Tracy Vernon
Outlier
Puppet, papier-mâché
Artist Statement
Mr. John Puppet: “What? Lung cancer? But I’ve never smoked. A malignant pleural effusion too? Let me Google it ... Three to six months. That’s what it says. Just like that, my future shrinks into a number. Then I discover I have an Exon 20 mutation. Suddenly I’m searching for clinical trials instead of vacation plans. My wife and I learn to drain fluid from my lung through a PleurX catheter at home. Overnight, we’re not just husband and wife—we’re nurses, technicians, and cheerleaders, hoping we don’t make a mistake. Three months into the trial... my tumor shrinks 70 percent. Six months... stable. One year... still stable. Then the catheter clogs. Another hospital stay. Another unknown. A doctor pieces together tubing like MacGyver, hoping the medication will dissolve the blockage. It does. Like Mount Vesuvius, four liters erupts from my lung. Today, more than three years later, I’m still on the clinical trial. I’m still responding to treatment. The internet was wrong.”
This papier-mâché puppet portrays my husband and is built around a discarded PleurX drainage bottle that once helped keep him alive. Fragments of the bottle’s instruction manual are embedded in the paper surface, preserving the language of medical care within the sculpture itself.
[It] is part of an evolving performance that uses storytelling, humor, and handmade objects to transform a deeply personal cancer journey into one of resilience, ingenuity, and hope. Rather than allowing statistics to have the final word, the work gives voice to the lived experience behind the diagnosis and celebrates the unexpected possibility of becoming an outlier.
52 Views of Cancer
52 Views of Cancer is a deck of playing cards illustrated by people who know cancer firsthand. Each of the 52 cards carries original artwork by a different cancer patient, survivor, or immediate family member, each with their own view of the disease.
The artwork comes first. We're bringing the deck to major scientific and medical conferences and putting these artists' work directly into the hands of the researchers and clinicians working on the cancers they've faced.
Learn more about Invenra’s efforts to fight cancer.
