Premature Pain

The above title is just a working title on the series I'm starting to create. I've been thinking a long time about the pain that tiny premature infants suffer when the are in the NICU. I was a neonatal nurse in my previous life and often took care of infants who had breathing tubes (respirator) attached, and were unable to cry out in pain. As a nurse, I had to look for other signs of pain, including grimacing, pulling away,tightened up limbs, etc., and try to relieve their suffering thru positioning, wrapping, lowering of lights, and of course pain medication. When I started out in nursing, the common belief was that the more premature infants didn't really feel pain, as their pain receptors were not fully developed. We now know that's wrong, and I look back on those years wondering how we could have been so niave.
I went to the Benn Morgan class at Crow Barn with this idea in mind of showing pain, and trying to show pain relief, fleeting as it was. I did not come up with much while I was there, but I took home the tools to work on this. The piece below is the start of my attemps. The fabric is all deconstructed screenprinting with some thermofax images added in. I like the piece, but I'm not there yet in saying what I want to say. This piece is to organized, and pain is very unorganized. I think I'm off to a good start and I'm already working on a piece that is a little more jagged and chaotic. I'm trying to get out of the vertical, horizontal way I'm working on this, yet still not have any smooth edges. I think I'm a work in progress myself.