Art Project...in progress

If you are interested in how the art assignment is working out at the moment, I have so far finished making the centre piece which is the anatomical representation of the abdomen. Being clay, it needs to dry out before it is fired and can be painted.

I'm thinking at the moment of painting the whole abdomen in its true colours (ie. slightly pinkish stomach, purple-like spleen, dark red liver etc) or painting them in paler pastel colours and the three kidneys in darker colours to bring attention onto them.

I plan to make small pills and capsules out of clay to represent the medication, and to stick this in some areas of the abdomen to show the reliance and dependence to keep the system working.

The holes in the hilum of the kidney and the major vessels in the centre (inferior vena cava and the abdominal aorta) will have coloured piping stuck into it which will connect them up. The clay was too fragile to roll thinly and connect as blood vessels (and the ureters), therefore I will do this after it has been fired.

The two kidneys have polycystic kidney disease, which meant I could use smaller pieces of clay rolled into balls to produce these cysts that are growing all over the kidney. I even scooped some clay out to represent burst cysts. The transplanted kidney is located at the bottom left.

As mentioned, the main purpose of my piece is to represent the dependence on medication (I was overwhelmed by the number of drugs transplant patients are administered after their operation!). So as the background of the board which my clay will be mounted to, I have designed these drugs based on the actual medication.

Example, I have found the name of certain immunosuppressants which are prescribed to renal transplant patients and have designed these on my computer (some based on their actual packets I could find online) and then printed these out and stuck them as a montage on the wooden board. I have also measured up and printed some of my own medication packets to stick to the boxes of over-the-counter medicines I had bought for this project. By doing so, I also have spare medicine packets that I can stick to my work too.

The montage of different medications that a renal transplant patient may be taking. I designed the packets online and stuck them to the board as a montage background for my clay piece.