Written by Lauren Rabb | Curator | TMC Healing Art Program
Healing
I’m happy to announce that our focus has turned from surviving the COVID months to expansion and legacy! We are moving forward with renewed energy for the program, with a goal of achieving a fully-funded endowment by 2024 – the year of our 10th anniversary.
To that end, one of our strategies has been increasing staff and community knowledge about the program. With the help of TMC Communications specialist Angela Pittenger, who serves on our Strategic Planning Committee, the program was featured on KGUN 9 news. She was also instrumental in getting posters about the Healing Art Program up in the hallways at TMC. We ran eight separate “Wellness Artwalks” for hospital employees, and are in the planning stages of an orientation video for new staff members. We also spoke to new residents at their orientation.
We are happy to welcome a new member to our Strategic Planning Committee: Dr. William Lamear, a recently retired Otolaryngologist (Ear, Nose & Throat) associated with TMC for many years. He joins our team of community and medical professionals who love the Healing Art Program, and are committed to helping us raise an endowment to ensure the future of art and music in the hospital.
Art PROGRAM
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First, I want to correct a misprint in the Winter 2022 newsletter - the artist who gave us the beautiful watercolor and collage works currently hanging in Booth Hall is Fran McNeely, NOT Fran Yanarella. That’s her middle name and I am solely responsible for this mistake.
This time around we are celebrating new artworks by Eileen Fountain and Rochelle Lang (to be hung soon), and new gifts from Paul Gold and Greer Warren - a magical Gail Marcus-Orlen hanging in Erickson Hall, and a soon-to-be-seen color lithograph by Millard Sheets. Finally, I was honored to be invited by Jim Waid to meet Linza Bethea, the widow of artist John Birmingham, and for the opportunity to choose some lovely works for the hospital. Although they are abstractions, they are also reminiscent of Italian street scenes, and I can’t wait to get them installed.
Fran McNeely watercolors, Booth Hall
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We have been busy installing art in Nurses Administration, TMC for Seniors (there even was a party to celebrate), the new Rincon Surgical Center, Benson Hospital and Vail Valley Clinic. We re-installed and added to art in the newly-renovated Booth Hall – including the spectacular Dancing in Sabino Canyon series of infrared photographs by Dr. Larry Hanelin - and we’re about to brighten up the ICU with beautiful landscape photography. Planning is also complete for new photographs in the patient rooms and family rooms at Peppi’s House – the TMC inpatient hospice facility –after its planned renovation.
I want to give a shout-out to three new photographers who’ve joined the 55+ who regularly donate the use of their images: Amy Stephens, who makes our Sonoran desert look gorgeous at any time of year; Rhonda Royse, whose father Greg McKelvey has been one of our go-to photographers; and Kristine Peashock. If you are a follower of the Instagram account “Tucson Ordinary,” you’ll already know Kristine’s ability to capture the unique and quirky side of Tucson.
Gail Marcus-Orlen, Erickson Hall
Gerald Goldberg photos in Nurses Admin
Amy Stephens photos in TMC for Seniors
Philanthropic Donors MUSIC
We’re excited to announce that we’re adding two student musicians to the wonderful group of people who play for patients in the hospital: Dante Olita, a sophomore majoring in classical guitar, and Katie Laine Baird, playing the viola. Katie recently graduated, and founded a local branch of Suite Melody Care, which provides music to assisted living and retirement homes. So she comes to us with a built-in interest in music-for-healing. If you see them in the hallways, give them a big smile and a thumbs up!
The Healing Art Program is funded by donors like you! Recent donors include Rica Spivack, Mark Rubin, Sandy Maxfield and Jerry Freund. Right now, donations can be designated for current operations, or for the Healing Art Program Endowment. If you love the program and want to know how you can help, please reach out to me, or Jeffrey Lamie, Vice President and Chief Development Officer, TMC Foundation at (520) 324-3116.
Larry Hanelin, Dancing in Sabino Canyon, Booth Hall
Cheryl Hrudka a.k.a. An Altered View, Kraus Hall
Katie Harrell, New Cardiology Lobby
Sylvia Garlands (cropped) in Drachman Hall
F OUND A TION
5301 E. Grant Road
Tucson, AZ 85712-2805
FROM ARTIST DIANE DALE | A CONTRIBUTOR TO THE PROGRAM:
I have been taking care of my partner in and out of several medical facilities in the last nine months. Wow, TMC's well-chosen artwork makes a huge difference in the atmosphere. Brava! Thank you for your great work.
FROM JOYCE BROAN | AN ART COLLECTOR AND DONOR TO THE HEALING ART PROGRAM:
Lauren—what you have done with this program is truly remarkable!! You have transformed the public and private spaces into a veritable art gallery. I had occasion to be a recent visitor to TMC and it took me an hour to get out because I wanted to see the wonderful art work that you and your committee have made possible.
Congratulations on a transformative accomplishment!
FROM ARTIST FRED WACKERLE | A CONTRIBUTOR TO THE PROGRAM:
I was recently at TMC for a procedure, and my nurse told me how much she enjoyed walking Ferguson Hall and stopping to view my paintings, which gave her a sense of “peacefulness.” Your program definitely makes a difference.
