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Punishment
Dinner for the Dying: Last Suppers
Art exhibit that features death row final meals focuses on humanity.
Posted March 4, 2015
From now through April 12, the Dayton Art Institute in Ohio, with the University of Dayton, invites patrons to an unusual exhibit in the “Dead Man Walking Series.” With cobalt-painted porcelain plates, artist Julie Green has created The Last Supper: 600 Plates Illustrating Final Meals of U.S. Death Row Inmates.
She uses her skills to get people thinking about issues with the death penalty. Each plate represents a final meal request from an inmate facing imminent execution. It’s stark, yet intriguing. Who doesn’t want to know what someone considers the ultimate food experience? Would it be steak or hot wings, ravioli or seafood?
People who’ve seen the exhibition leave comments. Some remark on how it makes execution feel so palpable, while others consider what they would choose for a final meal. A few are disturbed, some angry. Most are supportive.
“Thank you!” writes one. “I was moved by the plate that said they made the person a birthday cake because he never had one.”
“In these images of food and canvas plates,” writes another, “you reveal the person facing the ultimate last supper. It sparks curiosity to imagine why some chose what they did and why others did not eat or request. Most powerfully the exhibit shows the remains, the little value placed upon a life in the final act of nourishment.”
Another visitor remarks: “I am stunned by the humanity of the piece—it is so easy to forget that these are complete beings as flawed as they may be, ultimately human—as we all are!”
An art professor at Oregon State University, Green identifies each plate with the execution date and last meal, but leaves off the inmate’s name. Opposed to the death penalty herself, she seeks to keep the question of human rights central to the observer’s experience.
Currently, there are 602 plates. After they're painted, Toni Acock fires each one. Green plans to add 50 more to the collection each year that capital punishment remains a practice in this country.
After I noticed an article about this exhibit, I contacted Green to ask her some questions, which she graciously answered:
1. Which plate was your first one?
A Texas menu, in full color, was the first painted plate. When exhibited, it is alone on a wall with the preliminary sketches, not with the blue plates. As someone who loves intense color, I was not satisfied with the red mineral paint after being kiln fired. It was mauve, and would not do for ketchup, or apples.
2. What inspired you to start this project?
Oklahoma has higher per capita executions than Texas. I taught at University of Oklahoma for several years, and that is how I came to read final meal requests in the morning paper.
3. Tell me about your process.
For the past fifteen years, my studio life has been six months painting The Last Supper, six month working on new projects. The challenging subject matter of final meals requires time away. Right now I’m painting airbrush egg tempera abstractions of food for an upcoming exhibition at Upfor, in Portland, Oregon. And they are blue and white! Can’t seem to get away from that color combination. These egg tempera panels are a joy to make, and a response to years of painting sad blue food.
4. What is your primary objection to the death penalty?
The margin for error. It is encouraging to see Pennsylvania join Oregon, Washington, and Colorado in placing a hold on executions because of concerns about the system. We now have twenty-two states without an active death penalty.
5. Have these plates started important conversations, as you've hoped to achieve?
Yes, far more than I believed possible. My mother used to be in favor of capital punishment and now she’s not. If you can change your mom, you can change the world.
6. Which plate was the most moving or powerful for you to create?
The Timothy McVeigh plate took me a week to paint. I was teaching in Oklahoma at the time of the bombing, so it was close to home.
7. How do you get your sources for each plate?
Here are the steps for finding a recent execution:
1) Go online to http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/execution-list-2015
At the time of this writing, the most recent execution was February 11, 2015, Walter Storey, in Missouri. I googled “Walter Storey final meal” and viewed NBC, NPR, and UK news sites stating that Storey consumed a cheeseburger and French fries as his last meal.
2) Go downstairs and select a small diner plate appropriate for burger and fries. Thanks to our neighbor Viviane, a great second hand shopper, there are over 100 white ceramic plates to choose from.
3) To create the image, I work one of three ways:
- For this simple request, I might work from memory. Or, I refer to a blank recipe book now filled with junk mail advertisement photos of food, with lots of meat and desserts. I might go online and gather images. This is useful in complicated menus. I select images with the same point of view, like overhead, or receding in space. I construct a digital collage including all the foods and email it to myself.
8. What has been the response so far?
Varied, as you would expect. Each exhibition has a comment book, which is a wonderful document showing how, say, Chattanooga, Tennessee, museum-goers felt about capital punishment in 2005. In the South, there’s more opposition to the project, and more support of capital punishment. After Kirk Johnson’s feature in The New York Times, I received over 300 emails. Of those, all but one was supportive. It took awhile, but I sent a personalized reply to everyone.
9. Will this show travel all over the country? Is there a schedule?
After Ohio, it’s headed to the Block Museum at Northwestern University. In 2017, The Last Supper may return to Texas. Because of wear and tear on fragile plates, I hope to find venues to show the plates for one year or longer. At some point, perhaps they will be on permanent display in a museum, in a state with the high numbers of executions, like Texas or Virginia.
10. Is there anything specific you want to say about this project that hasn't been featured in the PR about the show?
I would like add that a few thoughts for Psychology Today readers.
My neighbor has a bumper sticker that says. “Art saves lives,” When I first read that, I thought it was a bit of a stretch. But on reflection, it’s not far off.
Studio can be time to meditate, to quiet the noise, to get into the zone. I can’t image a life without art making. My husband, Clay Lohmann, also uses traditional craft medium in his case quilting to generate conversation. Clay’s influence and support of my creative practice cannot be overstated.
Our home and lifestyle support studio practice. Up at 5 am, we head to the studio. Then to Oregon State University to teach, or keep painting. No sofa, no TV. Daily yoga, organic food in moderation, take good care of the body and mind. We are fortunate to have time to create, and if what we make encourages positive changes, wow, icing on the cake. It’s a great life.
To see more, go to www.juliegreen.com, http://guysew.com, or the Dayton Art Institute’s current exhibitions.
