Health Care Fine Art

Where have all the Spiders gone?

Arboreal Orb Weaver Spider (Neoscona spp.)

Taking pictures of Nature for HealthCare may seem like a glamorous undertaking but you probably haven't considered the downsides. For one thing there is the weather, which in Missouri can be blisteringly hot & humid during the summer and then bitterly cold at times in the winter.

Even worse, the bugs. This time of year one of the most annoying things tend to be the spider webs. Starting in late summer and continuing until winter there are usually hundreds of spider webs along the trails that I hike. It is often so bad that I have to carry a stick about as long and skinny as a fishing pole in front of me to catch the webs before they catch me. The webs and spiders are harmless, but the strands of the web are sticky and feels creepy when they cover your face.

This year there are almost no spider webs. It has me a bit worried; what has happened to all the spiders? Did the late spring frost kill some of them? Or did the 9-week long drought we are enduring make the habitat less appealing for the flying insects that the spiders eat? Or is it just a natural population dip.

I don't know, but I will say it is a lot more pleasant to take hikes.

Featured Artist: Eliot Porter

Eliot Porter, Pool in a Brook, Near Whiteface, New Hampshire, 1953

Eliot Porter is my hero.

His work has influenced me more than any other photographer. He too was a physician who left medicine to devote his life to photographing nature. His style (like mine) favors more intimate landscapes rather than the grand vistas we associate with Ansel Adams. Many of Porter's images are visually flat instead of showing the great depth that is common with Adams.

It was probably Porter's 1962 Sierra Club book, In Wildness is the Preservation of the World that had the biggest impact on me; it was on my bedside while I was in high school. The image on the cover of that book was the one shown above. Porter is best known for his pioneering use of color in nature photography in the 1950s. 

This week I am reading American Places, one of his many books. Looking at his images now I am struck by the technical limitations. The greens don't appear as "real", many of the images are low contrast and soft in focus. Much of this can be explained by the poor quality of art books in the early 80s. Even accepting the technical limitations I still came away feeling that something was missing. Many of the images were just plain dull.

Still, his images provided the spark for my passion to create nature images.

His collection of photographs is now at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth. I probably should go down and see the originals, maybe that would help.

Dublin Methodist Tour

This week I drove to Dublin, Ohio to drop off some canvas prints for the nearly finished Dublin Methodist Hospital. It turns out that there was a Pebble Project tour of the facility this week and they were nice enough to invite me to tag along. To see the pictures of the tour click here. Be sure to click the "Slide Show" button once the pictures of the tour appear. 

This is a new (from the ground up) 94-bed hospital located just outside of Columbus, Ohio. From talking with Designers and Architects all over North America, it seems that this is one of the most exciting new hospitals anywhere!

Why is it such a big deal? Because Cheryl Herbert, the president of the hospital, had the vision to create a facility that incorporated the best of Evidence-based design and the leadership skills to  make it happen without compromise. People who have been involved with the project kept referring to it as a "dream job"; that this would be a hospital that could be a model for all new hospitals.

Cheryl got involved early with the Center for Health Design and signed on to have this be a Pebble Project. Karlsberger was picked as the architectural firm. The Interior Designers that worked with me on the art for the project were Char Davis, Joanna Rogers and Roz Cama.

Backlit Panels - Part Two

A FedEx truck delivered a sturdy wooden box on Friday. After I unscrewed a side panel I found a very thin lightbox with one of my images installed. You can see me holding the backlit panel in the picture to the left (click on the image to see a bigger picture).

Today I called Tom Kitchell at  International Linear Matrix in Florida to ask him a few questions about the light box he sent me.

How is your lightbox different from others on the market?

Ours is one of the thinnest light boxes available - it is under two inches thick, even when it is double-sided. Also ours is unique in being made and serviced in the USA.

What would a lightbox like the one you sent me cost if a hospital were to buy one?

A 2 x 3-foot lightbox like the one we sent you retails for $480.

How long do the tubes last before they have to be changed?

The fluorescent bulbs are rated for 20,000 hours. That is 2.5 years of continuous use. We use standard T4 Flourescent Bulbs which are standard; very easy to find and easy to replace.

Do you typically supply the printed image to go in the lightbox, or do your customers tend to do that locally?

We can go either way. The images we print are done a Kodak N-CAD printer using Kodak Premium Backlit film that is 7 mils thick.

Is there anything else you would like to say?

Because our boxes are made here at our factory in Florida, we can give very quick turn around times, typically 7-10 days. All of our orders are custom. We can make a lightbox of any size up to 4 x 10-feet.

 

I plan on displaying this lightbox in my booth at the HealthCare Design 07 Conference in Dallas in November.

Part One of the discussion on Backlit panels can be found here.

For more information:
Thomas J. Kitchell
International Linear Matrix
10821 Canal Street
Largo, FL 33777
www.ilmusa.com
800-780-7446 x 3016

Critic Attacks 'Comfortable' Art in Hosptials

Many of the posts on this blog have focused on Evidence-based Art; especially the use of comforting nature images. But Grayson Perry, the Times of London Art Critic, recently wrote an essay criticizing the practice. Perry, who says that art should challenge, not comfort, was interviewed by Madeleine Brand on NPR today.

