Heavy metal  Abstraction doesn't takethe bite out of thesecreepy
machines  Even for staunch flesh eaters, which I am, a meat-
packing plant carries all the charm of the sixth level of hell.
Doesn't matter how spotless, how ventilated, how safe for the
workers, it's just one step removed from the actual
slaughterhouse--all those disembodied slabs of meat a jarring
reminder of things dead and dying at our hands. You can wipe the
blood off the conveyor belt, but you can't take the red out of
raw sirloin.  Joseph Stashkevetch does just that, though, in one
of his newest works, and so well that all that carnality
suddenly looks quite beautiful. The pale fat that marbles its
way through the meat, the translucent plastic of its shipping
container, the shiny plane of the steel belt that whirs it all
away to the waiting trucks--these elements are so distilled and
romanticized in Stashkevetch's grayscale drawing that they
become the unlikely subjects of a tranquil still life.  Not that
the New York artist harbors some m