It is no secret we have a country that has a greater population of retired military personnel than it did a decade ago. What are these men bringing home with them? After spending some time with an Army Ranger Combat Medic he started listing parts of the body and what repairs he had to know without hesitation. IEDs, shrapnel, gunshot sounds, etc. It felt like he could go on forever.
After our discussion I created a blank canvas of the human body for him to write over. Interestingly enough he would start writing, then pause and talk about it, as if he had to write it down first due to instinct. Blueprints buried in his mind. Later he explained that a man down had roughly a thirty-minute window. “Stage One,” to be treated until a helicopter would arrive. If not properly taken care of the changes of the wounded surviving diminished greatly.
Each box displays a section of a recreation of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, a symbolic combination of art and science. Within the boxes themselves are the notes from the Medic. Some are common military terms, others are memories mapped out of soldiers the Medic was surrounded by and had to treat before helicopter assistance was available.
