THE HEALING POWER
OF ART

Health care professionals find solace in art

By JASMINA WELLINGHOFF

Photography JANET ROGERS

It all started over a bowl of soup at the El Campesino Restaurant on Fredericksburg Road. Bihl Haus Arts executive director Kellen Kee McIntyre was having lunch with Paula Davies, founder and chair of the Health and Healing Consortium, when the conversation turned to discussing how their respective nonprofit organizations could collaborate.

“I have always been interested in the arts,” says McIntyre, who has a Ph.D. in art history, “but I have also been interested in two additional art-related fields — the healing aspect of art and making art available to nontraditional audiences. As we were talking that day, Paula suggested that we invite doctors who were also artists to show their art and talk about how it has impacted their self-care. Everything came out of that.”

McIntyre had already seen the benefits of letting people who are not professional artists engage in making art. Since the Bihl Haus gallery is located on the premises of the Primrose at Monticello Park Apartments, it was only natural for her nonprofit to offer classes for the residents, most of whom are older retirees. “We have seen firsthand that they were receiving health benefits from taking these classes,” she notes.

Once they agreed on the idea, the two women got busy. They identified and contacted health care providers throughout the city, including therapists, dentists and nurses in addition to physicians, and last fall turned their idea into reality when Rx Art: Take Your Medicine opened at the Bihl Haus featuring 20 healers/artists. The show was such a success that they are planning a second one for this fall, to take place Oct.16-Nov.14. As in 2008, both experienced artists and novices who have never shown their work in public before will be welcome. The point of the show is not to flaunt the latest contemporary art trend, say the two organizers, but to focus on art as a vehicle for healing for adults. The question they would like people to ponder is this: Is art medicine? And while they have first invited healers to provide their answers, both Davis and McIntyre feel that engaging with the arts can be therapeutic for everyone.

“Nonprofits that work with children already use this concept,” says Davies, “yet when it comes to adults, there’s very little available in the community. In American culture, art is seen as impractical. People have dismissed it and thrown the baby out with the bathwater. Indigenous cultures, on the other hand, make painting, dance, drumming, etc., part of their culture. It’s not about being a great painter or sculptor; it’s about self-care.”

Turning trouble into gold

One physician who has answered that question for herself is internist Dr. Jane Appleby, who divides her time between serving as the medical director for VITAS Innovative Hospice and working as a chief quality officer with the Methodist Healthcare System. While many doctors would probably shrink away from hospice work, Appleby embraces it.

“I like the team approach of hospice care. Doctors, nurses, social workers, chaplains all work together to take care of the patient and the patient’s family,” she explains. “All aspects of care are included — physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. We are looking at the whole picture. There’s no pressure to see four patients per hour, so each family gets the attention they need. Healing occurs not just by writing a prescription or performing a test but also through the interaction with patients and through relationships. And healing can happen at more than one level. I have seen emotional and spiritual healing happen with my patients many times in many different ways.” Appleby also points out that hospice doesn’t always mean death, especially for non-cancer patients. The comprehensive care they receive can and does occasionally help improve patients’ outcomes. Nevertheless, medicine is often a high-stress occupation, and one way Appleby copes with it is by turning to art.

She first discovered this great escape while she was still running her solo practice years ago. The stressful job had taken a toll on her own health, forcing her to take three different medications for hypertension by the time she turned 40. “I needed to do something different, and that’s when I started painting,” she says. This was in 2002, and shortly after, the budding artist entered her first group show at the VIVA Bookstore and, to her surprise, even sold a painting.

Largely self-taught, Appleby eventually took sculpting lessons two years ago, which led to a whole new area of discovery. Today, she creates softly contoured, largely abstract stone pieces that exercise a calming influence on the viewer. A piece named Madonna, for instance, features a small, egg-like stone cradled inside a protective curving stone vessel. The idea behind it is to evoke a safe, healing space. And in a way, that’s what sculpting does for Appleby.

“It’s very physical. The act of creating something in stone, the interaction with the emerging artwork is almost like a healing meditation,” she says. “I can get lost in it. Each piece is like a journey. I start with an idea, then build on that step by step. It takes me away from thinking.”

For Rx Art 2009, she is considering painting something on the theme of personal transformation, a subject that has preoccupied her for a while. Drawing on the language of alchemy, the artist describes her quest as exploring “how we transform our personal lead and find the gold.” One of her existing canvases, for instance, shows a heart with flames shooting out of it. The metaphorical fire can be seen as burning “all the icky stuff to leave behind the golden elixir,” she suggests. Another piece actually titled Transform features the Chinese symbol for transformation against a golden field of color, itself partially framed by bands of black and dark coral.

Clearly, Appleby is seeking some of the same answers from art that her medical training has taught her to pursue. In her artist’s statement she wrote: “Medicine, at its best, offers healing. Art allows us to move into a nonlinear experience of healing. Besides that, making art is a lot of fun.”

