I have found that we can anticipate the future by paying attention to artists. Like hackers, artists bend tools until they break and ask, “Why CAN’T I do that?” They push the edges of any field they find themselves in.
Autodesk, which makes software for people who make things, created the Pier 9 Residency Program to give artists, creatives, and manufacturers the chance to work with the latest digital fabrication tools, right alongside the developers. For example, Jennifer Berry, a Pier 9 artist in residence, was inspired by bees – the world’s first 3D printers. She created a 3D printer that extrudes beeswax, which is edible, durable, produces no waste, and can hold more than 50 times its weight.
How might we bring the artistic spirit into health care and include more people who ask, “Why not?”
One place to see artists in direct conversation with health is at Stanford Medicine X, an annual conference that is on hiatus this year. Below I share some of the work that artists have brought to Medicine X – and at the end I add one more artist whose work inspires me.
From top left, going clockwise: Anthony Carbajal, Yoko Sen, Elizabeth Jameson, and Gilles Frydman.
I love when artists invite people to participate in the creation of the work. For example, Rachel B. Stork Stolz set up a table where people could decorate spoons, which symbolize units of energy when living with disability or illness (see: The Spoon Theory, by Christine Miserandino):
Yoko Sen recorded people talking about the last sound they want to hear, at the end of their lives, then incorporated those voices and sounds into her performance:
Regina Holliday paints on site, incorporating themes from the keynotes and panels into her work, then presents it back to the audience:
Maggie Whittum is an artist whose work I recently found thanks to a tip from Doug Lindsay. Her depictions of chronic pain and the effects of stroke are indelible:
Do you have a favorite visual artist, poet, film maker (etc.) who works in conversation with health and health care? Let’s add more artists, more people who ask, “Why CAN’T I do that” to the public conversation about health. Please add their names and links to their work in the comments!
Featured image: A still from The Great Now What (video above).
Photo credits: Stanford Medicine X, Maggie Whittum
Hi Susannah,
Great article and lovely to be introduced to the artists whose work you present.
As an artist, I have been exploring the interaction between art and medicine for the past 20 years. As Research Associate at the School of Medicine at Dalhousie University ,I am my colleagues continue to use art as a mode of research and also creating avenues for the arts in all their forms to be integrated into the medical curriculum.
Thank you for illuminating work being done in this area.
Mark
Thanks, Mark!
Everyone: check out The Medicine of Art
And please share more links — we all could use more inspiration these days.
Hi Susannah,
Further to my tweet response to your blog post, let me introduce a number of really exciting art-health collaborations/initiatives that are worth following on twitter and investigating further via their individual websites.
Dr Monica Lalanda
Spanish physician Monica Lalanda (fluent in English, in addition to Spanish, her mother tongue) is a medical doctor and a very talented comics artist, with additional qualifications in medical ethics and bioethics. You can read about her work using comics to teach medical ethics to medical students here https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/teaching-confidentiality-through-comics-one-spanish-medical-school/2018-02 and/or hear her being interviewed (in English) about her work and comics https://healthmediapolicy.com/2018/02/14/using-comics-to-teach-medical-ethics-in-spain-and-beyond/. Monica is author of a wonderful book ConCienciaMédica (in Spanish) (now in its 3rd edition) which examines ethical dilemmas faced by physicians – the book, based on the Spanish Code of Medical Ethics, is completely in comic format. It’s instructive, visually appealing and humorous. It ought to be in English too – perhaps if enough people urge her to do an English version – one might just appear! Monica is also the founder of Grafica Medicina @graficamedicina https://medicinagrafica.com, the Spanish sister-site of the wonderful Graphic Medicine https://www.graphicmedicine.org
Monica can be found on twitter @mlalanda or https://medicoacuadros.wordpress.com
Matthew Paul Mewhorter
Matt is a talented cartoonist who is living with cancer. He draws cartoons about his life with cancer and depicts himself in these cartoons as an owl figure. You can find him on twitter @cancerowl or via his website cancerowl.com. Matt was recently interviewed by Robin McGee as part of her Cancer Book Club interviews about his cancer journey and his comics. You can access the interview here http://bit.ly/2eiq9qU
Mark Gilbert
Mark is a Research Associate/Artist @DalMedSchool. His focus is on interaction of medart, art, drawing EOLC and MedEd. He has done some really interesting work and has been involved in very moving artistic projects including Saving Faces @Saving_Faces http://savingfaces.co.uk/about-us/art-project https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=531&v=ayp4O7AbATk https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aUzC-rXixMo where he worked with patients to visually document their journeys before, after and in some cases actually during their surgery for injury, deformity or cancer. Other examples of his artistic work in the healthcare settings and with patients can be found on his website http://www.markgilbert.co.uk/index.php?/project/portraits-of-care/ He is also on twitter @Markagilbert
MK Czerwiec – Comic Nurse
Nurse, Author, Artist, Speaker. MK is the Artist-in-Residence at Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine and a Senior Fellow of the George Washington School of Nursing Center for Health Policy & Media Engagement. She has been making comics under the pseudonym Comic Nurse since 2000. She co-runs GraphicMedicine.org, a website devoted to the intersection of comics and health. You can follow her on twitter @comicnurse and find her on her website http://comicnurse.com
Graphic Medicine
Founders MK Czerwiec (@comicnurse) & Ian Williams (physician & artist) @TheBadDr with the collaboration of wonder resource @NoeTheMatt (Medical Librarian & comics aficionado)
Graphic Medicine is a real treasure trove of resources for those interested in the interface between the medium of comics and the discourse of medicine – website http://GraphicMedicine.org, twitter @GraphicMedicine. The Spanish sister site @graficamedicina https://medicinagrafica.com is run by @mlalanda & a team of physicians/healthcare professionals who are also talented artists.
