...........................................................................................................50 Plate 24: This Week on Dr. Oz.......................................................................................................52 Plate 25: This Week on Dr. Oz (Detail).....................................................................................9, 53 Plate 26: Goop and Gravel...........................................................................................................55 Plate 27: Goop and Gravel (Detail)..............................................................................................56 Plate 28: Installation View 1...................................................................................................11, 58 Plate 29: Installation View 2.........................................................................................................59 Plate 30: Installation View 3.........................................................................................................60 INTRODUCTION In the last few years, we’ve seen incredible cooperation across the globe to stymie the spread of Covid. Unfortunately, we’ve also seen fear, apprehension, and misinformation. Through this exhibition, my work shows examples of pseudoscience and how medicine, medical practices, and the lack thereof, have been used to treat, exploit, and abuse people throughout history. Many of these practices have evolved with us over time, while others crop up as new technology is presented. Medicine is just one way that humans across the world have tried to help each other, but it’s led to quite a few less than helpful practices. Some of these practices are relatively harmless, like drinking a little apple cider vinegar for general health, while others can be potentially toxic, like drinking bleach to cure autism. My work presents ideas and tells stories in a way that encourages people to engage with them, and get these ideas across in a playful, colorful, albeit occasionally morbid way. HISTORY The concept of snake oil is as old as illness itself. From Pliny the Elder telling us to cure rabies by taking the hair of the dog that bit you, to 18th century doctors encouraging you to drink seawater (1, Russel), all the way to modern day "grounding beds” that connect your personal energy to the earth itself, we have been trying to sell whatever we can to each other with fantastical promises and impressive-sounding words. These cures are certainly convenient though. With no real testing, these products can go straight to market, bypassing those pesky tests to prove whether it “works” or not. The only lab rat they’re testing these products on is the consumer! Aren't you lucky? I still see these products on infomercials and advertised between posts as I scroll social media, and I’ve spent at least five years trying to convince medical professionals at any appointment I have to tell me the weirdest cures they’ve personally seen, only to be met with a surprising number of “I know someone who does that” or “I’ve done that” when I give ridiculous examples. Medical doctors, pharmacists, nurses, people that we assume would “know better” because they’re more knowledgeable about medicine than anyone else seemed to be just as likely to use these treatments, which shows that ignorance isn’t what causes people to resort to these practices. My own father is a pharmacist with chronic pain, and I’ve seen copper-filled compression socks in our house for years now. As a child I saw these things in the house and with confidence only an eight-year-old could have, claimed I knew better than him. His solution was stupid, and he’ll never feel better from that. How dare he try to treat his chronic pain using a solution I immediately assume won’t work. 3 Years later I realized that passing judgement without offering solutions or even reasons was not the most helpful option, so I started learning about these cures and how these companies convince people that they’re real. I almost immediately found they used passive language like “may help,” “improves energy,” and “users have claimed...” and realized that these companies go after people who are already vulnerable. They will advertise during news programs to get an older audience or sell weight loss supplements using ads on social media targeting preteen girls and young women. What truly lit the spark was learning about Evangelist Peter Popoff. This self- proclaimed man of God specifically targets poor African American communities with his incredible product, Peter Popoff’s Miracle Spring Water, which was free to anyone who ordered it, and according to his TV ads, worked as long as you paid him $17.99 (a number he claims is holy). It cures everything from liver failure to financial debt! With nothing but the targeted harassment of a debt-stricken African American community and the promise that the Chrisitan facade he hides behind is real, he’ll cure anything! The donation page on his website is beyond satire, using scripture to tell people that the more they donate, the more they get back. (Fig 1). Just two years ago he would