Megan Merchant
FEVERISH
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: The background is a mix of gray, white, and pale pink in marbled patches. Erasure lines and brown lines like old writing decorate this background. The foreground shows a black-and-white image of a cherub behind four old-fashioned medicine bottles. A fifth is just visible near the torn edge of the paper. They sit on an old-fashioned TV that is turned on its side and displays the word “BE” on its screen. Fragments of printed paper, as on old, stained book pages, dot the image. The fragments say things like “Does not my he- / All by myself I / Glowing and c-“ or “By kissed by cherubim, / By whatever these pink things mean. / Not you nor him.”
WHAT A THRILL
IMAGE DESCRIPTION: The background is yellow and marked by grayish water stains, boot prints, and pen designs made of dots and lines. A large black-and-white picture extends from the left side of the image. A hand gives a thumbs-up. There is a band-aid wrapped around the thumb, and a soldier stands on the curled fingers and points his gun toward the bottom margin. One of the background water stains runs over the hand’s knuckles. Another band-aid sits on top of the wrist (medical-pad-side up) surrounded by the words “What a thrill—My thumb instead of an onion.” and “A million soldiers run.” The top left shows a woman’s face and torso and a boy’s face. They may be mother and son.
Artist statement: In both collages, I am fascinated with the vulnerability of the human body, as well as how there is no mind/body bifurcation to our beings. Instead, our minds are simply part of our bodies.
“What a Thrill” is a response to the Sylvia Plath poem “Cut,” which describes cutting one’s “thumb instead of an onion.” Plath explores this invasion of the body, whether by accident or by self-harm. In my collage, I look at the vulnerability of the body—and the defenses we put up to it—as well as to our fear of our fragile bodies. We have emotional responses which go far beyond physical pain.
Sylvia Plath’s poem “Fever 103” inspired my collage “Feverish.” Plath’s poem is about a time when she was ill with a high fever. The poem’s images are such a dramatic response to the feeling of being wiped out by a fever that they seem to move beyond the body’s responses and instead represent hallucinations caused by a high fever. My collage takes a more subdued, melancholic perspective because a high fever can present a mortal danger to the body. It can also help heal.
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