Alcohol #2 (ethanol)
8” x 10”
Acrylic and rubbing alcohol on canvas
2010
$100

Lucifer (showing a flask). Behold it here! this little flask
Contains the wonderful quintessence,
The perfect flower and efflorescence,
Of all the knowledge man can ask!
Hold it up thus against the light!

Prince Henry. How limpid, pure, and crystalline,
How quick, and tremulous, and bright
The little wavelets dance and shine,
As were it the Water of Life in sooth!

Lucifer. It is! It assuages every pain,
Cures all disease, and gives again
To age the swift delights of youth.
Inhale its fragrance.

Prince Henry. It is sweet.
A thousand different odors meet
And mingle in its rare perfume,
Such as the winds of summer waft
At open windows through a room!

Lucifer. Will you not taste it?

Prince Henry. Will one draught
Suffice?

Lucifer. If not, you can drink more.

– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “The Golden Legend”

These molecules are rendered as space-filling models, in a natural, low-energy conformation, and displayed from an angle that shows off as much of their structure as possible. The atoms are color-coded, with carbon being black, hydrogen white, and oxygen red. They are painted in artist-quality acrylics, on gessoed canvas.

Like all good Americans, I spent my day thinking about Barack Obama’s birth certificate. For those of you who would like to play along at home, the rules of the game are as follows: Some say that Obama’s birth certificate from Hawaii, officially known as a “Certification of Live Birth,” is a fake, because they just know that Obama was born outside the country. Hence, he is not a “natural-born citizen,” and is ineligible to serve as President. This is especially vexatious to those Republicans who, like Macbeth, fear no natural-born man. The horror with which they conjecture — perhaps Obama was in Kenya from his mother’s womb untimely ripp’d — is totally understandable.

Members of the US House of Representatives and several state legislatures are taking action, and demanding laws requiring future presidential candidates to submit their real birth certificates (no fakes allowed) before their names can be put on the ballot. A lot of people are taking offense at this idea, although it strikes me as perfectly harmless. Indeed, the fact that such a law isn’t already on the books is a little surprising.

We always hear that bureaucracy is the tape that holds the government together. Every form at the DMV has a little box for your middle initial, it’s impossible to replace your Social Security Card without a birth certificate, and don’t even think about trying to use your handgun license as a form of primary ID. And if we weren’t required to sign on the dotted line, swearing that the above information is true, society might fall apart altogether.

And yet at the highest level, they seem to go without paperwork altogether. When I heard about the bill under consideration to compel Obama to submit his birth certificate for cursory analysis by the Missouri state legislature in 2012, I’m sure I wasn’t the only one thinking, “Man — Presidents have it easy.”

I’m supposed to believe that at no point during his historic campaign did Obama have to paperclip a photocopy of his birth certificate to a ballot access application. He didn’t have to bring a utility bill addressed to him in Chicago to verify his current address. And if he has any felony convictions in his past, I bet he didn’t have to admit them on a sheet of paper.

I can’t help but wonder whether the upper tiers of government all share this disdain for the paperwork that nourishes them. When the House and Senate pass a bill, do they have to ink up the “PASSED” stamp to make it official? Or do they just expect the American people to take their word for it? When the president signs legislation, does he really need to sign it at all? Does he need to sign white, pink and canary copies, and initial each page? If his signature doesn’t match the ones on his canceled checks, are we, the American People, allowed to call him and note that, “there’s been some unusual activity in your branch of government, and would you verify that you approved these recent bills?”

A wise man once said that when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal. I can only assume that the same spirit that animated Richard Nixon informs elected officials’ approach to paperwork. If Congress says they’ve passed a bill, or if Obama and his family say he was born in America, what pencil-pusher is going to call such important people on such petty details?

Now we know. That’s why I think it’s helpful to look at the “birthers,” as they are known, as the political wing of the bureaucracy. This obsession with proper documents and formalities has manifested before, in the “tax protestors” who deny that the Sixteenth Amendment was ever ratified. We are told, for instance that “a number of states returned uncertified, unsigned, and/or unsealed copies [of the amendment], and did not rectify their negligence even after being reminded and warned by [Secretary of State] Knox.”

“With carelessness like that,” I can hear the birthers fume, “you’d be lucky to get a fishing license.”

THC #2
18” x 24”
Acrylic on canvas
2010
For Becky

These molecules are rendered as space-filling models, in a natural, low-energy conformation, and displayed from an angle that shows off as much of their structure as possible. The atoms are color-coded, with carbon being black, hydrogen white, oxygen red, and nitrogen blue. They are painted in artist-quality acrylics, on gessoed canvas.

Nitroglycerin
14” x 18”
Acrylic on canvas
2010
$400

Nitroglycerin was the first modern explosive. Before it was discovered in 1847 by mixing glycerin with concentrated sulfuric and nitric acid, the best known explosive was gunpowder, a comparatively slow-burning, low energy explosive. When it became available for industrial use, it proved valuable for blasting railroad tunnels, having even more explosive power than many modern compounds..

In nitroglycerine, the nitrate groups are attached very weakly to the glycerin backbone, and can easily slip their surly bonds, and rearrange themselves into nitrogen, CO₂ and water. The energy in the bonds escapes as heat and light, and the gaseous products billow outward, producing a shock wave. Nitroglycerin is extremely unstable, and in its natural form unsafe to transport — famously, the slightest shock or jostle can set it off. Nitroglycerin factories were periodically destroyed, and Alfred Nobel made his name by marketing dynamite, a preparation of nitroglycerin stabilized with diatomaceous earth.

Nitroglycerin is also a medication, used since the 19th century to treat chest pain arising from obstructed blood vessels in the heart, and nitroglycerin tablets are still sometimes known as “heart pills.” A quick-acting treatment, nitroglycerin is taken sub-ligually, tingling in contact with the body as if to advertise its potency. In the body, it breaks down into nitric acid, a hormone responsible for blood vessel dilation.

When a patient takes nitroglycerin, the body responds by throwing its blood vessels wide open, allowing blood to reach the heart more easily and often averting a heart attack. However, dilating the blood vessels drastically and suddenly lowers the patient’s blood pressure, resulting in certain exhilarating side effects, including headache, dizziness and fainting. Indeed, the effect is so pronounced that workers in nitroglycerin factories often suffer from debilitating headaches, merely from proximity to such a powerful compound.

These molecules are rendered as space-filling models, in a natural, low-energy conformation, and displayed from an angle that shows off as much of their structure as possible. The atoms are color-coded, with carbon being black, hydrogen white, oxygen red, and nitrogen blue. They are painted in artist-quality acrylics, on gessoed canvas.