send out self-addressed envelopes and if you sprinkled your money order with the miracle spring water, whatever you prayed for would come true! Apparently, he’s just throwing away the charade and now he just takes the money directly, and as long as you know how to use the paypal app, you’ll have a direct line to God! 4 (Fig 1). Peter Popoff Ministries peterpopoff.org/donate/. Accessed 17 Apr. 2025. The people Popoff swindles aren’t stupid, they’re faithful. Gullibility isn’t a sin, and being trusting shouldn’t be seen as a personal failing. There’s no difference in my mind between the people praying to God and paying tithes and those that buy crystals or try taint tanning. These are normal people who may simply be in tough positions and are looking for any solution because nothing else has worked. They may even know that the cures aren’t real but need to feel some semblance of control over their situation. No one picks up a geode and starts to vibrate and glow, but they might feel better knowing they’re doing something to try and fix their situation. METHODOLOGY I directly reference classic cartoons like Animaniacs, Looney Tunes, and Tom & Jerry in my work. Originally, I was inspired by the work of Sam Purcell, the creator of Sam & Max, a comic book series, tv show, and video game series about a dog and a rabbit acting as freelance police, solving mysteries. I found that the humor I wanted to emulate could be found in more physical comedy–oriented works like Looney Tunes. The exaggerated arm and leg movements, squishiness of the flesh, and strain in the body shown in nothing but pose lend themselves to my work in a way I tried and failed to achieve with realism. These exaggerations and cartoon-like qualities were integral to creating a lighthearted feel to more serious subjects like death and conversion therapy in pieces like Trickshot and The Closet. (Fig. 2) Sam & Max: This Time It’s Virtual Other artists have used a similar method to great success, Keith Haring, for example, used 6 bright colors, bold lines, and fun poses and compositions to encourage people to interact with less than fun subject matters, similar to what I’m trying to do. By presenting such a fun facade and framing his message around humor, joy, and hope, Haring was able to get people to interact with the gay community and the AIDS crisis in a way that was aesthetically appealing and marketable. My first goal is to get people to be attracted to the work, make it something that people want to approach. Judging by the sheer amount of fingerprints in the candlewax, some people were more than happy to approach (Fig 3) Keith Haring solo exhibition opens at Tony Shafrazi Gallery in SoHo © ALLAN TANNENBAUM This method is also used by people outside the visual arts world. What is The Daily Show if not showing the public terribly depressing news stories disguised as fun, yet exasperated comedy? There are actual studies showing that humor doesn’t just make information more 7 approachable, but in the study by Coronel (2), they found that “...humor...enhances people’s memory for information.” and also supports and advances the idea that “...humor may facilitate considerations of other’s views...” implying that humor also encourages room for empathy. Obviously, any theory needs multiple studies to validate claims for sure, but it’s incredible to find that comedians-turned-late-night-hosts like John Oliver and Stephen Colbert can bring politics to the world in the same way Bill Nye brings science, and know they’re actually having more of an impact than just taking the piss. HUMOR I could recite George Carlin’s and Robin William’s standup specials by heart before I got to middle school. My favorite show as a kid was Whose Line Is It Anyway?, an improv comedy TV show. I latched onto humor early on to connect with others in a way that would invite them to interact back. My obsession with comedy is what led me to view it as more than an element of my work, I choose to use it as a tool. Humor is as integral to my work as the clay itself. Besides the accuracy of my research, the most important part of everything I make is the actual comedy of it. Everything from the jokes in the pieces to the layout of the installation itself is rooted in my understanding of comedy. While researching, I found the Humor Research Lab, which uses the Benign Violation Theory as the basis for methodology. Benign Violation Theory, as defined on their website states “...humor occurs when and only when three conditions are satisfied; (1) A situation is a violation, (2) the situation is benign, and (3) both perceptions occur simultaneously.” (McGraw). A good example of this is the piece This Week On Dr. Oz (Plate 24 & 25), in which a benign situation, the doctor smiling politely while selling the viewer pills, is contrasted with the violation of the situation, a second figure moving white capsules from tic-tac boxes into pill bottles, recontextualizing the Dr. Oz figure to now be selling what he knows is sugar pills. This practice of expectation and misdirection is what guided nearly every piece I made. 9 Plate 25: This Week on Dr. Oz (Detail) I even used the Benign Violation Theory to intentionally make certain pieces unfunny, while maintaining the visual language and expectations of jokes provided by the pieces around them. An example of this is The Closet (Plate 17, see below), in which I gave the child the most cartoony squished-in face I could, so exaggerated it could only be read as sudden and humorous from a distance, only to have the explanation on the pedestal be a gut punch of humorless condemnation. 