Simon Tolhurst
Simon is a Portrait Artist in Residence UCLH Cancer Centre. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/health-39577218/the-artist-who-draws-cancer-patients You can find out more about Simon & his work on his website simontolhurst.co.uk. His twitter handle is @SimonTolhurst
DotMDConf
The annual Festival of Medical Curiosity in Ireland – an initiative of physicians @ronantkavanagh & @muirishouston. This annual conference brings together medical professionals and creatives with a wide range of talks and presentations on the intersection of the arts & healthcare. See http://www.dotmd.ie/talks/ &/or follow on twitter @DotMDConf
Eimear Farrell – Director ARTzheimer’s.
Eimear & the team use art to provoke bold & brave conversations about Alzheimer’s. Find out more about Eimear and her work http://www.artzheimers.com/about-us.html & https://vimeo.com/207532785. Website: http://www.artzheimers.com Twitter: @ARTZHEIMERS1
Thank you for making the jump from Twitter! I am thrilled to get these recommendations — inspiration for days…
you are welcome – they are really a great bunch of people and worth connecting with if arts & healthcare/medicine floats your boat.
Great list thanks for sharing.
Thanks Susannah, some of my abstract paintings are all about health, the territory of the body in pain. Somehow, those are not necessarily posted in my website, even though they have been in an exhibit. Hugs, G
I hope I get to see some of your paintings some day. Please do share a link if there’s a site featuring your work.
And here’s a fun flashback: you and I in front of the Guggenheim in Bilbao. Astonishing place.
Here you go. I need to update. https://bacigalupe.wordpress.com/my-paintings/
Hi Susannah,
You might be interested in the resources on my website http://www.therapycomics.com While much of this area is about people using art as a way to express their lived experience of health/healthcare, my resources try to use comics as a therapeutic tool to help people engage when They may struggle with standard text resources.
Wow! Big mistake clicking through this late at night — I’m immediately drawn in and NOT following your advice about good sleep hygiene 🙂 Thanks so much for the share.
Love this! I am writing a graphic novel and finding how one can think of storytelling in graphic terms.
I’ve been asking people on Twitter to post comments here, to add to my list of artists who work in conversation with health & care. I want to explain why because I realized that my request could seem stiff-necked, old-fashioned, and even selfish.
Tweets disappear. Yes, you can search for old tweets and yes, they sometimes bob up in the flotsam of Google results like a message in a bottle. By contrast, there are comment threads on this blog that have gone on for years. We go back to them like well-thumbed reference books. When reporters are looking for experts to call on a certain topic I send them to comment threads, where people smarter than me on a topic share what they know.
Come to think of it, it is selfish of me to want people to make the jump from Twitter. I’m greedy for their insights. I want to hear more than can fit in a tweet. Why do they recommend that article or person? What else do they want to say? Who else can I introduce them to, here in the comments section?
I also lure people here and give them a no-character-limit forum in the hopes that they will write an essay like one of these:
Julia Brennan on our collective textile heritage
Fard Johnmar on perseverance
A commenter with the initials BMC on engaging in end-of-life conversations before it’s too late
These are amazing comments and I’m grateful to the community that educates me and everyone reading, listening, watching.
Thank you for being here!
Susannah, it makes total sense that the resources should all be in one place, so I, for one, had no problem jumping from my tweet recommendations to this page to explain why I recommended the people I did. In truth there are many really cool initiatives in this space, and since people seem to have appreciated the resources I recommended yesterday, I will add a few more that might interest those with an interest in this topic, visiting this blog post.
