Go check out the second episode in our segment on “Art and Health (/Healthcare)”, with visual artist, activist, and physician Dr. Eric Avery. Dr. Avery "...is an artist/printmaker who became a physician during the Vietnam War in the 1970's. In 1974, he received his medical degree from The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, Texas and then in 1978 completed his psychiatry training at the New York State Psychiatric Institute in New York City. For forty years he has worked at the intersection of visual art and medicine, leaving the practice of medicine several times to concentrate on his art career. His social content prints explore issues such as Human Rights Abuses, and Social Responses to Disease (specifically HIV and Emerging Infectious Diseases), Death, Sexuality and the Body....
For twenty years, Avery worked as the HIV psychiatrist at the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) in Galveston, Texas....from 1992-2012...he made prints, paper and art actions that reflected his clinical work with HIV/AIDS. In the 1990's, in clinical art actions that high lighted developments in HIV care, he moved HIV medical practice into the protected aesthetic art space of museums and galleries, trying to prove that art can save lives.".
I first came across Dr. Avery’s work at Smith College Museum of Art’s exhibition Bearing Witness, showcasing prints made by Avery which document the HIV/AIDS epidemic.
As It Is, from Damn It Suite. (1987). Eric Avery. Woodcut printed in color on handmade Mulberry paper. Permanent collection Smith College Museum of Art.
During this conversation, we discuss Avery’s humanitarian work across the world, his human rights activism, how he brought an AIDS clinic into museums, the opioid crisis, printmaking, living in a building owned by Warhol, and so much more.
