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::Who Is Eric Avery?
1997-Avery Brain - 1953-Eric Avery   1958-Eric Avery - 1970-Medical School Galveston - 1973-Portrait of the Artist as a Young Doctor   1974-James Eggers, M.D. Eric Avery, M.D.   1979-On the Lam Street Band, New York City   1980-Las Dhure Refugee Camp, Somalia Photo: Wolfgang Starke, M.D.   1980-Las Dhure Refugee Camp, Somalia Photo: Harry Benson   1980-Las Dhure Refugee Camp German Red Cross Tent - 1995-Condom Head Photo: R. Haile   1995-Use Your Head, Use a Condom Photo: Roger Haile   1995-Wallpaper Works   1992-Trevor Fairbrother and Eric Avery, Boston Museum   1994-Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Associate Member of The Institute for Medical Humanities	Eric Avery MD Born November 8, 1948 Milwaukee, Wisconsin Raised in Pecos, Texas Bachelor of Art in Fine Art, University of Arizona, 1970 Medical Doctor, University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, 1974 Psychiatry Residency, New York State Psychiatric Institute, New York City, 1976 - 1979 Medical Doctor Ship Sea Sweep, Indonesia 1980 Medical Director, Las Dhure Refugee Camp, Somalia, 1980-1981 Lived in San Ygnacio, Texas, 1981-1992, making and exhibiting his art and working as the Southern Region Refugee Coordinator for Amnesty International USA Returned to the Practice of Medicine in 1992 as the Consultation-Liaison HIV Psychiatrist at The University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and joined the faculty at The Institute for the Medical Humanities at UTMB Lived in Galveston, Texas 1992-2013 Retired (August 31, 2012) as Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Member of The Institute for the Medical Humanities at The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas Currently, remains Emeritus Associate Professor, The Institute for Bioethics & Health Humanities, UTMB, Galveston, Texas. For the 2019 Spring semester at East Tennessee State University, he was The Basler Chair of Excellence for the Integration of the Arts, Rhetoric and Science. In 2019, after 6 years in New Hope, Pennsylvania he moved back to San Ygnacio, Texas, two blocks from the Rio Grande, 30 miles down the Border from Laredo, Texas. He continues to make art and develop art medicine projects. Listen to Nicole Bearden’s Critical Bounds” 10/22/20 podcast conversation with Eric Avery “On Art and Health” (70 minutes) For forty years he has worked at the intersection of visual art and medicine. His social content prints explore issues such as human rights abuses, and social responses to disease (HIV and Emerging Infectious Diseases), death, sexuality and the body. In clinical art spaces set up in art museums and galleries, his art medicine actions have explored the liminal space between art and medicine. From 1992-2012, at the IMH in Galveston, he made prints, paper and art actions that reflected his clinical work with HIV/AIDS. He has had numerous solo exhibitions in the United States and his prints are in many collections including: Smith College Art Museum, Baltimore Art Museum, the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, Firestone Library at Princeton University, The Library of Congress, ARS MEDICA collection Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art, Philadelphia, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, Blanton Museum of Art, Austin Texas, Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Fort Worth, Texas, The Boston Museum of Art, The National Library of Medicine, The Cushing/Whitney Medical Library at Yale University School of Medicine, Watson Library The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Gallery of Art. In England, his work is included in The British Museum and The Wellcome Trust Library for the History and Understanding of Medicine.   Selected Projects 2013 to Present Smith College Museum of Art-"The Art of Healing is a Sacred Art": The Prints of Dr. Eric Avery (Blog Post 2013) Smith College Museum of Art Acquisition - Paper+People (Blog Post 2014) Princeton University Firestone Library (Blog Post 2014) Art AIDS America (Exhibition 2015) The American Dream: From Pop to the Present (Exhibition 2017) Print Life Neurogenesis (Print 2017) Epidemic York College (Exhibition 2018) Epidemic ETSU (Exhibition 2019) Eric Avery: Doctor of Printmaking (Blog Post 2019) Wayne G Basler Chair of Excellence for the Integration of the Arts, Rhetoric and Science, Spring Semester 2019 East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee Eric Avery: Paradise Arrives (Blog Post 2019)   - Sue Coe, artist and author/illustrator www.graphicwitness.org     I first met Dr. Eric Avery through a letter from Somalia. He was working as a doctor in a refugee camp with thousands of human beings who were starving to death. A photograph in Life magazine shows Eric in the middle of the camp that stretched for miles, a figure at dusk holding up a tiny baby into the light, silhouetted by dusty tents. It was there that Eric started to make woodcuts—to record the terrible sights he had seen and, as his scalpel cut into the wood, as therapy.     