Southmead Hospital public art film – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ldcC-QE4VI
This is a wonderful 10 minute film that explores the role that art plays in the new Brunel building at Southmead Hospital Bristol (UK). There are interviews with members of the project team and the artists commissioned to create artworks for the new hospital. The film explores the reasoning for integrating art into the fabric of the building, the role it plays, and why the artists responded in the way that they did.
The programme is led by arts in healthcare specialists Willis Newson and the works of art by the commissioned artists (Laura Ford – http://www.lauraford.net, Peter Randall-Page – http://www.peterrandall-page.com/about-artist/, Jaqueline Poncelet – https://www.art360foundation.org.uk/jacqueline-poncelet/, Jaime Hayon -https://www.ericvokel.com/blog/en/jaime-hayon-the-universal-artist/ , Ally Wallace -https://www.allywallace.co.uk/About , Tobias Rehberger – http://www.artnet.com/artists/tobias-rehberger/) are stunning. Its a beautiful marriage of function and beauty. If only every hospital could be like this.
Thoughts in Passing Project
On a more sombre note this project is a powerful combination of beautiful pencil portraits of patients at end of life and 3 minute audio edits of interview chats artist Claudia Biçen had with each patient whose portrait she drew. This is a very moving, visual tribute to lives lived and is so much more than an art project. http://www.thoughtsinpassing.com/subject/
Finally, for now, at least,
A super website that anyone with an interest in the field of arts, health and wellbeing ought visit, or at least be aware of. The Repository for Arts and Health Resources http://www.artshealthresources.org.uk/repository-search/ is a real treasure trove, particularly for academics and researchers; policy-makers in central and local government; health and social care managers, and creative arts professionals engaged directly in using their artistic skills in healthcare and community settings to support health and wellbeing. http://www.artshealthresources.org.uk
Incredible! Thank you so much. Inspiration for days and days.
Thank you for acknowledging and validating this process. We bent the rules to hack pop culture and created a Reality TV style show to reduce suicide and mental health stigma called Think You Can Shrink? and it worked! Contestants were people who thought they were good at giving advice (bartenders, hairdressers etc,) So much fun with a serious topic but accused of professional blasphemy by some colleagues.
I’d love to hear more stories about people who bend and even break rules to try to change health care for the better. Thank you!
What a wonderful, timely, warming post – thank you Susannah! I suspect a lot of us are starting to feel the MedX sirens calling only to remember our ship isn’t sailing at all this year (yet!). I’m taking a lot of solace in seeing how the MedX community —indeed the entire ePatient diaspora —is making many new islands with many new sirens. This post reminds me of how much our community has grown. We’re now discussing art in healthcare like its de rigeur (which…it is!).
You and my fellow commenters have captured so many of my favorite healthcare artists. Here are some of the others from our tweets:
– Last week visual artist and designer Katie McCurdy came to teach our team how to think visually and tell health stories with pictures https://twitter.com/nickdawson/status/1037062385104633856/photo/1
– And last week @SenSoundSpace came to Kaiser Permanente to awaken our ears and hearts and minds https://twitter.com/nickdawson/status/1037062701522944000/photo/1
– Also thinking of twitter.com/carbajalphoto’s amazing photos from his wheelchair perspective https://www.instagram.com/p/Bl_b-E2h8ac/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=yy9wic85cnve
Now twitter.com/fabralind has launched (what i suspect is the first) poet residency program at SibleyHub.com – he and his poets do custom poetry with patients and staff
There’s twitter.com/A_M_R_K’s work on visualizing grief: https://www.instagram.com/p/BloIe_eAQB6/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=1mmxlcvc3utk5
I think I’d even argue that twitter.com/stevenkeating’s 3D prints of his tumor is art too
and speaking of Keatings, twitter.com/zoecello has mixed her art and her lived healthcare experience beautifully
Loving the additions that are appearing to this list. Susannah here is a quirky, fun initiative that seeks to bring poetry into people’s busy lives and into healthcare settings.
The Emergency Poet – Emergency poems on prescription
Poet and writer Deborah Alma (aka Emergency Poet) and her creative partner James Sheard are behind this fun, quirky, participative, artistic initiative which sees “patients” being invited into the back of an old ambulance, to engage in a free, private, poetic health consultation. Once the consultation is complete, patients are prescribed an appropriate poem, verse or lyric based on the poet/patient interaction. The ambulance visits hospitals and a wide range of public spaces
Learn more about the initiative here via this short video report https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/magazine-29352405/poetry-on-prescription-from-the-emergency-poet or visit the website
Website https://emergencypoet.com/how-it-works-2/
Twitter – @emergencypoet
Thank you for the tip to check out The Emergency Poet!
