Levels of Help

Artist Statement

Levels of Help

Brenden

The piece I made shows three hospital waiting rooms that have an identical base. In each room there are things that set each one apart. Each room is filled with discreet and hidden messages to show the injustice in the different hospitals.

One room is for the poor community that has no insurance or healthcare. The room is to show the discrimination in healthcare and hopefully show it needs to be stopped. The second room represents how if you don't have insurance you wont get care. The room also has a few signs of racial discrimination. The third and final room is hospital service for the wealthy. It shows how the wealthy get more privileges. Also, in the room you notice there is not much decoration. That is to show that they don't need as much stuff at those hospitals. The rich get treatments that make it so they don't have to come back again and again, unlike other hospitals where the patients do have to come back.

For the whole drawing process I used a normal pencil. When I was done I added a color to the piece with colored pencil. The poor room got a red color covering it. The middle class got blue. The rich got yellow to symbolize gold and its value. Each color is a primary color to show how these are some primary health care issues, discrimination and money. The colored parts are not drawn “professionally” to symbolize how the healthcare isn't perfect. Far from it.

When the class and I were listening to rights that were being named off by the teachers, one caught my attention. I had heard about a law that was being debated upon for hospitals and how they can respond to those in need. If, for example, a man comes to the hospital with a bad injury, the hospital could reject them if they don't have insurance. Later, after researching the topic, I ran into a dead end. There wasn’t anything I could find on the potential law. I had the original intention to write mostly about the law, but I found that as of now not not many people at all want it to be passed, and that it isn't a pressing issue at this time. During the search for information, I found other issues that earlier I had dismissed. Those issues turned in to my art piece. Discrimination in the American healthcare system.