And you may ask yourself, “how did I get here?”
In Dear Ethanol, Kerry Payne Stailey constructs a quiet, unsettling world shaped by true accounts of lives altered by alcohol — her own included. What unfolds is a story of descent and redemption, told not through spectacle, but through small, intimate reckonings.
Working with carefully staged miniatures, Kerry reimagines confessions from those living alcohol-free, alongside her own. Each scene becomes a visual translation of lived experience — fragments of grief, clarity, resilience, and release. The work unfolds slowly: one image a day, one day at a time.
At its core, Dear Ethanol is a posthumous dialogue with the artist’s father, who battled alcoholism and died by suicide. It is both elegy and confrontation — an offering of love, and a refusal to look away.
The work also challenges the cultural mythology surrounding alcohol. While heavily marketed as a symbol of connection, glamour, and even wellness, alcohol remains one of the most widely normalized addictive substances in the world. In a culture that encourages consumption yet stigmatizes those who struggle — or those who choose to abstain — the contradictions are stark.
Alcohol is a Group 1 carcinogen and a contributing factor in more than 200 diseases and injury conditions. Globally, harmful alcohol use is responsible for approximately 3 million deaths each year — nearly 6% of all deaths worldwide. In the United States alone, excessive alcohol use accounts for roughly 95,000 deaths annually, and is implicated in a significant proportion of suicides.
And yet — alcohol remains legal, ubiquitous, and deeply embedded in our social fabric.
Dear Ethanol sits inside that tension.
“Inspired by the virtual recovery communities I discovered when I stopped drinking, Dear Ethanol is my salute to all who choose sobriety over intoxication in an era when alcohol is worshipped. I chose to represent these scenes in technicolor deliberately. Enough darkness, enough shadows. These days feel bright and happy, shiny and new. I hope these images land in a way that helps others reclaim their joy, one confession, one connection at a time. ”