Don Dizon, an oncologist, just shared the sad news of the death of Anya Krugovoy Silver, a poet who wrote about many things, including living with cancer:
Dedication
Because I know that healthy people fear us,
that they invent ways in which we differ
from themselves, it’s to you, dear friends,
to whom I write my poems. You,
whom I’ve never met, to whom I type
my frantic letters, whose suffering
fills my inbox long past midnight,
who read path reports like prophecies.
Who exist in stages.
You sit in the waiting rooms of far-
away cities, I invent faces to match
your histories, which regimens
have worked and which have failed.
I speak your names at night, a litany,
the repetition like picking a scab
or saying a rosary.
To you, I dedicate these words.
Let them stand before God
like a sheet of flame, smoking
your precious, flickering names.
in memory of Paula Ford
——————-
Here is Don’s remembrance and lessons learned from Anya.
Twitter buoyed up a link to the Eighth Annual Caregiving Art Show — deadline to enter is TODAY (Friday, September 7, 2018).
Another couple tweets that crossed my feed, illustrating the “let’s bend that tool as far as it can go” innovation spirit of artists, hackers, patients, and caregivers:
Tesla: As long as your work complies with our bug bounty policy, Tesla will not void your warranty if you hack our software https://ts.la/2PEzevm
James Wedding: Holy. Smokes.
Can you imagine what would happen if healthcare tech took this approach, and actually helped innovators make the system better instead of fighting us at every turn?
I’m looking at you, @myomnipod.#WeAreNotWaiting
(Note: If you are not familiar with the #WeAreNotWaiting hashtag, check out: OpenAPS.org)
Susannah- I love this post and there is so much art to come back to in the comments. Glad those from Twitter showed up here. I added this to my Pocket list so I can catch up with all the sources shared. I started painting when I was in treatment after initial diagnosis when my son’s friend gave me an acrylic painting kit. Then I started painting quilt squares in colors that represent different cancers – I can’t sew. http://womenofteal.blogspot.com/2012/05/third-painting-in-my-life-quilt-series.html You can see links to two other quilt pieces from that post.
Thanks again for this sharing of art and health.
Dee, that’s a beautiful quilt! Thank you for sharing the link.
There’s a special connection between textiles, like quilts, and technology — and, of course, women’s work on both. I wrote about it here.
I went to your link and started to read … I remembered that post. And sure enough I had commented. Not sure why at the time I didn’t share a link to a photo of one of my quilt paintings. Painting to me is like meditation. I concentrate on the colors and shapes and those worries seem to recede.
I recently came upon a quote that fits not only these political times, but the times in our lives when illness storms (or seeps) in:
“In such an ugly time the true protest is beauty.” – Phil Ochs
All this week people have been sharing their favorite artists of health care with me on Twitter and I’d like to capture some of those names here:
Michelle Litchman shared: @NicAMiller’s murmurmotion video shows woodcut sparlings coming to life and moving as a magnetized unit reacting to their seven nearest neighbors to represent depression. Nic Annette Miller’s explains the piece on the blog, She Explores.
Ruth Ann Crystal, MD, shared: Mike Natter, MD – and Lucy Kalanithi, MD, added a link to his work.
Naveen Rao shared: @ComicNurse is the coolest 🙂
Danielle Sepulveres shared her collaboration with illustrator Martiza Lugo: Disney princesses need health care
Joe Angelelli shared: Anne Basting – her art inspires life at our health + care #AgeFriendly intersection @AgeFriendlyPGH http://anne-basting.com/welcome/ https://www.timeslips.org/categories
Richard Anderson shared: May not be exactly what you are looking for, but of some relevance: “Co-design in health: What can we learn from art therapy?” http://interactions.acm.org/archive/view/may-june-2018/co-design-in-health …
Aaron Neinstein, MD, shared: @Justus_MedSculp @skrugman
I see Mike Natter being mentioned here – his work is superb – a physician and a very talented artist. Here is a link to a nice interview he recently did with Surviving Medicine https://survivingmedicine.org/045-dr-mike-natter/ …
Susannah, its wonderful to see people contributing to this important topic. Some time ago I created a database (it needs tidying up as its very “rough & ready” at the moment (though I can find all I need in it and it makes sense to me!) on the whole area of arts and health and wonderful initiatives in this space, from inspirational projects to healthcare and other professionals and artists/creators of all kinds working in this space.
