Arts In medicine
My interest in making art outside conventional classrooms has led me inside hospital clinics, rehab centers, pediatric waiting rooms and nursing stations to create work with and for the public. I believe that the act of making is an act of mending. I have developed an arts practice that relies on lacing together cloth, paper, ink, thread. Projects have included: making large whimsical art quilts with pediatric patients to raise money for their care and scientific research; layering dreams and memories in translucent silks with cancer patients for wall installations; building words on fabrics to make head scarves; engaging an entire hospital staff to contribute to piece of abstract art that celebrates the splendors of the natural world; writing impossibly perfect poems with 6-year-olds and stitching in their truths, by hand. I have noticed that making art together doesn't respect the boundaries of clinical science--it responds to the wide open space of the imagination.
Moon Garden
During the Fall of 2019, I collaborated with Grey Brown, Family Services with Duke Intensive Care Nursery and together we offered a 6 week textile art residency engaging families and caregivers to create Moon Garden. Using the NICU conference room and nearby Family Waiting area, I set up a pop-up textile studio in which folks helped to screen print silks, collage fabrics and hand stitch the Art Cloth. Participants also created a lively suite of greeting cards from materials generated from the project.
Wrap Your Head Around It
Wrap Your Head Around It is (2014-1015) an interdisciplinary arts project that links text with textile through community action. Wrap’s fundamental goal: the making of 200 hand-dyed and printed scarves with and for the cancer community. Read more...
Remapping the Mountain
Remapping the Mountain (2012) was created with employees of the Blue Ridge Regional Hospital in Spruce Pine, NC (including employees with regional clinics) to explore healing art connections through the creation of a collaborative work of visual art for the hospital. I led participants through a mixed media arts residency designed to fit in and around a busy workplace.
Town Flowers
Town Flowers (2006) an embellished art quilt commissioned for the Cafe at The Levine Children's Hospital, Charlotte, NC. The six panel art quilt includes fabrics (hand dyed and painted cottons and linen) created with Charlotte youth. Each of art quilts is pieced, machine stitched, beaded, 40 x 40 inches.
FACES
Faces (2006) is an art quilt triptych created with hospitalized youth at Duke Children’s Hospital, Durham, NC during a textile residency program.
Writing the Under Story
Writing the Undersong (2005) is a textile collage created with patients and their families at the Moses Cone Regional Cancer Center in Greensboro, NC. The project was supported by Green Hill Center for NC Art and the North Carolina Museum of Art.
WISHING GARDEN
Wishing Garden (2005) is an art quilt triptych created with hospitalized youth at the Duke Children’s Hospital, Durham, NC during a textile residency project.
Learn more about all my projects in ARTS IN MEDICINE.
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