In sculptural installation and online, Hole Poem explores mind/body disorientation featuring two icons: the human heart and head. The heart is exhibited anatomically in image and in three dimensions. A series of self-portrait photographs displaying Alopecia Areata and brain imagery references the head. The “Holes,” throughout the artwork are both factual and used in metaphor. First, they are the marked physiological changes symptomizing Alopecia. Secondly, these round, smooth patches are the messengers of a greater, stress-related disorder, the “hole in the heart.” They express the body’s distress and intelligence in its warning. All the holes are explored as visual metaphor: in flat, round luminous neon shapes; in cores cast in rubber and plastic, giving the holes volume and depth; and in spinning disks. In return, we ask: How big and how deep are these physiological and psychological holes? Can we measure them? What tools do we use to fill, suture, patch or repair them?
Hole Poem was given critical attention by Elizabeth K. Menon in The State of the Real and in Studies on Themes and Motifs in Literature.
Carolyn Speranza 
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