Once I have polished up the database, I will put a link here for people who are interested. BTW I am loving the contributions on this topic here, and have learned about some new initiatives I was not familiar with. So thank you one and all.
Finally just to share a current initiative that readers here might be interested in, or wish to contribute to: The London Arts and Health Forum ( super resource (UK) website – http://www.lahf.org.uk – twitter @LAHFArtsHealth is publishing a series of 10 blog posts looking at the future of arts, health and wellbeing. The blogs, from leading practitioners working across the sector will ask what is going well and what could be better in this field of practice. They will challenge behaviours and attitudes and demand changes, they will celebrate good practice and coax clearer thinking. The first blog post was published today (10 September 2018). From Monday – Friday (for a period of two weeks, starting today (10 September) a blog post will be published. If you are interested in this topic, follow the blog at https://lahf.wordpress.com
Amazing! Thanks so much.
Hi Susannah,
Great topic. A few who come to my mind:
Linnea Olson (https://afreshchapter.com/2018/02/07/linnea-olson-advocate-artisit-alum/)
Janet Kozachek http://kozachekart.blogspot.com/
Marijke Vroomen Durning https://www.nextavenue.org/creative-art-quilting/
Bryce Olson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwNIq5n2z0M
Thanks, John! Each one of these is intriguing. I didn’t know that I would be tapping into a wellspring when I wrote this post.
To add to our conversation about how health intersects with art, STAT just published this article about Yoko Sen:
Anatomy of a beep: A medical device giant and an avant-garde musician set out to redesign a heart monitor’s chirps
Hi Susannah!
I wish I had seen this post when you wrote it. This is a great list of artists!
Let me introduce myself. Long, long ago I was an artist (a portrait maker) who then became a patient advocate with an interest in improving outcomes for patients suffering from cancer and other conditions by promoting the value of patient empowerment and self-care.
Over the last few years, I have made quite a few portraits of people deeply involved in medicine, from researchers to patients, to pursue a rather simple goal as an artist: to help re-humanize the medical enterprise. It has been a great adventure.
Thanks, Gilles! That’s the great thing about blogs — they sustain. The conversation is never over, as the great Ted Eytan has said.
I’m glad to have the link to the Not A Drawing Facebook page so people can see your work.
Sadly no longer alive, but the amazing work of Hollis Sigler: https://www.mmoca.org/mmocacollects/artists/hollis-sigler
Continuing my practice of adding links to a conversation, weeks & months later:
A Chinese Artist’s Humanizing 19th-Century Portraits of Disfigured Patients, by Veronique Greenwood for Atlas Obscura.
Brace yourself for some alarming images — and a lovely story.
Ashley Eakin is a filmmaker with a rare bone disease and she’s making a film about the masks we all hide behind. Check out her Kickstarter campaign for more info. And don’t miss her previous work: The Details and That Moment Social Media Sets You Free
Also, thanks to community colleague Robert Furberg for sharing this thread on Twitter about an article reviewing “a growing field of research to try and see how well drawings of an illness correspond to how patients think of their illness, how they’ll cope, and ultimately how likely they are to get healthy again.”
Thanks to a tweet from Steven Schlozman (aka @zombieautopsies) I was reminded of this amazing artist’s work:
“In a particularly difficult season of depression, photography was one of the tools Tara Wray used to cope.
“‘Just forcing myself to get out of my head and using the camera to do that is, in a way, a therapeutic tool,’ says Wray, a photographer and filmmaker based in central Vermont. ‘It’s like exercise: You don’t want to do it, you have to make yourself do it, and you feel better after you do.'”
Continue reading the NPR story: Channeling The Pain Of Depression Into Photography, And Finding You Are Not Alone
An update from my last exhibition called Cartographies of Territories and the Body.
http://artesycultura.uc.cl/es/creacion-investigacion/catalogo-de-proyectos/941-cartografias-del-cuerpo-y-territorios
My nonprofit uses *poets* to support patient safety, staff resilience, and the humanization of healthcare through empathetic listening. It’s called Poets In Residence.
Love this post and all the comments!!!
https://www.poetsinresidence.org/
In my quest to stay up to date on the research related to peer to peer health care, I’ve been reviewing recent publications like: “Parents’ Experiences of Caring for Their Child at the Time of Discharge After Cardiac Surgery and During the Postdischarge Period: Qualitative Study Using an Online Forum,” by Wray et al (J Med Internet Res 2018;20(5):e155).
I was curious to find out more about Jo Wray, the health psychologist who led the study, and found that she helped create “The Heart of the Matter” — a 2018 “exhibition that brings together art and medicine to reflect on the human heart.” Click through if you have time — it’s a gorgeous, participatory expression of humanity.