10 Plate 17: The Closet The placement of the pieces in the installation was also integral to getting the viewer to have the ideal emotional journey through the space. I arranged the pieces in a cyclical design so it wouldn’t matter where viewers started or ended, they would have the experience of starting with a humorous piece, getting hit by one of the serious ones in the middle, continuing onto four more humorous pieces and then repeating. (plate 28, view below) One piece was an outlier, At Least the Arthritis is Gone was intentionally made to stretch wall-to-wall across the space, showing it wasn’t part of the progression, and could be read at any point in the cycle, with wording in the explanation 11 that felt more sarcastic than comedic, allowing the viewer to go straight to it after Better Dead Than Different. Plate 28: Installation View 1 Despite all my evangelizing on how I use humor, I’m aware that it’s not universal, and the jokes I make in the work are specific to the culture I grew up in. I have made pieces that focus on fun body language and wacky situations, but without a full explanation of the background, several of the pieces seem to be an amalgam of random elements, like Adjustment From The Top Rope, which is just two mice performing a wrestling move, and has proven to be the piece I got the most questions about before I put up the explanations. There is so little visual context in the piece that 12 there was a lot of confusion over why an elbow drop was being performed, and noone knew how it related to medicine. WORKS At Least the Arthritis is Gone Do you ever feel run down? Weak? Stressed out? Well with our magnetic copper bracelets, you don’t have to anymore! Our bracelets improve balance, joint pain, arthritis, and inflammation, improve circulation, and even manage depression and cure cancer. Copper bracelets, socks, compression sleeves, and whatever else you want are also available! Great news! They also interact with your magnetic fields! And your chi! And it enhances well- being! Whatever that means! Good luck measuring it! Copper bracelets are normally sold with magnets embedded in them, with the claim that the magnets are the real therapeutic element of the treatment, and somehow these magnets interact with and alter the wearer’s magnetic field. Shockingly, this is not clearly explained by anyone, because it’s not real. The highest profile scandal involving magnetic copper bracelets surrounded the company QT Inc., which was sued back in 2006 by the FTC for falsely claiming that the ionizing copper bracelets they sold could relieve pain and treat the symptoms of arthritis. The FTC has literally said that ionized bracelets like this are “part of a scheme devised…to defraud its consumers.” This piece was inspired by the ads you see during the news for ionizing bracelets where a buff man in a too-tight black t-shirt shoves someone, verbally critiquing their lack of balance saying “see how easy you are to push over?”, only to give them a bracelet and pretend they’re no longer able to push them over. Rather than sculpt my very own Chad McMuscles and his magical 14 mall kiosk, I thought that a tightrope walker absolutely loaded down with copper bracelets but still losing balance was a funnier option. Plate 1. At Least The Arthritis Is Gone 2023-2025 Ceramic and glass, copper, wood, steel Dimensions variable Greenville Museum of Art 15 Plate 2: At Least the Arthritis is Gone (Detail) 2023-2025 Ceramic and glass, copper, wood, steel Dimensions variable Greenville Museum of Art 16 Shit Yourself Skinny Hey Girlboss! Do you sometimes feel normal human feelings like bloating after eating? Want to fix that? Instead of waiting the few hours to a few days it would normally take for that feeling to go away, drink our product! Flat Tummy Tea! Once you start drinking this product, in only a few hours to a few days, that feeling will go away! And also, you get to shit yourself! Thanks to the Senna Root we add, watch out for rectal bleeding! Ask any woman between the ages of 10-30 and there’s a chance she already knows about Flat Tummy Tea, and has it advertised to her on whatever social media app she uses. Senna root is the main active ingredient in these teas that causes the user to basically lose 15 pounds of pure water weight through pooping alone. There are plenty of other “wellness” products on the flat tummy tea website, like apple cider vinegar gummies, detox solutions (why detox? you have a liver, and there’s no proof detox teas work, and according to NIH.gov, a team of experts concluded that results don’t support the use of detox diets for weir.) and pre-workout, all of which have