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Julie Green's project "The Last Supper"
includes a depiction of an Indiana inmate's
last meal, which featured a birthday cake.
He had never had one before. |
It's the stark blue-and-white image of a simple birthday cake that lingers in Julie Green's memory of the plates she has painted.
An Indiana death row inmate, on the eve of his execution in 2007, requested birthday cake as part of his last meal.
"Because he had never had one before," Green said.
They're killers convicted of heinous crimes, but before being condemned to death, their past shaped many things about who they became - including what they would request for their last meal on earth.
"These meals speak to their histories and their families," said Green, an artist and art professor who has made painting death row inmates' final meals into a decade-long project called "The Last Supper."
A bag of Jolly Ranchers or a solitary honeybun. Vending machine sandwiches. Mom's homemade lasagna and ravioli. Pizza, burgers, barbecue and fries. The chosen foods eaten by killers before being killed, painted in blue-and-white simplicity on old plates.
Green was teaching art at the University of Oklahoma in 1999, when she read an article in her local paper about an Oklahoma inmate's execution and became intrigued about the details of a last meal that were included.
Green said she had mixed feelings the first time she read about an inmate's last meal in the newspaper: It seemed so intimate and personal. She called the newspaper and the prison warden to ask, "Why is that in the paper?"
"Because the public wants to know," she was told.
Since then, she has painted more than 500 plates, including dozens of Oklahoma inmates' final meals, for a project that is exhibited throughout the country - which she hopes inspires Americans in every state to discuss and debate the death penalty.
Source: Tulsa World, March 25, 2012
Related article:
Jul 22, 2011
Originally conceived to participate in the Texas Moratorium Network's exhibit Justice For All? Artists Reflect on the Death Penalty, the first painting of the series, Last Meal: Ruben Cantu, has been shown at galleries in Austin ...
Recommended visit: Click here to visit Kate MacDonald's online exihibition "Last Meals".
