Cure

A project by Grinnell College artist Lee Emma Running, Cure is a conversation with the deer of Iowa, a herd of 400,000 with bountiful food and no natural predators. “In my agricultural state,” writes Running, “they are both vermin and trophy.”

Cure involves walking the pathways of the deer, retrieving their bones, then polishing, engraving and gilding those bones. As Running puts it, “I am building a precious relic of something silent and wild that lives and dies by our agriculture, our economies, and our speed.”

More information about Running’s project is available in this Iowa Arts Council interview with DEFT, and Cure reaches out into “An Arrangement of Bones”, a 7×7 collaboration with Grinnell fiction writer Alissa Nutting.

Through Digital Bridges, Lee Emma Running was supported in collaboration with Grinnell College students Lydia James and Phoebe Shreckinger in creating digital video as part of the larger project of Cure.