Click here to listen to the National Public Radio interview. It is 3 minutes long.

The article that triggered the interview is called "Does art have a place in hospitals?" It can be read by Clicking here.

The pink photo in this post is a self-portrait of Grayson. Click to see a larger image. He is not only a respected art critic, but he is also the winner of the prestigious Turner Prize in 2003. He is best known for his works in ceramics and for cross-dressing.

Suggestions Please

Who ever heard of an artist asking for suggestions?

Jackson Pollock never asked for suggestions, did he?

An artist is supposed to find their unique inner vision that expresses some deep truth and reveal it for others to see. Right? At least that seems to be the story in Art School.

However, it turns out that most patrons of the arts could care less about your inner vision; they know what they like and that is what they will pay for.

10 - 15 years ago I pursued my inner vision. I had a lot of fun creating abstract and surrealistic paintings. Very few of them sold. I found myself creating more-and-more art storage. When when I started to paint and photograph the nature in my backyard suddenly I  found that there was a market. People liked it and were willing to buy it.

I took that as a suggestion and have been following that path ever since.

The cartoon above was created by Mick Stevens for the March 26, 2007 New Yorker.

Wild Pumpkins

Wild Pumpkins

While walking along Hiller's Creek this morning I came upon a wild pumpkin vine with two mature pumpkins on it. In the 37-years that we have lived here this is the first time that I have seen pumpkins in the wild.

This was on a very remote part of the Prairie Garden Trust, near the Great Blue Heron Rookery. There is no way this was planted by anyone, so that means this particular plant must have come from seeds that somehow managed to escape from someones garden. Lucky for us; now we won't have to buy them at the store.

Book Review: The Deep

Mertensia ovum, Size 8 cm.

Nature photographs may be among the best images to display in healthcare settings, but not those from the book The Deep: The Extraordinary Creatures of the Abyss by Claire Nouvian. This wonderful coffee-table book is filled with fantastic pictures of animals you have never seen before. However, most of the animals are too creepy to look at. There should be a rating: Warning: inappropriate for sick people; surely they would get nightmares.

But I found the images beautiful and fantastic. You can get a sense by going to the website.

William Broad from the New York Times wrote:

Bizarre species from as far down as four and half miles are shown in remarkable detail, their tentacles lashing, eyes bulging, lights flashing. The eerie translucence of many of the gelatinous creatures seems to defy common sense. They seem to be living water. On page after page, it is as if aliens had descended from another world to amaze and delight.

Birds are Bad?

Worm-eating Warbler 10967

An experienced HealthCare Art Consultant was looking over my work and she rejected every single bird picture in my portfolio. She even rejected the Worm-eating Warbler picture shown above.

Clearly conventional wisdom says: No bird pictures in Hospitals!

Do we have any research to support that idea? I asked researcher Dr. Upali Nanda and she answered:

...not much data to reach a conclusion, however some amount of anecdotal evidence does seem to support this.

One prominent example is the installation of a large scale sculpture called the "bird garden" that was created as a window view for cancer patients and resulted adverse reactions amongst patients. This was partly due to the slightly abstract nature of the installation, but some patients saw the birds as frightening predators. I believe the complete reference is in Ulrich's chapter in Claire Cooper Marcus's book.

If you think about the beaks, and the beady-eyed look, that birds have in conjunction with the emotional congruence theory- then it is possible these features , even when harmless and aesthetically gorgeous, can come across as predatory to the emotionally vulnerable. Again, I cannot quote any "hard-core" evidence towards this, but we would love to do a study on it!

What would be involved with doing a study? What would the research cost?

Now cost of a study- that varies. A simple survey with around 60-70 patients will probably cost around 5000$. An outcome-based study would be much more.

If you wanted to do a study you would have to get in touch with one of the local hospitals (for sample population), a researcher (to design the study), field-assistants (to collect the data), and a statistical consultant (to analyze results). The researcher could be qualified to do both the research design, data collection and the stat analysis of course- but if you decide to go with different people- this is the kind of team you will need.

Upali Nanda PhD is Vice President and Director of Research at American Art Resources. American Art Resources is the largest art consulting firm in the United States working exclusively with the healthcare industry. It is one of only two Art Consulting firm conducting original research on Evidence-based Design. The other firm is Aesthetics based in San Diego.

29-foot wide Mural in Albany

Dog-Leg Fall Panorama 6287

My friend and computer consultant George Kopp is in Albany, NY this week. While he was there he tracked down and photographed a recent installation of mine.  I printed the mural myself on nine canvas panels. It is installed on a curved wall in the entrance to a medical clinic. The overall dimensions are 29-feet wide by 7-feet tall.

The Interior Designer on this project was Amy Pressman of Pressman Design Studio. She was the one who thought this up and made it happen. This was a very complex framing job, but as you can see, the results turned out great thanks to the framer Gary Weitzman.