St Joseph Hospital Bangor Maine Art From Employees to Decorate Walls
Miki MacDonald, a family nurse practitioner with St. Joseph Healthcare in Bangor, said she always tries to make her examination rooms feel homey and welcoming, with paintings on the walls, books of verse and children'southward stories on tables, and other items meant to put patients at ease.
"When you see kind of a frumpy or bare examination room, it speaks to you on some level that there is a lack of care going into the overall approach to a patient's wellbeing," MacDonald said. "When you run into a piece of art or hear some music, it is something that tin hopefully help transcend the ofttimes stressful state of affairs that yous're in."
That idea — to employ fine art to turn doc'southward offices, hospital rooms, waiting areas and testing facilities into places that are more welcoming and a lot less antiseptic and cold — is the guiding principle behind St. Joe's Healing Arts Commission, an effort started six years ago by a grouping of staff members and volunteers at the hospital.
MacDonald is 1 of the committee's six members, aslope local artists and arts patrons Katie Schaffer, Deb Dall, Jean Deighan and Mary Hollister; St. Joseph Healthcare Foundation senior vice president Brad Coffey; and Justin Benway, also of the foundation. Together, they plan a wide variety of arts programming at all of St. Joe'south various facilities — though it all started with the fine art cart, an idea had past hospital president Mary Prybylo and now run past volunteer coordinator Renee Peterson.
From left (clockwise): Deb Dall, St. Joe'due south Healing Arts Committee, hangs a new art exhibition past local artist Nina Jerome in the lobby of St. Joseph Family Medicine at 900 Broadway on Fri; Photographer LeeAnne Mallonee (left) and Deb Dall (right), St. Joe's Healing Arts Commission, wrap upwards Mallonee's photographs as her showroom came down and a new winter exhibit went up; Mary Hollister, St. Joe's Healing Arts Committee, works on hanging artwork by local creative person Nina Jerome for the wintertime exhibition; Deb Dall and Mary Hollister (hands), St. Joe's Healing Arts Commission, measure the space betwixt pieces of artwork equally the hang the winter exhibition by local artist Nina Jerome. Credit: Linda Coan O'Kresik | BDN
Hospital inpatients are visited past a volunteer with a cart containing a number of prints of paintings and photographs, which are coated in an easily-sanitized plastic. They look through an iPad to make a selection, and then the art they cull is hung in their room for the duration of their stay.
The cart was funded by Sanford Rush, whose wife, Mona, was a hospice patient at St. Joe's before she died in 2014. The projection has continued throughout the COVID-nineteen pandemic, as all the art can be sanitized before and after it is brought into a patient's room. Researchers have plant that engaging with art — whether creating or observing it — tin assist reduce patients' stress and depression, which can be related to chronic weather condition such as heart illness and diabetes.
"I think it's but a really nice thing for patients, to exist visited by someone, and getting to thumb through all these pieces, and choose whatever you desire," Coffey said. "There's a really wide diverseness of paintings that appeal to a lot of different people. If you dearest dogs or cats, there's prints of that. If you adopt fine art, there's prints of that as well. The patients really beloved information technology."
Beyond the art cart, works from local artists are displayed throughout both the hospital and St. Joseph's Healthcare Park at 900 Broadway in Bangor. Schaffer has her photographs from Maine farmers markets displayed in the hospital cafeteria, while murals and installations past local artists can exist found in the master lobby, the emergency room and the hospital'southward surgery areas. And several times per calendar month, Bangor Symphony Orchestra musicians including violinist Lynn Brubaker and cellist Marisa Solomon come to the hospital to perform on each floor of the facility.
The largest project, however, is the Gallery at 900 Broadway, a permanent gallery that features several shows per year from Maine or Maine-connected artists.
"When the new facility at 900 Broadway opened in 2014, the plan from the outset was that artwork should be built into the building," Schaffer said. "And then we have this fantastic gallery that has really blossomed into something that I think the artists appreciate as much as our patients, in many ways."
Over the by half dozen years, Maine artists including Constance Kilgore, Diana Young, Ken Putnam, Joanne Houlsen, Martin Gallant, Mark Nutt, Gail Page, Clyde Folsom and Kat Johnson take all had shows at 900 Broadway. With its gallery, St. Joseph's has developed a rapport with artists who not just gain exposure for their art, but can sell work if they choose.
"I think nosotros've developed this actually dandy relationship with the artists we characteristic, considering we treat them well, and nosotros become so much out of information technology," Schaffer said. "If you're coming in for a mammogram, and yous tin can spend a few minutes immersing yourself in something beautiful before it happens, that's something you can't put a price on."
Across the fact that only having art displayed is therapeutic, the art often has an educational or thought-provoking chemical element to it. Creative person Maureen Egan, a chest cancer survivor, had a show at the gallery. There accept as well been collaborations with the University of Maine Museum of Fine art, which co-sponsored a showing by Robert Shetterly, which included his drawings depicting his grandmother's dementia, accompanied by workshops and lectures.
Over the past few months, the paintings of Maine artist LeeAnne Mallonee have been displayed, and starting this weekend, landscape works by Bangor painter Nina Jerome volition go up for the wintertime exhibition. The gallery has also been given a donation in guild to purchase works by Bangor painter Diana Young, who will donate some of her own works as well.
Schaffer said that the long-term goal is to build an outdoor sculpture garden or art labyrinth at 900 Broadway, in collaboration with neighboring Husson University.
"I think a peaceful place in the forest between Husson and 900 Broadway, where people could go to hear music or simply accept a moment of reflection, is something we'd all like to see happen," Schaffer said.
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Source: https://bangordailynews.com/2020/12/06/news/bangor/at-st-joseph-hospital-art-deliveries-have-been-lifting-up-patients-moods/
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