I awoke this morning to some depressing personal news. An artist acquaintance of mine from back in my New York City days has been diagnosed with lung cancer. Early stages, and his doctors give him a very strong chance of survival. He's the same age as myself, give or take a year or two, and as much as I can recall, lived a healthy lifestyle. He was very into his diet and did martial arts. I don't remember him ever being a smoker, but what I do remember was the fiberglassing.

I was working with him on a puppet project and his day job while we were working on the show was as some artist's hired hand. And by some artist, I mean a guy who was showing in that year's Whitney Biennial. It was my first introduction to the grand tradition that Artists don't actually do most of the work themselves. And what he was making were these fiberglass encased balloon intestines. When I saw the final installation at the museum, it was incredibly cool looking and one of my favorites at the show that year.

For some reason, we had stopped by his work while he was making the stuff. He was completely suited up in a clean suit, gloves, hood and respirator. But how many other hundreds of jobs over the years did he work at where they didn't pay as much attention to safety? The old "it's just for a few minutes, this one little thing!" I know there is some shop in NYC that makes puppets that more than one fabricator has told me that the soft goods area is right next to the fiberglassing area. In an unventilated basementy space.

It is a very scary reminder to limit the amount of time we spend working with chemicals, and to ALWAYS use proper safety equipment. And I'm not talking the switch to Simple Green at home here. I'm talking straight acetone, glues and paints with toulene, two part epoxies and fiberglass. These are the tools of our trade.