Health Care Fine Art

City Wildlife Photography - A Fox in the Garden

Red Fox (Vulpes vulpes) photographed in the city of St. Louis

Recently I've been traveling to the Missouri Botanical Garden about once a week. I make the trip because the spring flowers are spectacular; prefect for healthcare images. I've never considered going in to photograph wildlife; after all, the garden is right in the middle of St. Louis.

However, this morning at 7 AM I caught a glimpse of a Red Fox on the grounds of the garden and was able to get this photograph.

Apparently foxes are becoming increasingly common in big cities, especially London. National Geographic recently had an article titled "10,000 Foxes Roam London"

Orioles Have Arrived

Male Baltimore Oriole (Icterus galbula) with Shagbark Hickory Bud

A few days ago I did a post on my crazy bird feeding system: click here.
I'm happy to report that it is working.
Most satisfying of all is that the Orioles have found it are using it heavily. I have seen up to 6 Orioles waiting to get on the feeder at one time.

This is the flashiest bird that occurs in my back yard. Stunning!

To learn more about Baltimore Orioles, Wikipedia has a good entry: click here.

Dezeen - a Global Design Blog

Dezeen (www.dezeen.com) is a Design News Blog that you might want to check out. Based in London, it's covers Design News from around the world. I liked the layout of the website; very stylish, uses lots of pictures and is easy to navigate. It is updated frequently; usually 2 or 3 times daily.

The Categories of Design covered are very broad:

• Architecture
• Interiors
• Media
• Graphics

HealthCare does not seem to be an area that is well covered on this blog. When I searched the site for "HealthCare", "Health Care" and "Hospital" I got no results.

Design Jobs (called dezeenjobs) is a new and active part of the website. It has extensive global job listings: click here

Dezeen is run by Marcus Fairs, a furniture design graduate who has shifted his career to be a journalist. He has also written a book: Twenty-First Century Design

Art and Fear

One of the books that helped me the most in Art School was: Art & Fear: Observations On the Perils (and Rewards) of Artmaking by David Bayles and Ted Orland.

This is a very quick read with some very practical advice for those who are contemplating getting serious about making art.

One idea that has stayed with me is Quantity leads to Quality. It has to do with the idea of avoiding the danger of perfectionism. Here is what they wrote:

The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. One side would be graded on quantity of work, the other side quality. The quantity group would be graded on the total weight of their work, whereas those in the quality group had to make only one work. When it came to grading time a curious fact emerged: the works that were of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity.

To require perfection is to invite paralysis.

Imperfections (or mistakes) are your guides- valuable, reliable, objective, non-judgemental guides- to matters you need to reconsider or develop further.

From my experience, the idea is right. When I see the output of artists who keep working day-in and day-out, their work is better.

If you are interested in reading more of the notes that I took a decade ago, click "continue reading"

Same Picture, Different Day

Yesterday I went out and shot 24 landscape pictures that are the same pictures I have taken before. By repeating the exact same pictures over time I hope to be able to see the landscape in new ways; like watching a movie that compresses years into seconds.

This is my third year for the project, which means it is just beginning. It will be much more interesting decades from now. My hope is to see trees sprout, mature and then die; to see the landscape evolve.

So far the pictures show mostly season variation. For example, in the pictures above you can see that leaf growth was much further along in 2006 than the last two years.

The website for this project is: www.landchange.shorturl.com

Favorite Flower for HealthCare

American lotus (Nelumbo lutea)

I just finished planting 15 Lotus tubers around the edges of one of our farm ponds. Lotus has been my favorite wildflower for years. It  has a very dramatic blossom; the size of a cabbage, but at the same time it is very delicate. It is interesting to photograph in all seasons.

I never get tired of taking Lotus pictures which is probably why there are so many pictures of them on my website: link to Lotus pictures. I even like the way it's scientific name sounds: Nelumbo lutea. It sort of rolls off your tongue like poetry.

Lotus is also my favorite flower for HealthCare. There is something about it that is calming and focusing. Perhaps that is one reason the lotus has also been a popular symbol in Hinduism and Buddhism. One website said that the flower of the lotus "symbolizes the means to achieve non-attachment, as it lives in the earth but rises above the water. In Hinduism it has been used to represent the sun, and is associated with mother goddesses as a symbol of fertility."

One thing that has frustrated me about Lotus is that I've not been able to get it to grow. We do have thousands of them growing in the swamp at the Prairie Garden Trust, but I've been wanting them closer to my house so I can see them every day when I take a walk. I've been trying to convert a 100-foot wide farm pond into a Lotus garden for years and have met with a total lack of success.

This year I went all out, I ordered 15 tubers from William Tricker, America's Oldest Water Garden Specialists (est. 1892). Now that they are safely tucked into the mud I will keep my fingers crossed and hope that they will thrive.

Should the Government Regulate Art?

In March I attended the Symposium called “The Importance and Value of Art in Health Care".  One of the best speakers was Bill Ivey. Since he was such a good speaker I figured he would be a good writer so I ordered the book he just wrote : Arts, Inc.: How Greed and Neglect Have Destroyed Our Cultural Rights

Conclusion: I disagree with his argument that the government needs to do more to protect the Arts.

