PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Presenting “Hot Dog”, an abstract portrait about a day in November 2021 when I was taking care of my very ill father at the hospital. My father contracted a very rare disease… brain infection due to infectious encephalitis (a disease so rare that stumps even the most gifted medical teams). It causes personality change and loss of the ability to regulate a person’s own body. This caused a domino effect of other illnesses in my father’s body leading to his passing. Encephalitis, and later NPH, is a disease that hides then attacks. It’s like a game of peekaboo with the brain that causes it to go haywire. Literally the worst version of peekaboo… where no one wants to play but it’s thrust upon you.

Anyway, when this disease decides to be dormant for minutes, days, or weeks, the person inflicted has a momentary use of their brain (e.g. they act somewhat like their real selves) and in one of those precious moments, my dad noticed I was eating a chili and cheese hot dog beside him at his hospital bed. He got up the strength to say “gimme that hot dog”.  I was shocked, happy and dismayed all at once. Shocked my dad said a coherent sentence, happy he was actually able to eat (when the disease is active, he would forget how to eat) and dismayed as I was REALLY hungry/wanted my hot dog. Thankfully, two beautiful souls I was texting told me, “if your sick Dad wants your hot dog, then you give him the dang hot dog.” I am so so happy I listened to them as it was one of my happiest memories of my dad during a terrible period of time. He showed his sense of humor before he was gone.  Ever sense then, I get hot dogs, sit somewhere quiet and think of my Dad. This work shows the exact moment my father tasted that hot dog I gave him. It’s imprinted in my minds eye and now you get to see how it swirls dreamlike in my mind. Enjoy “Hot Dog”