If you are fortunate enough to be a friend of Eric’s, you will receive woodcut cards of plants and birds, shells and trees, as purely and simply illustrated as engravings by the 19th-century British naturalist Thomas Bewick. That would be sufficient for most artists, but for Eric, harsh truth is as urgently beautiful.     Eric uses science and art in tandem to heal. He transmutes the chaff of suffering into art. Eric always says “life before art” as he plunges into healing the victims of society wherever he finds them—in crack houses, on death row—refugees on the broken borders of life or death, the poor, the abandoned. They become alive in his art; their content creates his form.     His work as an artist/psychiatrist treating patients with HIV has become a document of historical record and is as sophisticated and powerful as any Dürer woodcut. It is the antibody to our disease of distance. Dominant culture flattens all experience, rendering reality into irony. We no longer trust ourselves to experience life directly. Eric makes art in the tradition of reportage; there is a direct emotional involvement with his subjects, a witnessing that is devoid of sentiment. The humility of small woodcuts depicting faces of cherished patients, printed on paper that is made from hospital sheets or the clothing of AIDS orphans, subverts and unravels the dominant social ideology of power and superiority. Read about Eric Avery? Political Prints and Paper Making Text by Eric Avery with illustrations Hand Papermaking, Summer 2004    Current Employment: Self Employed Visual Artist Address: ericnelsonavery@yahoo.com PO Box 250 San Ygnacio, Texas 78067 Education: Undergraduate - 1966-1970 University of Arizona Tucson, Arizona Degree: Bachelors of Art in Art Medical School - 1970-1974 The University of Texas Medical Branch School of Medicine Galveston, Texas Degree: M.D. Internship - 1974-1975 The University of Texas Medical Branch Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Galveston, Texas Residency - 1975-1978 Adult Psychiatry Residency Training Program Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center New York State Psychiatric Institute Department of Psychiatry New York City, New York Fellowship - 1992-1994 Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry (HIV/AIDS) Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences The University of Texas Medical Branch Galveston, Texas Professional Activities: Medicine Clinical Staff Psychiatrist (1992 - 2012) AIDS Clinical Care and Research Program Out-Patient Clinic The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas Consultant Psychiatrist (1998 - 2012) HIV & General Consultant Psychiatry The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, Texas   Professional Activities: Art Medicine Exhibitions Art Actions Printed Matter	1997-Avery Brain - 1993-HIV Condom Filled Pinata Photo: S. Nussenblat - 1997-Eric Avery, David Paar, Sue Coe, NYC   1996-The Stuff of Life Photo: J. Glowczwski - 1997-Fogg Art Museum Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts Photo: Harvard Crimson - Photo: J. Glowczwski - 1997-Eric Avery, William Marshall- Studio Assistant Stuff of Life Because We Are   2003-Bill Lagatutta, Master Printer Tamarind Institute, and Eric Avery at 3rd Impact Print Conference, Cape Town, South Africa   2012-Medical Student Teaching Award. Dwight Wolf MD, Eric Avery MD, Robert Hirschfeld MD, Chairman of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. Photo: M. Kinonen   2014-New Hope, Pennsylvania Photo: Daniel Heyman   2015-Whitney Museum of Art Photo: Roger Haile   2018-Eric Avery and printmaking mentor Andrew Rush in Tucson, Arizona   2018-Resist Ageism Photo: Jill Schoeniger   2018-Eric Avery and Adam DelMarcelle Epidemic exhibit York College, York Pennsylvania Photo: Marissa Grate   2019-Basler Chair for the Intergration, Rhetoric of Art and Science East Tennessee State University Johnson City, TN Epidemic Photo credit: Dave DiMarchi   Eric Avery 2020 San Ygnacio studio Photo: Charlie Warden   August 2020. Painting Laredo, Texas No Border Wall street mural.   March 2023. Ways of Seeing Laredo, Texas