The crux of his argument is that art needs the advocacy of government to protect us from the greed of big business. I just can't accept that. The digital era is starting to liberate artists from being dependent on big business.

Most artists these days have websites to reach the public directly. They don't need the government for that.

Artists now have the tools to produce their own finished product without having to rely on a big studio. Musicians can record and distribute their own CDs. Digital tools (cameras, printers, high-speed Internet) have allowed me to run a thriving art business in a remote rural area.

I would argue that the Arts in America are stronger now than they have ever been. One reason for that is that our government for the most part stays out of the way. If we want to ensure that the Arts in America continues to thrive we just need to be sure the government does nothing other than assure artistic freedom.

Bill Ivey was the chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts from 1998 through 2001, was director of the Country Music Foundation from 1971 to 1998, and was twice elected Chairman of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. He presently serves as founding director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University.

Evidence-Based Design: What Is It?

I just received my second copy of HERD, the new Journal on the use of Research in Design.

In skimming the table of contents one article jumped out: Evidence-Based Design: What Is It? by Kirk Hamilton and Jaynelle Stichler. They are the two co-editors of HERD.

In my conversations with Art Consultants, Designers and Architects I get a sense that Evidence-Based Design is a topic that generates a lot of confusion. To help clarify the confusion, I think this one page essay should be required reading. Here are some quotes:

... there is also significant variation in how designers and healthcare clients define the term “evidence-based” anything... These definitional variations can create unrealistic expectations about the process and skepticism about its efficacy in making a real difference in patient, provider, or organizational performance outcomes. The purpose of evidence-based design is to make use of data from multiple credible sources to guide design-related decisions with the ultimate goal of improving the patient care experience, the staff work environment, and organizational performance.

Simply put, evidence-based design is the process of integrating the best research evidence, clinical and design experience, and client (patient, staff, hospital, and community) values to guide healthcare design decisions.

Incidentally, in skimming over the table of contents I did not see any topic specifically about the use of Art in HealthCare. But much of what is written here relates indirectly to Evidence-based Art.

D. Kirk Hamilton, FAIA, FACHA is coeditor of the Health Environments Research & Design Journal (HERD) Mr. Hamilton is Fellow and Associate Director of the Center for Health Systems & Design as well as an Associate Professor of Architecture at Texas A&M University in College Station, TX. He is also a Founding Principal Emeritus, WHR Architects, Houston and Dallas, TX.

Jaynelle F. Stichler, DNSc, RN, FACHE is coeditor of the Health Environments Research & Design Journal (HERD) and an Associate Professor of Nursing at San Diego State University, School of Nursing, College of Health & Human Services.

Featured Artist: Rhonda Grimberg

Peaceful by Rhonda Grimberg

The April issue of HealthCare Design arrived today and I was delighted to see Rhonda Grimberg's work featured in the Art Corner. To read the article click here.

Studio portraits of garden flowers against a white background is her signature look. These cheerful images fit perfectly in healthcare interiors.

I met Rhonda at the HCD Conference in 2005 and I have enjoyed keeping in touch with her since then. One thing I learned from the article was about her notecard project:

Grimberg decided to use her art as a positive healing force by providing individually packaged notecards and envelopes to infusion centers. The concept is to make the notecards available to patients as they spend time getting their chemotherapy...They represent joy, hope, and looking forward. They are happy images, and I hope this kind gesture will be something to brighten patients' days and serve a purpose...

You can see more of Rhonda's work at her website: www.RhondaGrimberg.com

Transported to a faraway place

Art at Somerset Medical Center’s Steeplechase Cancer Center

Roger Yee (editor of HealthCare Spaces) gets to see some of the most exciting new Hospitals being built in America. I asked him if there was any art installation that caught his eye recently.

If you’d like an interesting example of how art is being used in new healthcare facilities, I would draw your attention to a modest but effective installation, the linear accelerator room at Somerset Medical Center’s Steeplechase Cancer Center, Somerville, New Jersey, designed by Array Healthcare Facilities Solutions.

In this windowless space, the design team has placed three floor-to-ceiling-high “picture windows” depicting a forest scene in backlighted photography. Though designers usually make no attempt to simulate a window with art in this kind of situation, the effect is skillfully reinforced here by an informal and non-institutional setting using wood and wood-like cabinetry and flooring as well as good lighting. The illusion of a forest just beyond the walls is thus surprisingly effective.

Neither the patient nor the medical staff actually believes the art is an actual window into a forest scene, to be sure. However, the composite imagery of the room makes us want to believe it. When we fall under the spell of art, our desire to believe--or suspend our disbelief--may be all we need to feel transported to a faraway place.

Yee, a prolific author, graduated from the Yale School of Architecture. He has 23 books currently listed on Amazon, including the soon-to-be-released HealthCare Spaces Vol 4.

Roger Yee
Editorial Director
Visual Reference Publications
New York