Dilaudid Land
Cortney Davis
About the artist:
Cortney Davis, a nurse practitioner, is the author of five poetry collections, most recently Leopold’s Maneuvers, winner of the Prairie Schooner Book Prize in Poetry. Her most recent nonfiction publication is The Heart’s Truth: Essays on the the Art of Nursing. An illness narrative in words and images, entitled Twenty-Six Days: When the Nurse Became a Patient, is forthcoming in Spring 2015 from Kent State University Press. On the lighter side, she enjoys serving as poetry editor of Alimentum: The Literature of Food. Her website is cortneydavis.com.
About the artwork:
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In Plain Sight #1
Peter Kahn
About the artist:
Peter Kahn is a second year medical student at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. He is interested in how stories are told by physicians and patients alike.
About the artwork:
“I took this photo as part of a series of portraits while doing clinical rotations in the Bronx, NY, with the intention of allowing patients to tell their stories in a way that they might not otherwise share with a healthcare provider. I wanted others in the medical community to get a sense of who these patients are when
Moon
Justin Sanders
About the artist:
Justin Sanders trained as a family doctor and is now pursuing a career in palliative care. He and his wife live in Boston, preparing to welcome their first child into the world. Having studied art history and worked in the fine arts, he has a deep faith in their healing power. He is a Pulse author and serves as its visuals editor. When not frantically cleaning house in preparation for a baby, he loves to mess up recipes from a growing cookbook collection and to read The New Yorker.
About the artwork:
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Stained Marrow
Erin O’Branski
About the artist:
Erin O’Branski is a physician assistant practicing in hematology-oncology at the Duke Cancer Institute. She is also a continuing-education student at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke. She is currently documenting art and beauty in everyday life in the hospital, a project which began as a way to process the pain and sadness associated with life-threatening diseases. Her recent short documentary Cancer Warriors can be seen at http://www.documentingmedicine.com/cancer-warriors/
About the artwork:
“After performing a bone-marrow biopsy, I accompanied the lab technician to the lab and photographed the process of
Empty, Scarred, Full of Love
Karen Peacock
About the artist:
Karen Peacock is a board-certified art therapist in private practice in Memphis, TN. “Using art to express my experiences provides a unique perspective, often bringing equilibrium to emotions that may be hard to express verbally.”
About the artwork:
“After giving birth to my son, I reached for art materials to express the complexity of emotions I was experiencing. This image, created with crayons and ink pen, depicts the contrasting feelings of physical emptiness and emotional fullness, as well as feelings of being physically scarred and emotionally loved.”
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Breathless Glitter
Maria Lupo
About the artist:
Maria Lupo is a registered art therapist in New Jersey. She holds masters degrees in fine arts and in counseling psychology and serves as the chair of the New Jersey Alliance for Arts and Health. The recipient of the 2010 Outstanding Professional in the Arts award from the Arts Council of the Morris Area, she exhibits her artwork nationally. “I have trusted art all my life as a way to cope and heal.”
About the artwork:
Breathless Glitter, mixed media: oxygen mask used while transporting the artist’s mother to the
Grief and Gratitude
Alan Blum
About the artist:
Alan Blum is a Professor and Gerald Leon Wallace MD Endowed Chair in Family Medicine at the University of Alabama School of Medicine in Tuscaloosa. A self-taught artist, he has published three books of his sketches and stories of patients, and his artworks have appeared in more than a dozen medical journals and textbooks. He is a frequent guest speaker at medical schools in courses in the humanities.
About the artwork:
“This sketch in ballpoint pen on the back of a prescription pad is of a woman I helped care for more than twenty-five years ago. During her first visit to the family-practice clinic, I had listened to her poignant history and
Premature
Daniel Wong
About the artist:
Daniel Wong is a recent Stanford graduate with plans to attend medical school. He is interested in the creative bond between art and medicine and the power of artistic expression to foster healing. Daniel finds art to be a unique method of human communication and finds visual arts a fascinating means of forming deep psychological connections with others. He works primarily in oils. More of his work can be found at dwong.net.
About the artwork:
“When I was in the womb, my mother’s OB-GYN looked at the ultrasound and congratulated her: it was a girl! Though he realized his error later, I often wonder about my mother’s
Lone Tree
Mary T. Shannon
About the artist:
I am a psychotherapist who specializes in using story and art as adjunctive treatment tools. Having used both of these tools in my own healing process, I am better able to guide others in doing the same. Additional visual art, as well as essays and academic journal articles on narrative medicine can be found on www.marytshannon.com.
About the artwork:
My husband and I solemnly walked by this scene the day before his surgery, silently holding hands. The surgery was risky, and we both knew he might not survive. I wondered if I would soon be like this tree, standing alone, and how I would survive on my own. A month later we
Tlingit Aspirin
Elaine Whitman
About the artist:
Elaine has been taking photographs since she was nine years old when her father, an internist and talented amateur photographer, gave her a Brownie box camera. She has worked her way through many cameras since that time and now relies on a pocket-sized Canon “point-and-shoot” and a Nikon D7000. (This image was taken with the Nikon.) In addition to her passion for photography, Elaine is also a music volunteer for hospice, where she plays her Native American flute for patients and their families.
About the artwork:
“On the eighth anniversary of my diagnosis of stage IIb breast cancer, and on our thirty-fifth wedding anniversary, my husband Neal and I celebrated my remission and our marriage with a cruise
Aeterna
Bernard Lapointe
About the artist:
Bernard Lapointe is a palliative-care physician in Montreal. “After a few years as a family physician, at the dawn of the AIDS epidemic in Montreal, I found my practice very rapidly transforming from a downtown STD practice to palliative care. I still remember, vividly, those years: the pain, the dynamic communities rising to the challenge, the creativity of the various artists fueling the fight. The slogan was ‘Silence = Death,’ and our voices did not allow for silence. Caring for the terminally ill year after year carries its price. The urge to live fully today, to expand beyond my limitations and