“URTSBC3,” 2012 by Jordan Eagles

New York-based artist Jordan Eagles has been working with blood as his medium for over a decade. His large scale works,  which are not for the squeamish or hemophobic, have been exhibited in galleries all across the country.
 

“FKTS 19,” 2012
 

“Life Force 2,” 2012
 
Eagles uses blood he has obtained from slaughterhouses as well as human blood that was donated to him willingly from people who will live on long after they have gone, as a part of Eagles’ ambitious creations. And while most people find the sight of blood unappealing, Eagles says the process of working with blood can be both “meditative and exhilarating,” and that even after working with the unconventional medium for so long he still “gets a thrill out of the energy that comes from the material.” In order to preserve the blood he encases it in plexiglass and UV resin which allows the blood to hold on to its natural colors, structure and patterns, which according to Eagle “embodies transformation, regeneration and an allegory of death to life.”
 

“Blood Mirror,” 2014
 

 
In 2014, Eagles started work on his project “Blood Mirror,” in response to the FDA’s ban on accepting blood donations from gay men that started back in 1983 and was just lifted last year. The blood used to create “Blood Mirror” was donated from nine different gay men including a Nigerian gay rights activist living in political asylum in the U.S., as well as the supervisor of Eagles’ project, Dr. Howard Grossman, the former director of the American Academy of HIV Medicine. Many of the pieces you will see in this post used “BARCs” (blood, acrylic, resin, and copper) for the materials.
 

“HF1HR,” 2012
 

“HF4,” 2012
 

“Life Force,” 2014
 

“Red Giant, 1”
 

“Red Giant,” 2011
 

Sun dried, preserved blood
 

2012
 

2008
 

 

Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Bloody hell: Disney made an animated ‘period’ short about menstruation