Do whatever you want with you body.
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The First Red Flag was knowing I would be a good worker in Health food. I was indoctrinated into alternative medicine filtered through white paranoia of the government as a teen. As Much As I pushed back, so much so my Dad thought I was a Satanist in High School, I still was indoctrinated into it. I still agreed to chugging pint glasses of homemade colloidal silver water, Made by attaching a negative and positive charge to two different pieces of silver (sometimes Silver coins that where allegedly 99% Silver….allegedly) that where then suspended in water. This ritual perhaps one of the least stressful things about living with a conspiracy theorist was something we would do with regularity, when illness appeared, it seems like once it started it just never stopped.
Silver Water Turns Her Blue, Displayed at George Adams Gallery NYC
This Painting is a Funeral Bouquet, for My Dad and for my relationship to alternative medicine. I painted this while I was in an intense severing, intense grief, instability. Whenever I’m in a place like that and I feel compelled to make art I inject a lot of comedy, or things that make me smile. . The imagery in the borders of the piece are organized by element, a sort of free associative process when I sketched for the piece. The Borders contain the world that hold the bouquet , a window outside, or next to or near.
Top Right Air: Chem trails, Butterflies, Trangels, Shitting Peace Dove, Noahs Ark?
Bottom Right Water: Silver Water, Fish, Milk with “Growth Hormones", Tadpoles, Cum
Bottom Left Earth: “GMO” Foods, Food Delivery, Eggs, Pods, Cells, Soil
Top Left Fire: When half our home burned down (my Dad thought it was the government who lit the match)… if a white christian watches the Waco siege enough times. amiriite
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Smurf of Center
I think its easy to assume that the title is in reference to the popular association with blue being associated with deepness, sadness, melancholy. It is Maybe a double entendre, I think I wanted the viewer to assume it was about sadness but perhaps in researching the silver water aspect of the title would illuminate the viewer to Argyria.
Around 2008 I saw Paul Karason for the first time on television. His bright blue skin punctuated by sharp white facial hair, its hard not to think of Papa Smurf. I remember sort of being in disbelief that this “Panacea” could turn your skin blue permanently. This liquid I drank way too much of with the promise it could cure anything. A Silver Bullet For cancer, for the flu, for anything.
Argyria is a condition caused by prolonged consumption or exposure to Silver Dust, Colloidal Silver Water..etc. The Silver Particles Collect in the body and react to light creating the blue appearance in the skin. It isn’t life threatening, it can cause some discomforts. It is irreversible.
Maybe it is about sadness.
Paul Karason Image pulled from Wikipedia
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Edible arrangements
The photos that became the Paintings for “Silver Water Turns Her Blue” and “Bad Panacea”(the sibling painting to this piece) where made while I was working in health food. Some quick exercise using scraps from the compost something to entertain myself in the dread of getting demeaned about rice bread and performing niceness like my rent depended on it. I remember holding a stock from a dismembered fennel bulb, its fresh anise scent, the curve of the bulb resembling a lily. I laughed at the idea of using a gherkin as the spadix to compete the illusion. A peace Lily made of trash, a flower made of of lemons and carrots. It felt like I was weaving a sloppy spell.
It still makes me laugh that my still life flower paintings are of edible arrangements, its so trashy, but just makes sense. Funeral bouquets made of produce from a health food store about food healing. I of course can’t also help but think of the Company Edible arrangements and how my fruit figures look like anthropomorphic versions of their Office Party Offerings. I pull the Suburbs with me always, my aesthetics will always be with the edible arrangement.
Bouquet for “Silver Water Turns Her Blue”
Bouquet for “Bad Panacea”
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Symphony in Blue
Without support trauma can take you to strange places, you have to try and make sense of everything around with what you have, it doesn’t always end up beautiful. Survival skills you learn become stale, they cease to function, they can often mutate into ways of being that harm the self ultimately.
I think my Dad was doing what he though was best, truly. He thought Silver Water would keep us safe, he didn’t trust schools or hospitals , or much of anything. I have a vial of Colloidal Silver in my bathroom cabinet, it functions as an artifact. I think about how consuming it could turn me blue, I think about chugging that bitter aspirin flavored water as a teen. It helps remind me to trust my intuition, but it is merely an artifact, a silver heirloom dissolved into water.
I kept thinking about music that involves the color blue as a central theme…there is a lot out there. But I like Kate Bush’s Symphony in Blue(shocking I know). She muses over what Blue makes her feel and then what red makes her feel. It not all sadness, its complex and I like that. I leave with her X-mas special performance of “ symphony in blue”.
-Craig C
3-15-2025
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P.S. please have edible arrangements at your next funeral event I might just go.
