ROBMORPHEW

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                                                                                              ROB MORPHEW'S WORK IN SCULPTURE

Robert Morphew is a formally educated sculptor having earned an MFA degree. His studio/home is in Boynton Beach, Florida. He is in his mid sixties and has lived almost his entire adult life stricken with rheumatoid arthritis. Inspite of the debilitating consequences that the disease exhibits, such as contuinual pain in all joints of his body, every day of his life, and deformities of his extremities, he has continued to produce a body of work that is quite remarkable, to say the least. I met Morphew as an associate adjunct professor of studio art at the Central Campus of Palm Beach community college when I began there in the late 1980's and have become his close friend and ally ever since.

Because of the deformities to his hands, Morphew had to invent his own medium that he can work with which is kind of archival paper mache' that he is able to manipulate, however slowly, with his hands. The work he has produced is impressive, and should be exposed. Morphew is under a physician's care for pain management of the disease, and was on a program for treatment with the anti-TNF-alpha pain reduction medicine etanercept . At the time he was able to obtain it, he was eligible for the particular drug manufacturer's program for indigent people in need of an anti-pain medicine which is without drastic side effects common to most other anti-pain drugs, such as morphine, or non-steroid anti-inflammatory compounds such as ibuprofin or aspirin in large doses. He, therefore, had no out of pocket expense himself to pay, due to the kindness of the company's program for people like Morphew who need it to live the semblance of a "normal" life. The cost for treatment of using etanercept for Morphew was a quarter of a million dollars a year. Ironically, ever since the new legislation overseeing Medicare benefits enacted in order to make it easier for people in need, such as Morphew, he is no longer eligible for that drug manufacturer's program because he must now comply with Medicare regulations requiring an out of pocket deductible that he just doesn't have to pay. Medicare assumes that money is available even to those people who are disabled to the extent that they are are unable to hold down "normal" jobs. It's nothing short of a miracle that he continues with his work anyway. He is currently under treatment with another medicine that hasn't received Medicare's approval yet, and when it does as expected, he will no longer be able to use that medicine either to help control pain, because he still won't be able to come up with the required copayment that Medicare requires. Hello Alice in wonderland.

I took some pictures of Morphew's work for him because he can't do it for himself. These sculptures are mostly small "maquettes", as it were, and most would require casting into a permanent medium such as bronze. I'm thinking of a single painting that was sold recently at a Christies auction by the still living artist Jasper Johns that belonged to David Geffen, and went for a neat sum of eighty something million dollars .I'd be willing to bet that Morphew could buy some etanercept himself if he could sell some of his own work for eighty something million dollars. I'm sure I could too, come to think of it. Be that as it may, I'm showing some of Morphew's valuable work here for him to be viewed should somebody be interested in it. If you are then please send me an email or call with your contact information so I can let Morphew know to contact you; and more importantly, that there are people interested in his life work. Unfortunately I don't have any dimensions to list with these examples, but I'm sure that Morphew would be able to provide dimensions should somebody be interested enough in his remarkable sculpture. It is important to note that in art, as in life, size doesn't matter.