Artists never know when inspiration is going to strike. For Jordan Eagles, it happened on a bike ride near Battery Park. The lifelong New Yorker noticed another person was wearing a t-shirt with a slogan that combined his two passions: the New York Mets and blood.
Eagles called back to him, and asked where he received the shirt. It read, “The Mets are in our blood,” and was sponsored by New York Blood Center. The man said he received the shirt when he donated blood himself.
That caught Eagles’ attention. For the last 30 years, he’s used blood in his artwork to explore how it represents people and belonging. As a sexually active gay man, he’s barred from donating blood, a stigma that dates back to the AIDS epidemic.
After finding the shirt on eBay, Eagles initially intended to wear it at his studio. But then he realized the folly in that. “It struck me that I couldn’t even believe I would consider wearing the shirt as a studio uniform when I’m not even eligible to receive it,” he tells Queerty. “That moment is when I realized the shirt was actually meant to be an artwork.”
How about we take this to the next level?
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This summer, Eagles’ vision has become a reality. His Bases Loaded exhibit, on display through August 9 at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn, displays various Mets and baseball-related items mixed with blood. Mets giveaway t-shirts and sensationalized New York Post covers are splattered with blood drawn from HIV-positive gay men, while resin sculptures represent different portions of baseball mythology.
One display, called “balls,” preserves blood-stained paper towels used to clean up his studio. Others mix vials of blood drawn from Eagles and his father, who gifted him with his love for the Mets and America’s Pastime.
In between showings, Queerty recently caught up with Eagles to chat more about his blood-soaked, baseball passion project. Here’s what he had to say…
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QUEERTY: Why is baseball a good vehicle for your message?
JORDAN EAGLES: We call baseball America’s Pastime. It’s one of those sports that’s rooted in the fabric of our culture. The shirt itself is about baseball: it has the Mets and blood. The Mets are in our blood. The question of what is literally in your blood versus the idea of blood. HIV could literally be in your blood, or your family could literally be in your blood. But people use blood as this divisive tool. “The immigrants are ruining the blood of our nation,” we often hear in politics. For me, the jumping off point is about blood donation policy and stigma towards the LGBTQ+ community. But it’s broader. It’s also trying to look at blood, which is a life force, can be used as something that’s divisive. And specifically, in the language of blood.
How about using baseball as a metaphor?
In terms of baseball itself, when I was growing up, making out was first base. And second base was touching over the clothes. Maybe third base was something else. The framing of adolescent sexual exploration came through language about baseball. In terms of gay culture, there’s the pitcher and the catcher. I think even those terms—pitcher and catcher—can be stigmatizing. The pitcher is considered dominant or “better than.” The way we look at language both in the heterosexual adolescence and then even in gay culture, in can be stigmatizing. It’s framed in the language of baseball.
Your exhibit features two iconic covers from the New York Post: one that says “blood feud” with Yankees great Roger Clemens on the cover and the infamous Mike Piazza “I’m not gay” headline–with “not” outlined in blood. What do those represent?
It was another example of the word “blood” so prominently plastered, so in-your-face. This sensationalizing of blood. The idea of a blood feud speaks to the struggle within the LGBTQ+ community for equality in terms of blood donation, and this larger idea towards a fight for equality. What prompted me to turn it into artwork is, the date of that newspaper is June 14, 2001. It believe it was June 14, 2005 when the World Health Organization anointed it World Blood Donor Day. I couldn’t resist the coincidence.
[As far as] Piazza, he was a Hall of Fame catcher for the Mets and rumored to be gay. I marked the word “not” in blood from a friend who was HIV-positive. Piazza was a good sport, from what I can remember. It’s more that the media sensationalized it, or suggested that it’s a horrible thing to be gay. It’s something to denounce. In the context of the exhibition, I think that speaks broadly towards the stigma of LGBTQ+ individuals.
Are there any displays that particularly stand out to you?
There are two works that preserve my blood mixed with my father’s blood. One of them is called “the goat.” It stems from during the research of this project, uncovering 69 photos when I counted them. I thought that was crazy, too, considering the Mets won their first World Series in 1969. There were these photos of my dad and and me. I was a two or three year old baby. He was holding me and having me onto his shoulders. Just these really loving father-son images. Except in all of them, I’m wearing a Mets jersey or a Mets cap! To me, it speaks to the idea, when you say “the Mets are in our blood,” what else in our blood? Our families are in our blood.
Pride nights have been a big topic in baseball this year. The Mets host a really popular one. What are your feelings on them?
I’ve been to one Pride night previously. To be quite honest with you, I didn’t see very many gay people. From the looks on Grindr, I was seeing people from 25 miles away. It was one of those,”Let’s see who’s here in the stadium,” and I was getting people from Flushing. But no one was 300 feet away!
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