*I wrote this several years ago and haven’t changed the present tense or added any commentary, because I think it suits the rawness of my response.

When I became interested in taking another degree (in Fine Art), I felt it was necessary to assign myself work that wasn’t part of the syllabi of my classes. My intention was to learn as I knew some of the great masters in the Arts had. So, I interviewed the instructors at my university who were in charge of the Gross Anatomy lab. They were wonderful people, scientists, medical doctors, and one was even a former medical illustrator. I asked permission to be allowed to enter the lab with a group of physical therapy students who were taking a semester long class on Anatomy and which included a lab component. They would be dissecting human corpses in the lab over the course of one semester.

It was a privilege to be given the opportunity and the responsibility to attend the dissection process in the gross anatomy lab once a week for a semester. I did not complete the whole semester, because of health reasons, but was able to attend bout 2/3 of the semester. It was a daunting, powerful, gripping, and inspiring experience. I learned a new respect for the human body, those who study it, and the absolute beauty of the body’s intricate delicate structures. 

 

I’ve officially had my first day in Gross Anatomy lab and it isn’t that easy to talk about. There were lots of surprises and some serious practice being present to all the new sensory information.

To be clear I went in the lab once before. I took a tour of it with a nuerologist, a really lovely vibrant young doctor who worked as a medical illustrator before she went to medical school and still does some freelance work. The lab was supposed to be empty. This means, all cadavers politely encased in their covered metal lab tables. This was not the case. Instead of a sterile inactive lab space, we walked in to find a class in the process of dissecting. They were diligently working on four cadavers, about five to eight students per body. The smell of the non-formaldehyde embalming solution was extremely strong. I can only say that the bodies were brown and pale ivory, devoid of color and, having had the skin peeled away from chin to the to solar plexus, looked a lot like meat left on the counter too long.

The body absorbs information, but doesn’t always know how to process it. My body hung in there until the tour was over, politely mouthed my thanks and assurances that I’d be in on Monday and then refused to eat anything that wasn’t green for two days. I also came down with a cold and found my mind continually slipping back to the images of the cadavers I’d seen. I wasn’t sure how I would do going back in. My reaction was powerful and quite negative. Some part of me did not want to go back and look at death and decay or smell embalming fluid ever again.

Five days later, I went back. This time to take an hour to sit with a cadaver and draw whatever I felt like drawing. I selected muscle. It was the thing that had haunted me from my first brief exposure.

It was better not to have a mass of students hovering over the cadaver: cutting, looking at textbooks and making small talk about outside of class things, moving the skin sections out of the way so they could get a better angle.