the box automatically clicked for “Subscribe & Save”, giving the buyer a monthly subscription. This piece was the biggest problem for me logistically. Trying to get a clear material that I could manipulate to look like it’s made of liquid, layer until it was six inches deep, and I could embed objects in seemed like an impossible task. I considered and experimented with glass, which had too steep a learning curve for the amount of time I had left, epoxy resin, which showed layers and was far too expensive to justify, and even isomalt (sugar sculpting) which I have plenty of experience with, but felt uncomfortable using as it becomes cloudy very quickly and there is the genuine concern of ants. Luckily, I found clear candles on Etsy one day, a clear, safe, tintable, 17 layerable, and relatively cheap solution with a learning curve as difficult as hitting “add 30 seconds” on a microwave. With advice from fellow students Nakiyah and Alisa, I was able to use the new material almost as soon as I got it. An obvious inconsistency between my description and the piece is that I’ve chosen to present the piece alongside 3 Ballerina brand tea, rather than Flat Tummy Tea. This is because I try my best not to directly support the same companies that I’m critiquing. This practice leads me to typically purchase the lowest-quality version of the product, which really works in my favor; rather than spend time and effort trying to make the actual product look cheap and untrustworthy, they just show up looking that way. 18 Plate 3: Shit Yourself Skinny 2023-2025 Ceramic, wax, tea 16”x16”x8” Greenville Museum of Art 19 Plate 4: Shit Yourself Skinny (Detail) 2023-2025 Ceramic, wax, tea 16”x16”x8” Greenville Museum of Art 20 The Best Part of Waking Up Hi loyal customer, don’t you want to both get your morning cup of joe AND cure cancer? Well great news, the King of England wants you, yes YOU, to pour coffee up your ass. As part of Gerson therapy, enthusiastically endorsed by King Charles, say goodbye to chemotherapy and HELLO to 13 fruit juices a day, coffee enemas, and vitamin injections. This practice is currently run out of Tijuana, Mexico, because the US has forbidden doctors from practicing it! King Charles was on a crusade for years and years to try and get alternative therapies integrated into the National Health Service of England, more than likely because he had so many stocks in the same companies that he was trying to integrate at a country-wide level. He only stopped because in 2014 his mom, Queen Elizabeth, stepped in to stop the whole thing and make him disband his “charity”. I managed to get all the major points of the treatment in the explanatory blurb for this piece, but I wasn’t able to talk about anecdotal evidence for it. This treatment has been used for actual centuries, ever since we first got coffee really, but it was incredibly popular with John Harvey Kellogg, who had his patients at his sanitariums undergo multiple enemas every day. If you were lucky, you’d get your enema water replaced with coffee or even yogurt! When I would talk to doctors and nurses about my work, I always brought up coffee enemas as an example of fake medicine, and more often than not, the person I was talking to would mention to me that either their old teacher had used them or the hospital I was standing in still had the facilities available for coffee enemas. After learning how common this practice is, I now think that 21 it’s less about absorbing the caffeine quickly and more about the fact that enemas are made to clean you out and coffee is both deep brown and incredibly aromatic, meaning it’d disguise whatever came out with it. Plate 5: The Best Part of Waking Up 2023-2025 Ceramic, glass, wax Dimensions variable Greenville Museum of Art 22 Plate 6: The Best Part of Waking Up (Detail) 2023-2025 Ceramic, glass, wax Dimensions variable Greenville Museum of Art 23 Plate 7: The Best Part of Waking Up (Detail) 2023-2025 Ceramic, glass, wax Dimensions variable Greenville Museum of Art 24 Plate 8: The Best Part of Waking Up (Detail) 2023-2025 Ceramic, glass, wax Dimensions variable Greenville Museum of Art 25 Adjustment From the Top Rope Do you suffer from ailments such as headaches, sore back, shoulder movement, ghosts, hearing loss, a cold, smallpox or even headaches? Sounds like you may have vertebral subluxations! Invisible on X-rays, and one of the causes of contagious diseases (according to one of our founders), vertebral subluxations are the cause of most, if not all problems in the human body. With our patented mix of chiropractic treatments, reflexology, and osteopathy, we’ll poke, rub, stretch, grab and crack you however we want can. Chiropractic was started in the 1890s by a man who spoke to a ghost that told him the secrets of chiropractic, and by god was that ghost right. Who cares that the American Medical Association referred to it as “an unscientific cult” and boycotted it until they lost a legal case against us, we know it works, and so do you! The idea behind this piece is that wrestling is fake; it’s a performance. I’m directly equating how performative chiropractic treatments can be to how performative wrestling is. The youngest patient I could find getting treatment was based on a direct admission from a chiropractor that claimed he did an adjustment for an infant. 