Cell 2 Soul: The Humane Health Care Blog

A "LUCKY" Find or How We Became Painters of Rocks

By Wendy Clothier

It all started in early June. I was exercise walking alone and came to a corner where I noticed a colorful small rock stacked upon a concrete property marker. It was a (lucky) ladybug!! I looked it over and decided, Nah, I don't want to take this rock. . . it was not that well done and I figured someone else might like it. I saw it again on my next walk, then when I walked with Richie, my husband he noticed it. I told him how I "rejected" it! The next visit to that spot showed the ladybug had "flown the coop!"

The following weekend's newspaper included some pictures of painted rocks, a spot where they were distributed, with the message to take one and then bring one of your own creations to replace it. We then understood the ladybug, after reading that the adult artist placed a few rocks around the city and also in one spot at a gate nearby Egremont Elementary School. Richie and I visited that spot and got so wrapped up in the idea after seeing the sign that said. . . "TAKE ONE AND INSPIRE, SHARE ONE TO MOTIVATE. Help our garden grow." I picked up and kept one decorated with a rainbow, with a cloud that said LOVE. I thought, "Hey, I could do this, too. It might be fun!"

I found a few rocks, washed them off, and dug out my old acrylic paints, paint brushes, permanent markers. . . and began to work. I realized I needed more than just the dried out paint pots from a hundred years ago. We hit Michael's for more supplies and the rocks also became all varieties of SHELLS to paint! It was necessary to coat the paintings with gobs of Mod Podge coating, and then a final spray sealer, so that rain would not wash off the paints as the finished products lie on the ground. Richie got inspired, too!! He painted one snow scene and a few faces, but his specialty seems to be putting single words and phrases on his rocks. This is really quite a process, and has us totally involved. Little did we realize that a pandemic would expose our creative side!

Setsuko's 120 Yellow Bowls

Setsuko Winchester is a Japanese-American potter who threw 120 yellow bowls to commemorate Japanese interned by the U.S. during World War II.  The story is timely, since a similar spirit of xenophobia is gripping our country in the first few weeks of the Trump (dis)administration.

Each yellow bowl stands for 1000 Japanese interned.  She explains her motivation in a three minute video.  An in-depth article about Setsuko's yellow bowls appeared in the Berkshire Eagle on February 12, 2017.  "Ceramics are part of your blood when you are Japanese," S. Winchester

Yellow tea bowls at the Poston War Relocation Center, located in Yuma County of southwestern Arizona.
photo by Setsuko Winchester

See the book: Farewell to Manzanar by Jane Wakatsuki Houston

There is also a film: Farewell to Manzanar.  If you watch it, bring tissues.

Comment by Joan Shaw, Educator, Kalaheo, Hawaii: "This project is a poignant reminder of how easily and inappropriately groups of people can be maligned by the ignorance of others. When you look at the contributions of Japanese Americans over the years, it's hard to understand that they were once regarded as dangerous spies and traitors - to the point of being rounded up and interned. This is happening now with groups from other parts of the world. An excellent novel: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford."

Art is Powerful Medicine

Art is powerful preventive medicine. Looking at a picture is like walking through an endless series of doors, with each succeeding door leading us deeper and deeper into a rich experience.This journey stimulates our minds, our emotions, our souls; it makes us more alive. Ultimately the esthetic experience heals us and makes us whole.  -- Robert Pope, Illness and Healing, Images of Cancer, 1991.

Susan Gubar in a February 7, 2014 NY Times essay, Living with Cancer: An Artist's View writes: "Though we accept ambiguity in art, it is harder to accept in science, harder still in medicine." 

Robert Pope (1956-1992) was a dedicated Nova Scotia artist who died of Hodgkin’s Disease at the age of 36 after a ten year battle with the illness. (The link to the Rpbert Pope Foundation is not live now.) His work "reminds us that often patients and caregivers cannot fathom what we sign up for. Even when physicians try to communicate the consequences of their prescriptions, patients need to make a leap of faith.

