These images come from a collaborative project created with a team of seven teenagers through the Blue Sky Project, an artist residency located in rural IL. We began with a series of interviews with strangers on the street about their experiences with health and illness, injury and disability, beauty and body image. These collected stories were then translated into a small-press zine, an audio CD, a set of wearable collage-drawings, and a series of photographs documenting the teenagers "wearing" the alternate body systems they created, set against the backdrop of the school gymnasiums, county fairs, and cornfields of their native McHenry County. The result is a complex, surreal look at teenage body image and at the ways that we imagine sensations we can feel but can't see. [ more information ]

AD 531 - Advanced Studio Arts, Prof. Kerry Marshall