Art from the Heart Celebrates Creativity of Team UAMS
| The second “Art from the Heart: Creative Works from Team UAMS” went virtual July 9 as about 60 people tuned in to celebrate the creativity of UAMS employees and students.
Lisa Headley, a UAMS medical student, submitted “Mother and Child,” a painting she created in her Art and Medicine class.
Twenty artists submitted work for the exhibit including paintings, sculpture, poetry and jewelry, which attendees were eager to admire and discuss. Staff from the Arkansas Arts Center and Angela L. Scott, M.D., Ph.D., from the Department of Pediatrics and the Department of Medical Humanities and Bioethics, led the discussions on the pieces, which were divided into thematic groupings.
“There is so much creativity at UAMS,” said Wendy Ward, Ph.D., director of Interprofessional Faculty Development in the Office of Interprofessional Education (IPE). “Art from the Heart allows UAMS to celebrate the beautiful and thought-provoking creative work that employees and students are creating.”
Shalese Fitzgerald submitted “Dual Tetrahedral,” the only sculpture in the exhibit this year.
Last year’s inaugural Art from the Heart event at the Arkansas Arts Center was well received, so IPE and the College of Medicine’s Department of Medical Humanities and Bioethics were eager to reprise the event.
Originally scheduled for April, the in-person event was derailed by the novel coronavirus, so the decision was made to move the event to Zoom.
“Art can be a balm to the troubled soul, whether one is creating it or enjoying it,” said Ward. “During this stressful time, we thought Team UAMS members needed art now more than ever.”
The participating artists and their submitted works were:
- Jason Cook – “Three Rivers in Copper,” “Bead Swipe,” “St. Patty’s Scene,” “Thin Red Line”
- Marie Mesidor – “Pour It All In”
- Rachel Armes – “Face the World”
- Lisa Headley – “Mother and Child”
- Jennifer Steck – “Einstein in Oils,” “Painting with wool”
- Anne Langley – “Woman in the Wind,” “Purple Haze”
- Jason Rawn – “Looking at a Pond One November”
- Gohar Azhar – “Together,” “Tree Rain and I”
- Susan Smith Dodson – “Crater Lake National Park”
- Marissa Miller – “Aura”
- Aparna Sharna – “Heaviness: A suicidal patient’s perception of lack of empathy in the modern health care system”
- Tommy Copley – “Winter is Coming”
- Edgar Meyer – “A Different Beat”
- Catherine O’Brien – “Columbarium at Subiaco Abbey”
- Laura Brooks – “Lemmings”
- Shannon Moreno-Cook – “Into the Light”
- Carrie Chiaro – “The Miraculous Staircase”
- Christopher Fettes – “Hospital Triptych”
- Shalese Fitzgerald – “Dual Tetrahedral”
- Laura Hanson – “Ornament”
Jennifer Steck submitted two very different pieces for this year’s exhibit. One was a portrait of Albert Einstein, while the other, “Painting with Wool,” used needle felting to create a human heart.
Photos of the artwork, along with statements from the artists, are available on IPE’s Facebook page. A video of the Zoom event is also available.
Each piece of art was shown during the virtual exhibit, while the poems were read by the artist or a facilitator.
“I hate reading poetry,” wrote D. Micah Hester, Ph.D., in the chat box during the presentations. “I can’t ‘hear’ it for what it says (on the surface and below). But hearing all these poems read changes it. I am engulfed, and they move me and I see them as well as hear them.”
Hester, chair of the Department of Medical Humanities and Bioethics, said he looks forward to future Art from the Heart events.
“I think we learn so much about ourselves from art – both from creating it and from experiencing it. I am glad my department is able to help celebrate art at UAMS.”