The installation "organs of truth, organs of meaning" represents half of my MFA exhibition at the State University of New York at New Paltz, 2003. It was presented with the objects entitled "attachables." The overall series, entitled “The Graphic Body,” explores how our systems of knowing change when translated to physical sensation. In this context, our experiences become increasingly corporeal and tactile. I am interested in the imbalance between our internal and external understandings of the world around us, our visceral reactions versus those perceptions which are thought out and informed by the glut of information surrounding us. Within that realm of information, discussions of the body strike me as being simultaneously graphic and vague, our sensory experience of the body blended with our cultural understanding of what a body should be. With this body of work, I aimed to create objects which require the external and the internal to be understood simultaneously, objects which rely on the body to be situated and experienced.

The group of objects entitled “organs of truth, organs of meaning” are intended to invoke a physical response through their direct size relationship with our own body. Each of the raised pieces represents a life-size human organ. The outsides are enameled in a visceral (almost bloody) orange, while the insides are enameled in colors that are both candy-like and evocative of MRI scans. A system of hanging shelves holds the pieces, and are etched with conglomerations of municipal instruction symbols. The internal colors of the organs are visible only by stooping under the shelves, encouraging physical interaction with the layers of information.