This is one of my favorite objects in my house. Somehow I acquired it after my father-in-law died. I believe it was a surplus first-aid kit which was retired from his workplace, and it’s filled with ancient bandages, salves and swabs. I look at its rusted case and I wonder: did Ron ever use it? What are the stories it could tell? But mostly I just admire its cool rusted case. I’ve used tweaked images of it in some of my digital collages, and for some reason its image seems poignant and metaphorical. Don’t we all want to have a handy kit which can heal wounds and give us a way to tackle out-of-control situations? Humans are amazing in their capacity to meet the scary realities of life with plans of attack.
Ah, more fodder for art.
Below you can see one of the collages this first aid kit found its way into.
Digital Collage from my old First Aid Kit and with Bird Cutouts from friends in Holguin.