90 seconds old. In defense of chiropractic, however, the biggest critic of this particular man was a second chiropractor who seemed to be very upset with this man’s practice. (Jillette) This same man also claimed that he performed chiropractic treatment on a two-year-old for excema, and has performed an adjustment on a dog. This subject was the trickiest to do research for, because there's so much anecdotal evidence for how much it helps. While researching it I went out of my way to read articles that were written by people who didn’t have the title of D.C. (Doctor of Chiropractic), to avoid confirmation bias 26 from people who just want to validify their field of study, and once I started making that distinction, I no longer found articles that supported chiropractic treatments. The consensus among all the rest of them is pretty well defined by Dr. Ernst who wrote “With the possible exception of back pain, chiropractic spinal manipulation has not been shown to be effective for any medical condition...The concepts of chiropractic are not based on solid science and its therapeutic value has not been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt.” (Ernst) 27 Plate 9: Adjustment From the Top Rope 2023-2025 Ceramic, glass 16”x16”x16” Greenville Museum of Art 28 Plate 10: Adjustment From the Top Rope (Detail) 2023-2025 Ceramic, glass 16”x16”x16” Greenville Museum of Art 29 Blowing Smoke Ironically, tobacco enemas are real. Or at least they were initially. Originally, the process used a tobacco pipe, but after breathing in too many times, they VERY quickly moved to equipment that didn’t require breathing in whatever was inside the victim’s backside. The practice started in the late 1770s and ended in the early 1800s. Pretty short lifespan, but people figured out pretty quickly that they were just blowing smoke up their ass. It was actually fairly normal to see this process used to revive people, commonly drowning victims. The tobacco was thought to “dry out the inside”, increase heart rate, help with respiration, as well as shock the person with embers, smoke, and equipment up their butt. The practice ended in the early 1800s when people realized it might be doing more harm than good. In 1774, two doctors formed a group, The Institution For Affording Immediate Relief To Persons Apparently Dead From Drowning, to celebrate those who helped others in this way. This group became the Royal Humane Society, a charity that currently rewards acts of bravery in saving human life and resuscitation, which is endorsed by the King of England. 30 Plate 11: Blowing Smoke 2023-2025 Ceramic, glass, cigarettes, smoke bellows 24”x24”x12” Greenville Museum of Art 31 Plate 12: Blowing Smoke (Detail) 2023-2025 Ceramic, glass, cigarettes, smoke bellows 24”x24”x12” Greenville Museum of Art 32 Winking At God “Tried this perineum sunning that I’ve been hearing about, and my suggestion is DO NOT do it as long as I did. My pucker hole is crazy burned, and I was going to spend the day shopping with my family, and instead I’m icing and using aloe and burn creams because of the severity of the pain.” -Josh Brolin (Thanos) I’m sure we’ve all had the idea that if we do one particular thing that no one else is doing, we’ll be better, all because we figured out this One Weird Trick (™). The trick isn’t a secret solar panel on your taint. Perineum sunning, or “taint tanning” operates under the idea that you somehow absorb more vitamin D through your perineum than the rest of your body. This fad gained popularity online a few years ago, with Instagram influencers claiming it’s a “Taoist belief” that “... strengthens organs, improves libido, regulates circadian rhythm, boosts mental focus, and increases energy,” none of which is measurable. Of everything I’ve presented here, I genuinely believe that this practice is the least harmful of anything, and potentially the most helpful. Theres no physical risk outside of what is normally expected from sunbathing, it’s free so there’s no financial risk unlike crystals, it’s easily available, and there’s no risk of harming anyone but yourself. The lamp shown with the piece was an incredibly lucky find. I agonized over the lighting for so long because I didn’t know how to make the light source itself funny. I considered sculpting a sun lamp, a portrait of God looking down with disappointment, even a three-headed 33 UV light setup paired with color-changing UV-reactive paint on the mice, but I just happened to stumble on an incredibly animated lamp with the personality of a Steamboat Willie cartoon. 34 Plate 13: Winking At God 2023-2025 Ceramic, glass, lamp 24”x24”x24” Greenville Museum of Art 35 Plate 14: Winking At God (Detail) 2023-2025 Ceramic, glass, lamp 24”x24”x24” Greenville Museum of Art 36 Better Dead than Different “Miracle Mineral Solution has not been approved by the FDA for any use, but these products continue to be promoted on social media as a remedy for treating autism, cancer, HIV/AIDS, hepatitis and flu, among other conditions. However, the solution, when mixed, develops into a dangerous bleach which has caused serious and potentially life-threatening side effects.