The hospital helped pay for skylights and wooden benches. The Children’s Miracle Network donated a piano, which is now played every weekday. At lunchtime, doctors, families and staff members alike can be seen eating their lunches and listening to classical music on the benches.
Photo by Emily Hedges
There were more than 1,000 of
these tiles painted by cancer
patients and their parents to
lighten up the Shands atrium.
The creation of the atrium was the creation of a community. It also helps to preserve memories for the former patients who have survived and the loved ones of those who have not. Mullen says that she has seen families come back to look at the tiles and remember when they were created and remember the people with whom they created them.
A second healing wall, themed “Everyone is a Star,” was recently finished by women awaiting the arrival of their babies and parents of babies in the neonatal intensive care unit. The third healing wall is already in the works for the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). The wall, scheduled to be finished in November, will feature tiles and mosaics centered on the theme “On the Wings of Hope.”
Stepping off of the elevator onto the 10th floor at Shands, stands a beautiful glass wall that blocks off the PICU from the elevator area. The wall has an underwater scene etched into it with brightly-colored beads and large sea turtles gliding smoothly across it. The PICU, one of the newest areas in Shands, opened with 22 beds in 2003. Today, artist Mary Lisa Kitakis-Spano, the visual arts coordinator for AIM, tries to get patients out of aforementioned beds to paint tiles for the third healing wall. She encourages the blossoming artists, seldom without a smile and always listening. On this particular day, she has convinced several nurses, a doctor, a fellow artist, a journalist (myself), and two patients to paint tiles. The group works diligently, painting cats and sunny landscapes and Spongebob Squarepants.
Ryan Rathburn draws meticulously on his tile. He is in his early twenties and received his heart transplant three years ago. Back at Shands today for some follow-up treatment, he traces Spongebob onto a tile and then paints it, a small token to put in the new wall on the ward in which he spent so much time.
“Waiting (for a transplant) is hard,” Rathburn says, not looking up from his artwork. “This keeps you not frustrated all the time and helps you meet other people. If they didn’t have this, I probably would’ve gone nuts with boredom.”
Gladys Sanchez, 14, a dialysis patient, agrees.
“I get tired of being here,” Gladys says. “You just want to go home. This stuff makes it better.”
The program’s magic comes from the desire to create art for others’ enjoyment by patients that may be in dire situations. One facet of the program is patient participation, with the artists in many different mediums from painting to dance to oral history and even meditation. However, another important facet, one that is often overlooked, is the enhancement of the hospital with art. Patient art covers many walls and art has been purchased for many others.