JIM RISWOLD
GLEEVEC
2013 color digital print

33-1/2 x 33-1/2 inches, Edition of 10, $750.
24 x 24 inches, Edition of 10, $500.


On August 16, 2000, I was diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia.

I was told I had somewhere between two to four years to live.

Later that year, Brian Druker calls me while he’s boarding a plane to Houston and
tells me, “I hear we have to meet.”

We meet. He introduces me to daily doses of Interferon. Interferon is no fun.

In May 2001, I meet Gleevec, Druker’s newfangled treatment for CML.

Sometime in early 2004, my mom and I watch a movie called Ripley’s Game. It’s
about a family man who wants to provide more for his family and becomes a hit
man because he has nothing to lose. He has nothing to lose because he is dying
of CML.

This upsets even my chronically optimistic mother. I try to assure her that despite my
illness, I will not become a hit man. I don’t convince her.

Later in 2004, tests can’t find any leukemia in 100,000 of my cells.

They still can’t.

Thank you, Brian.

My mom thanks you a thousand and one times for preventing me from becoming
a hit man.

This piece is dedicated to my mom, Paularose Riswold. She, despite no oncological
know-how, is one of the most powerful weapons against cancer in the whole
history of everything.