Like surgery, but no one is bleeding

Dr. Beth Engelsgjerd McMahon is also planning to take part in Rx Art this year. The now retired obstetrician-gynecologist is also a fiber artist, who was initiated into the needle arts by her grandmother when she was very young. As a medical intern, she used to stitch quilt pieces while on call to keep herself from falling asleep during the night shift.

Many years later, however, with a thriving practice in full swing, Engelsgjerd decided not only to revive her interest in fiber arts but to move a step beyond her former skills by designing her own fabrics. Beginning in 1995, she took classes in surface design, fabric dyeing and silk-screening from a number of established artists, including the doyenne of the genre in San Antonio, Jane Dunnewold.

Eventually, the increasingly confident artist ventured into more exotic territory by mastering the Japanese techniques of tie-dyeing called shibori and a style of decorative stitching known as sashiko.

Today, her creations adorn the walls and hang from the ceilings of her cozy house in North Central San Antonio. In the living room, a piece titled Incision made of silk organza and a silk/hemp blend looks at first like a colorful abstract design. But the inspiration for it came from the layers in the abdominal wall that the doctor had seen many times in surgery. On the opposite wall is an arresting art quilt dominated by a mighty tree with inflamed, riotous branches. Called World:Pieced, the work was created in response to 9/11, explains the artist.

The tree represents the tree of life, the hope for the future, but behind it are the Twin Towers as the artist envisioned them before and after the destruction. In the latter case, they look like ghosts of their former selves. The work was selected for an exhibit in Slater Mill, R.I., in 2004. She has also participated in group shows of the Fiber Artists of San Antonio and produced art to wear for FASA’s annual fashion show.

Since she retired in 2008, Engelsgjerd has continued to learn and explore new media such as paper weaving and traditional loom weaving. “I didn’t know I would love weaving so much, but I do,” she says. “A lot of thought goes into it; it’s technically demanding, a little like surgery. You figure out what you need to do — that’s diagnosis — then proceed to get it done with your hands. But no one is bleeding here; it’s much less stressful.”

Like Appleby, she finds that art making opens the door to personal discovery. “Art gets us in touch with a part of ourselves that we don’t always allow to come out in the office. It’s that shift in perception, from always analyzing everything, to that other, more intuitive place. You start seeing things differently,” she says.

When she was still practicing, she also found that art can be a great conversation facilitator. Patients often reacted to artwork displayed in her former medical offices. “It loosened people enough to start talking about themselves. It seems like a neutral subject at first, but it often led to a lot of revelations,” she notes. “As a physician, if you listen carefully, patients will essentially tell you what’s wrong, and that’s why spending time talking is so important.” At the same time, fragments of patients’ stories would stay with her, sometimes preoccupying her own mind for a long time. Transforming them into art would often help her regain peace and perspective.

Multiple exhibits

For Rx Art, Appleby and Engelsgjerd will be joined by several dozen other healers/artists working in a variety of media. In keeping with the focus of the exhibit, the show will not be curated in the traditional sense, although McIntyre will select the work(s) from each artist. More importantly, the organizers have invited other institutions to join in this year, including UTHSC, University Hospital, Inspire Fine Arts Center, Children’s Bereavement Center, the Cancer Care Center of South Texas (northeast location) and possibly others who were not yet on board at the time of this writing. Though most will be showing works by healers, the Inspire Center has chosen to feature its adult art students.

In conjunction with the shows, Bihl Haus will also present several workshops that use visual art, poetry, drumming and other disciplines to help people deal with stress, pain, grief, hopes and self-expression. The public opening will be preceded by a fund-raiser Oct. 10 that, besides food and music, will also include — what else? — art activities for both kids and adults.

“Our goal is to take this all over the city,” says McIntyre. “By our third year, we’ll be eligible to join the list of city-promoted fall festivals, and that will give us even more visibility. We want to make people aware that therapeutic art can be part of self-care for everybody, not just the healers. We are creating the environment to encourage discussion of this issue, the validity of which has been recognized with programs implemented all over the country. But we don’t yet fully understand the impact of these practices.”

Rx Art WORKSHOP SCHEDULE

Oct. 25, 2 p.m.
Expressive Art, presented by Dianne Monroe

Oct. 31 Mandalas and Movement, presented by the Children’s Bereavement Center

Nov. 7 Drumming Your Emotions, presented by the Children’s Bereavement Center

Nov. 11, 7 p.m. A History of the Healing Power of Wine, lecture and wine tasting by Dr. Kolleen Guy, author of the book, When Champagne Became French, and member of the UNESCO Commission to Preserve the Champagne Region of France

Nov. 14 Poetry Therapy, a mini-symposium presented by Jim Brandenberg, Mo Saidi and P.C. McKinnon

Date TBA Journal Writing for Healing presented by Leia Francisco

For more information about the workshops, call Paula Davies at (210) 722-5648 or e-mail pdavies@hhcinfo.org.