‘The FDA’s drug approval process ensures that patients receive safe and effective drug products. Miracle Mineral Solution and similar products are not FDA-approved, and ingesting these products is the same as drinking bleach. Consumers should not use these products, and parents should not give these products to their children for any reason,’ said FDA Acting Commissioner Ned Sharpless, M.D.” - fda.gov, August 12, 2019 Miracle Mineral Solution was my original plan for this show, when I was hoping to make a more depressing show that focused on autism cures in children, which after reading about for more than an hour, made me too depressed to even plan out a piece, let alone build a whole show. I was planning on leaving it out of this show as well, but a visiting artist from Estonia saw my other work, mentioned the miracle mineral solution, and I realized that this was an international issue, it wasn’t just contained to the USA alone. I intentionally didn’t make this piece funny, I just wanted the viewer to see it from a distance, see the silly face that the parent was making, the silly face the infant was making in response, and feel some kind of empathy or even relate to the experience only to look down and realize the parent was holding a bottle of bleach and the spoon was white inside. The piece is also 37 placed facing away from the two main entrances so the only thing viewers can see when they come in is a delighted child being fed in his highchair. The goal was to make an emotional impact so people realize the lengths others will go to in order to “fix” their child 38 Plate 15: Better Dead Than Different 2023-2025 Ceramic, glass, wood 16”x12”x16” Greenville Museum of Art 39 Plate 16: Better Dead Than Different (Detail) 2023-2025 Ceramic, glass, wood 16”x12”x16” Greenville Museum of Art 40 The Closet Conversion therapy has countless versions; aversion therapy, brain surgery, castration, religious and societal pressure, corrective rape, conversion camps, electroshock therapy, hypnosis, and physical violence, just to name a few. The only thing every method has in common is that they’re all a form of violence. If something has 1000 cures, either nothing is working, or there’s nothing to cure. The end goal of every “conversion” method is just forcing gay people back into the closet and pretending being gay isn’t the reality for them, so they can fit into the societal pressure of being heteronormative. This is the most succinct, wordless “get back in the closet” I can imagine. 41 Plate 17: The Closet 2023-2025 Ceramic, glass, wood, steel 24”x24”x24” Greenville Museum of Art 42 Plate 18: The Closet (Detail) 2023-2025 Ceramic, glass, wood, steel 24”x24”x24” Greenville Museum of Art 43 It’s Fine, It’s Natural Leeches aren’t just a great pet, they’re a real medical treatment! Some hospitals actually carry medical-grade leeches specifically bred for human use, though not for bloodletting like they used to. Leeches naturally produce hirudin, which stops blood from coagulating, as well as a naturally occurring anesthetic that numbs the area. In situations like reattachments, reconstructions, and skin grafts, leeches can be incredibly useful. The problem with leeches is that anyone can say “no it’s fine; my [insert relative] said it works so let’s put as many of these pond leeches on your face as possible” The vase’s shape and decoration is a reference to antique ceramic leech jars that used to be used back when pharmacies practiced bloodletting. The Pharmacy leech jar shown below is blue gilt earthenware by Alcock at Hill Pottery in Burslem, England from 1831-1859. The piece is made of a 10-pound wooden cylinder at the bottom of the vase with a steel rod sticking out of the top, which goes through a channel carved into the hands of the diver. To keep it in place, the majority of the vessel is filled with sand, filled up to roughly 4 inches from the lip, it is then covered with a layer of shiny black plastic to disguise it before being covered in about 250 ceramic leeches, all glazed with Coleman’s Tea Dust to try and match the coloration and glossiness of Hirudo Medicinalis, or the European medicinal leech, the species of leech that’s actually used for medicine. 