Something Will Kill Me. Probably Not Today.
This is a work in progress, a beta release, finished enough to get feedback on.
This project began with my diagnosis and treatment for prostate cancer (starting last December until June this year, though the hormone suppression lingers). As a gay man, the prostate is important to my sexuality; having it as the target for surgical procedures, radiation therapy and hormone treatment was a repeated assault.
Making art was how I engaged with this potentially overwhelming situation. It was also a bridge between my day-to-day life and the medical system.
I had a camera with me as a constant companion. It give me agency. Photographing grounds me in the moment.
The experience was otherworldly, a kind of sci-fi portal with rooms bathed in pink and purple light, criss-crossing laser beams to position me in the machine, the buzz of the radiation generator, the real-time images of my internal organs.
By sharing my artwork and asking the medical staff to help with the photographs, we partnered in an engagement beyond my sick body and their technical skills.
The artwork is playful and serious, elements are fragmented and whole, hidden and revealed. The work is meant to be held, tenderly, with an invitation to look closely, or to step back and look at a transformed image.
These are objects made from photographs that are folded into zines, fortune tellers, and other objects. They are on the edge of mechanical reproduction.
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| Larry Wolf, Fortune Teller Sketch (2023) |
How do others respond?
How do I respond?
How do the forms and images relate?
Do I introduce text?
Is this a performance piece, where I sit in a gallery, fold the fortune teller and flex it through its opening and closing to reveal the present-future?
I bring these to coffee with friends, to you the reader.
How do you relate to this work?
Where might it be further developed?
How might this be transformed into a published object (a book, printed sheets with DIY instructions)?
How might this be an environmental experience (an exhibition with colored lighting, laser levels, audio of the radiation machine)?
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| Larry Wolf, Fortune Teller - External Beam Radiation - Flat Sheet (2023) |
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| Larry Wolf, Prostate Cancer Fortune Tellers 1-5 (2023) |
Fortune Teller Workshops
I was invited to lead workshops on making fortune tellers at Chicago Zine Camp (July 2024) and NY Queer Zine Fair (September 2024).
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| Larry Wolf, Fortune Teller Workshop Handout (2024) |
The handout includes folding instructions (modified from Wikipedia), an astrological chart from an 16th Century fortune telling book (Fanti - Triumpho di Fortuna on a blog and at the Met), and a painting of an 8-ball by Martin Wong (Tell My Troubles to the Eight Ball: Eureka).
The creativity of the participants was inspiring. They made creatures, miniatures, comics, and more.
The Work of Others
Suchi Reddy - Look Here - Architected Space
In the summer of 2023, the National Building Museum in Washington DC filled their grand hall with polished aluminum fortune tellers suspended in the space.
The fortune tellers are the work of New York-based architect Suchi Reddy, whose firm Reddymade produces public artworks in addition to jewel-box homes and boutique interiors. For “Look Here,” she has suspended fortune tellers as well as triangular prisms, all clad in a polished aluminum material called Luminux, over a raised platform in the center of the museum’s atrium. Viewers ascending to the platform along twin ramps might feel as if they’re walking into a kaleidoscope or carnival funhouse.
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| Photo by Timothy Schenck, courtesy Reddymade and National Building Museum |
and
Kim Tanzer - The Four Medicines: Water, Walking, Forests, Gardens
Water
Walking
Forests
Gardens
These situations—a combination of place and active engagement—sustain me. They are the inspiration and often the subject of my art. They also, separately and in combination with each other, sustain human life. They are systems at the intersection of the Earth’s ecology and human behavior. In my life, these medicines interact with each other as they nurture and heal me.
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| Kim Tanzer (2023) |
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| Kim Tanzer (2023) |
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