When I was a kid, I loved horror movies. Flesh eating zombies coming out of graves, bug-eyed monsters chasing bikini-clad girls, Vincent Price going ape-shit in a mossy old castle-I ate it up and asked for seconds. Last year, when I returned to the U.S. after three years away, I noticed that horror movies were hot again after a long period of being old hat. But they no longer hold any charms for me. In the intervening years since I curled up on the couch on Saturday afternoons to watch "Commander USA's Groovy Movies, " I have grieved the deaths of my father, two of my grandparents, and my high school art teacher, and helped to dig more graves in Africa than I care to think about. I also spent a year participating in human dissections as part of my training as an artist and illustrator. Once you have been very close to real death, its hard to get worked up by a guy in a rubber suit and some red corn syrup. I decided to present these drawings not to gross you out, but to honor the kind people who donated their bodies to science and the professors who helped me learn to draw and paint the human body with confidence. The modern practice of artists participating in human dissection, began in the early Renaissance with artists searching to rediscover the secrets of Greek and Roman art. At first performed in secret because it was banned by the Catholic Church, dissection became part of standard academic training for artists until the turn of the last century, when artistic fashion changed to favor more expressionistic styles. However, drawing the nude model remains a cornerstone of a traditional arts education. This was exactly the type of education I was looking for when I started attending The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the Fall of 1994. There, I got the chance to take classes from amazing professors like Elizabeth Ockwell, Joanne Scott, Marion Kryczka, and Olivia Petrides. It was on a field trip with Elizabeth Ockwell that I first visited the gross anatomy lab at Northwestern University in March of 1997. The gross lab was a shock to the system. I remember the pungent odor of the alcohol preservative and rancid fat, the loud hum of the exhaust fans, and the oily feel of the floor, instruments, and steel tables. And, above all, was the shocking site of rows of bodies being mutilated in service of education. The preservative had preformed strange tricks on some of the bodies-darkening some, lightening others, and dying white hair a shocking punk-rocker pink. I was immediately disgusted and fascinated in equal measure, and I had to see more. Elizabeth somehow worked her magic on Dr. Randy Perkins (a Northwestern professor and art lover,) who allowed me to attend his anatomy lessons and labs free of charge and draw all the pictures I liked. I am extremely grateful to both of them. The drawings presented here were all done in the Fall of 1997, during Dr. Perkin's labs. Because of the nature of the dissection process, I would spend about 2/3 of the time uncovering the anatomy that I was looking for and about 1/3 of the time drawing. I would sketch quickly in pencil and then come in with black ink. When I got home, I would sort out what I had sketched by adding color and finer detail. Rather than work on one body, I would skip from one table to another to find the body with the clearest structures for me to draw.
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