Tim Hankerson

Wine displays updated monthly.

Reformatted existing menu to fit new menu holder & created menu holder inserts regularly. Laminated menus to last longer and stay unstained unlike the previous folded paper menus.

The hand is grabbing within the body as an expression of the pain a patient feels when undergoing chemo or other life prolonging methods. The pain is deep within you; not just surface level pain.

About this Sculpture: 

This sculpture is inspired by an interview and is a part of a bigger project. It is a comment on life prolonging methods in end-of-life care. There are many contributing factors to people choosing to prolong life as much as possible in end-of-life care; however, this often compromises the quality of life lived in the end. Particularly with chemotherapy, a lot of people choose to undergo chemotherapy when prognosed with cancer, and often don’t stop even when the prognosis is terminal. This is problematic because chemotherapy kills people’s insides and with no hope of getting completely rid of  the disease these patients are killing themselves while already going through the dying process. In my interview with Pam, her sister Kim was prognosed with terminal breast cancer, underwent aggressive treatment, and experienced the worst transition to death I’ve heard about. Fourteen minutes into our two hour conversation Pam stated,

“That’s the other part of this whole equation is once your diagnosed, once they put you on chemo, you can’t live out your dreams. I said [to Kim], If you feel good for just 10 minutes what would you want to do? She said, Never been to San Diego, I’d love to go to San Diego. I said, I’m picking you up, we’re going to San Diego. They put her back on chemo. So she couldn’t leave because she was on chemo. I said, “What are you doing on chemo? It’s killing you. It’s not curing you, you know, it’s not getting any better. It’s killing you, it’s making you sick, you curl up in a ball. You just want to die.” When she was off chemo and on hospice you could have a conversation, you could talk about what was on the news, you could try to have some normality.” 
Pams sister isn’t the only example of this by any means, but this story was profound to me and acted as inspiration for this sculpture to help bring light to a big problem in todays society. 

Goal of Project/Work:

I enrolled in a Death & Dying class at San Francisco State in Spring 2014, I was inspired by Professor Hinerman and the class in general. Death is a conversation that needs to be started, it shouldn't have such a stigma or be a taboo conversation. It should be examined by each individual even if that person decides, ‘This is something I don’t wish to think about.’ Too often when it is thought about only in end-of-life it is much more difficult to have all things considered. Often people blindly follow their doctors instructions and don’t examine the risks of some treatments or consider what they feel is best for themselves. Even worse is when individuals have to make healthcare decisions for a loved one and isn’t sure which procedures or actions that individual would want or disagree with. They literally have someones life in their hands while also experiencing losing them. I began this project to bring awareness to this problem as well as make people more comfortable talking about death. We need to all be more comfortable offering support to people that have lost or are losing someone because it’s an extremely painful process. The conversation might be hard, but it is also very rewarding.  

Some of the pull quotes I placed on transparencies to speak to Arendts discussions on seeing through the world of appearances in search for understanding, as well as a theme of the project suggesting we can only get a glimpse into the great mind of Hannah Arendt and never able to fully see or understand her thoughts.