Hospital art exhibit highlights helping hands

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Underscoring a growing emphasis on art in hospital settings, a unique exhibit using mannequin hands goes on display this week at the University of Arizona Medical Center’s South Campus.

Fourteen artists, including hospital employees and professional artists from the community, were provided with one mannequin hand to incorporate into their artwork.

The idea came from a side business that one of the UA Medical Center nurses has making mannequins. Employees would sometimes play jokes on one another using mannequin hands. Officials in the hospital’s expressive arts therapy program were inspired. The result is a display called “A Show of Hands.”

The expressive arts program works on art therapy with psychiatric patients at the UA Medical Center’s Behavioral Health Pavilion. The pavilion is part of the medical center’s south campus at 2800 E. Ajo Way. But the exhibit is not by patients, but rather by professional local artists and hospital employees ranging from a management consulting team to a pediatric nurse.

The artists, responding to a call for artists placed with the Pima Arts Council and the UA Medical Center newsletter, were asked to engage with the theme of helping, and overcoming obstacles. The resulting exhibit reflects a wide array of approaches to that subject, including use of materials and personal connection to the theme.

Some of the pieces are paintings that incorporate the hand, one is a mosaic, and others are three dimensional. One is a hand holding a bird accompanied by pieces of metal with embossed sayings such as, “You are loved,” “You are free,” and “Joy is real.”

Another piece by artist Krista Neis shows the hand as part of a circle that’s been decoupaged with medical articles and photos from the 1870s until now, arranged as a chronology of medical progress. The piece is covered with three bandages — cheesecloth gauze, a stretchy Ace bandage and a third made of recently developed hemostatic wound dressing. The piece is dedicated to a woman named Tara who is fighting cancer.

Artist Vanessa Dearing created a three-dimension piece called “The Other Shoe” that reflects some of her own experience as a breast cancer survivor and the always-present fear of recurrence.

The piece incorporates a quotation from American writer Vera Nazarian:

“Worry is the secret weapon perpetrated upon us by the dark forces of the world that lurk in the shape of fear, uncertainty, confusion, and loss.

We, on the other hand, have our own secret weapon against these incorporeal fiends.

It is laughter.”

The exhibit opens today in the lobby of the UA Medical Center’s Behavioral Health Pavilion, which is on the South Campus. Some of the works will be for sale.

Hospitals are increasingly moving from sterile environments with little décor to incorporating artwork. Among the evidence is research by Dr. Esther Sternberg of the UA’s Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine, who has written about the way that beautiful surroundings can dull the brain’s pain path and contribute to healing.