"Mr. Pope’s paintings make one wonder: Is cancer treatment a form of religion, a means of transformation that involves its own rituals, trials, high priests, sacraments, vestments and bodily signs for people in need of a miracle and convinced that we have to be stripped of everything before we can be reborn?"

Even after two weeks, Susan Gubar's article still resonates with me.  Read it if you have a chance, and the moving comments as well.

Related articles

Well: Living With Cancer: An Artist's View

Art in Healthcare - UF's Arts in Medicine

Hokusai

 Katsushika Hokusai (1760 - 1849) is the most renown Japanese print maker. You can see his prints here.  The following is a self portrait at age 83.

Marginal Notes: Impressionistic Medicine

 
"La Ronde" by Camille Pissarro

At a recent visit to the Clark Institute, while standing in front of one of Pissarro's portraits, I — as a practitioner of another form of art, the art of medicine — could not help but think that we clinicians are called to view those patients entrusted to our care as equals in the sense of their humanity, their needs and wants.  more»

 

Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for 32 years.  His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."

No Ashtrays, No Souvenirs

Reknown potter, Toshiko Takaezu, died in Honolulu on March 9, 2011 at the age of 88.  Born on June 17, 1922, in Pepeekeo, Hawaii, the middle child of 11, her parents were Japanese immigrants from Okinawa.

She was strongly influenced by her study of Zen Buddhism, and regarded her ceramic work as an outgrowth of nature and seamlessly interconnected with the rest of her life. “I see no difference between making pots, cooking and growing vegetables,” she was fond of saying. Indeed, she often used her kilns to bake chicken in clay, and dry mushrooms, apples and zucchinis.

“You are not an artist simply because you paint or sculpt or make pots that cannot be used,” she said. “An artist is a poet in his or her own medium. And when an artist produces a good piece, that work has mystery, an unsaid quality; it is alive.”

Full NY Times Obituary.

In 1975, Takaezu had a workshop at Kauai Community College which was organized by Wayne Miyata.  Martha Elpern was one of the participants and has these fading photos in an album.

 

Marginal Notes: Touching Portraits

 
"Execution" © James Esber

When I step into an exam room to see a patient, I enter another world. I offer a greeting—an invitation of sorts—create an ambiance, ask a question or two. If the chemistry is right, the patient begins to talk, expressing concerns, fears, pain; sometimes hope, even joy. I provide the framework, the blank canvas, on which the patient might choose to render a drawing, a portrait—a blend of some segment of existence. more»

 

Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for thirty years.  His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."

Marginal Notes: The last time I saw Paris

 
"Paris through a window" by Marc Chagall, 1913

In those days Paris was color blind.  Americans who had served in the European theatre in the First World War were eager to return to Paris.  These expatriates rejected their parochial roots and set out to find themselves in the big city.  Paris was where it was at.  more»

 

Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for thirty years.  His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."

Marginal Notes: Learning to capture the human figure

In his series of articles on the art of drawing, artist and author James McMullan speaks to that intuitive intelligence which the visual artist needs to cultivate in order to capture forces inherent in the human body:

Once we tune into these cooperative forces that animate the body, they seem obvious; yet opening up the kind of intuitive intelligence we need in order to see these forces is difficult when we are so used to relying mainly on the simple scanning operations of our eyes. As we draw, we need to record pressures and not just edges, and we need to see relationships between parts rather than just pieces of the body.

Reading these words, I was struck by the similarity between the art employed in drawing the human figure and the art of the practice of medicine.  Both require the use of intuition to recognize the forces in play before the eyes of the observer.  more»

 

Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for thirty years.  His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."

Marginal Notes: A Pupil of Picasso

 
Maya and the Doll by Pablo Picasso

In the Adventure of the Copper Beeches, Sherlock Holmes remarks: “To the man who loves art for its own sake, it is frequently in its least important and lowliest manifestations that the keenest pleasure is to be derived.” Over the years I have taken keen pleasure in the art of medicine—and in the art of Picasso as well. more»

 

Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for thirty years.  His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."