44 (Fig. 4) Pharmacy leech jar, ornate blue gilt earthenware, Science Museum Group, © The Board of Trustees of the Science Museum 45 Plate 19: It’s Fine, It’s Natural 2023-2025 Ceramic, glass 16”x16”x36” Greenville Museum of Art 46 Plate 20: It’s Fine, It’s Natural (Detail) 2023-2025 Ceramic, glass 16”x16”x36” Greenville Museum of Art 47 Trickshot We all wish that Q-tips could be used for ears. If we weren’t supposed to use them for that, why did God make them feel so good? Naturally we need an alternative, and dear consumer I bring you Ear Candling. Here to fix everything from headaches to ear infections, improved hearing to purifying your blood, it’s really the only sensible option. Despite all the evidence claiming it actually makes your situation worse, we know that the countless cases of punctured eardrums, facial burns, plugged ear canal, and burns to the inside of the ear canal are all just outliers and you shouldn’t worry yourself with all that. Available at Walmart now! Ear candling is the practice of placing a hollow candle into the ear canal and lighting it with the idea that the heat will create a vacuum that draws out earwax and other debris. This does not work. Ear candling is actually the only process over seven years of asking and research that I’ve gotten medical professionals to break HIPPA for and actually be disparaging about it instead of convincing me it’s real. Despite all the punctured eardrums, hot wax burns, and the fact it just doesn’t work, you can get these from Walmart. 48 Plate 21: Trickshot 2023-2025 Ceramic, glass, ear candles, wood Dimensions variable Greenville Museum of Art 49 Plate 22: Trickshot (Detail) 2023-2025 Ceramic, glass, ear candles, wood Dimensions variable Greenville Museum of Art 50 Plate 23: Trickshot (Detail) 2023-2025 Ceramic, glass, ear candles, wood Dimensions variable Greenville Museum of Art 51 This Week On Dr. Oz Apple juice has unsafe levels of arsenic! Cell phones give you breast cancer! Since his show’s beginning in 2009, this accredited cardiothoracic surgeon and Harvard graduate is now shilling miracle weight-loss pills and inviting vocally anti-vaccine guests onto his medical advice show. According to the British Medical Journal, over a 40-episode run of The Dr Oz Show, over half his claims were false, with an average of 12 recommendations per episode. This makes sense, given his $50 million deal with Usana to promote MLM diet pills on his show. Dr Oz also said that opening schools during COVID “may only cost us 2-3% in terms of total mortality.” Thank God this man is going to be in charge of Medicare soon! Specifically, 52% of his claims were false (Korownyk). 52 Plate 24: This Week on Dr. Oz 2023-2025 Ceramic, glass, wood, plastic Dimensions variable Greenville Museum of Art 53 Plate 25: This Week on Dr. Oz (Detail) 2023-2025 Ceramic, glass, wood, plastic Dimensions variable Greenville Museum of Art 54 Goop and Gravel Crystals work in so many cool and interesting ways! Whether it’s through the vibrations that each crystal emits or even that they simply act as conduits that encourage good energy to come in and bad energy to come out. So many cool and interesting ways that they don’t work! Regardless, the industry makes over one billion dollars yearly. Some people, like Gwenyth Paltrow and her “wellness and lifestyle brand” GOOP, use celebrity and the fallacy that just because she’s rich and more powerful than us, she knows what she’s talking about. This is despite the fact that her company had to pay a settlement of $145,000 because they claimed that you could use random crystals as Yoni eggs, causing problems like bacterial vaginosis. These products are still on the website. The woman who’s only notable feat is being a secondary character in Iron Man is for some reason claiming to be an expert in holistic medicine. 55 Plate 26: Goop and Gravel 2023-2025 Ceramic, glass, wood, crystal Dimensions variable Greenville Museum of Art 56 Plate 27: Goop and Gravel (Detail) 2023-2025 Ceramic, glass, wood, crystal Dimensions variable Greenville Museum of Art CONCLUSION The people who use these products or participate in these treatments aren’t to blame for them. These consumers are not less intelligent than average, or more gullible than average. They’re by and large people who have tried other options and have resorted to these treatments whether through ignorance, experience, or an understandable distrust of medicine because of a historical precedent against them. The ridiculousness of the treatments and those who sell them are the problem, and the ways in which they target the most vulnerable among us are what I’m addressing in my work. I know that I’ve achieved my main goal with my work. People are approaching the work and stay engaged between the pieces thanks to the humor and leave knowing more about this subject than when they entered, because I spent so much effort to make the pieces and information as entertaining as possible. From the minute you go in, until the minute you leave, it’s designed to be as engaging as possible. The museum was nice enough to let me hide a piece, Peter, under the table in the lobby, so even when visitors leave, they get one more surprise before they go. (plates 28, 29 & 30, below) 58 Plate 28: Installation View 1 59 Plate 29: Installation View 2 (with Peter) 60 Plate 30: Installation View 3 (with Peter) REFERENCES 1. Russell, Richard (1760). "A Dissertation on the Use of Sea Water in the Diseases of the Glands. Particularly The Scurvy, Jaundice, King's-Evil, Leprosy, and the Glandular Consumption". To which is added a Translation of Dr. Speed's Commentary on SEA WATER. As also An Account of the Nature, Properties, and Uses of all the remarkable Mineral Waters in Great Britain (4th ed.). London: W. Owen. Retrieved 7 December 2009. 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