Did anyone else feel sorry for Jeremijenko's children after reading the article? I know I did. The bizarre names, the life in chaos, the mother with far more ego than talent, the father who puts up with this madness.

Why must people beat up on those with unusual names? I learned a harsh lesson myself when my kids, John and Mary, came home from school crying because the other kids were constantly teasing them for their strange monikers. In retrospect, both myself and my wife, Polymorphic Jurisprudence Halflife Kickstarter Xenocentrification Flashlight (nee Petulant) should have given them more conventional first names.

Quite true.

And just because grant committees & Salon readers think it's art doesn't make it so.

You allowed someone to call herself an environmentalist, and in the same breath tell you that she commutes once a week from New York to San Diego.

Does she (do you) think that jet fuel grows on organic farms? And is she so irreplacable in that second job that she feels justified in burning thousands of gallons of the stuff?

...the kind of artist whose real medium is bureaucracy. Instead of wielding a brush, she wields the power of grant applications. The themes she talks about tend to make more sense on grant applications than they do in real life.

Science is supposed to be about experiment and discovery, but she seems to be only interested in using science to create polemics against the corporate culture (the same corporate culture that happens to reward her lavishly with grant money and access to museums).

The typical bureaucratic justification for art grants is that art is supposed to improve the minds of the public. Hence the great stress she puts on all the things her art is supposedly conveying to the public. However, art is in fact a lousy medium for teaching anything, because it can be interpreted in any way one likes. If the public really needs to know about fish on antidepressants, IMO there are better and truer ways to go about it than using art to turn the issue into a comedy.

Great article!

I've always been intrigued by artists whose work deals with nature (and science). They have to work so hard to avoid becoming out of date and corny.

I love that she is illuminating some of the myths about avian flu and it reminds me of a comment she made about her attitudes toward birds in 2004.

"I collect dead birds...extending Macbeth's cry 'there is prophecy in the fall of a sparrow' the autopsies I do are tender. If you come across any send them to me in a plastic bubble wrapped postal bag. Please mark where and how they were found."

It stuck me as strange and dark then, but now it haunts me.

I think her art sucks, but she's definitely a MILF...kinda like a younger Karen Finley.

Of course, we are also imbibing these powerful chemicals in our drinking water, since most water purification systems are not designed to take them out and I believe something like 90% of these drugs are excreted from our bodies.

Pharmaceuticals in pill form must be hardy enough to survive our digestive system. Nonetheless, I understand that many are bound by activated charcoal, a common component of water filters.

I find it fascinating that people who view themselves as liberal (i.e. salon readers) suddenly become Bill O'Reilly when it comes to art. There are a few comments here, that placed in a different context, would sound a bit, I dunno, rightish. Or at least wouldn't sound out of place ranting on talk radio. ("I'm just a regular guy and I'm sick of these elites...").

I'm not saying you are required to like Jeremijenko's work, or ideas, or apparently her lifeestyle, but let's get some perspective here. Just because you think something's bullshit doesn't make it so.

I have mixed feelings about Natalie J. You see, I really like conceptual art, at least reading about it. I don't think it holds up well as "art" per se, the thing I look to for inspiration and entertainment. But her ideas certainly sound cool in words, and I think she does have an unusual amount of creativity, and I hope she can draw attention to some of the causes she champions.

However- When I was a post-doc at Carnegie Mellon a couple years ago (in electrical engineering), she came and gave a talk about her robot dogs. I remember leaving early, severely annoyed, for several reasons. First, she showed up barely in time to give the lecture, then proceeded to edit her powerpoint slides for 15 minutes (I'm not exagerating, I timed it) with the projector on, so everyone sat there bored, watching her move her slides into a different order. No apologies for starting late, or explanations of why she wasn't ready. It appeared to be a talk she had given the day before- she edited, in front of us, the name of the institution and date on the title slide.

Finally, she finished her editing and began her talk. Let's just say, she had nothing to say. She would put up a slide, and ramble off the top of her head for a few seconds, or if she couldn't think of anything, she would play a video of one of her pieces (which at least was a little bit more interesting). But it was going nowhere, and finally I got up and left. I remember the next day, telling another post-doc in my lab about it, and how I thought bullshitting was apparently the skill most useful for getting grant money and/or a big salary (Natalie was just one example of several people we were discussing). I really couldn't believe this undisciplined person was a professor.

If Natalie is reading this, I would like to say, please have some respect for your audiences (and the tax payers!). Being an eccentric/left brain type does not give you license to show up late and unprepared and waste everyone's time. I would never grant her money for her work.