Constrained, Access Gallery, Austin, Texas, 2011

plastic, helium, cement blocks, clothesline

Beginning in my mid-thirties, I lost my hearing and became profoundly deaf. I received cochlear implants in 2006 and 2009. If you are not familiar with cochlear implants, they are implanted devices that seek to replace organic hearing (that is too badly damaged to function) with electronic hearing. Success rates vary wildly dependent on a lot of factors. I would say I am a medium success with mine – meaning that they do enable me to hear in the right environment and under the right conditions, but they don’t really come close to organic hearing and I still function as a person with very severe hearing loss. In addition to the hearing loss, the damage to my inner ears has affected my vestibular system and I have balance issues. Having shared all this dire news, please allow me to add that I am mostly a happy person with a good quality of life. The whole hearing thing is still a struggle and constrains my life in many ways, but I have been dealing with it for a long time now and have more or less adapted. But in 2011, when I made this piece, I was struggling to try and live a full life against obstacles that sometimes felt insurmountable. I had gone back to school to work towards my MFA in Intermedia Studio Art at The University of Texas at Arlington and found that representing my struggles visually helped. Other people seemed to enjoy the work as well, since EVERYONE has difficulties of one kind or another and they could apply my interpretations to their own life struggles.

In the piece pictured above, “Constrained,” I made a big semi-transparent blobby envelope using plastic drop-cloths glued together. I inflated the envelope with helium, clamped it shut and then bound it to the ground using clothesline and cement blocks. Over time (about a week) the helium molecules would seep through the plastic until the envelope was largely deflated and almost on the ground. Then I would inflate it again and the cycle would repeat all over again. For me, it was a good visual metaphor for how my struggles would exhaust me, almost to the point of giving up, and then somehow I would find the energy or inspiration to rise again and keep going.

I ended up recreating this piece several times for different exhibition opportunities and it has remained one of my favorites.