Just before Christmas my young daughter broke her arm in a sledding accident on a small neighborhood sledding hill. It was past office hours so we rushed her to the local urgent care. After checking us in they escorted us to x-ray. My daughter, who I mentioned is quite young, did not appreciate them moving her arm about in order to xray and was hurting and crying. I looked around for something to distract her and noticed the x-ray room walls contained images of cartoon characters. I started pointing them out to her and immediately she quit crying while she looked around at each image. Then they moved us to our examining room where the walls were bare. With nothing else to look at she resumed her discouraged attitude.
Since the break in her arm was right at the elbow, we went to surgery a few days later so the doctors could straighten her arm and place some pins to help it heal correctly. Once checked into the hospital, for a while we all waited together with her ready to go, in a hospital bed in a small partitioned room, that reminded me of an office cubicle. Again, bare walls and nothing to look at while waiting. After the surgery we were placed in a similar 'room' for recovery.
All was well and she seemed to recover quickly, not even asking for pain medication after the second day. Christmas eve we woke all the kids to begin the festivities and she awoke but refused to move from her bed. My husband helped her out and brought her to me, in which I noticed she was walking crooked and swayed as she stood. She seemed dazed and couldn't answer questions, and after a few jumbled words, couldn't seem to talk at all. My mother, whom we were visiting, is a retired nurse and took one look at her extremely dilated eyes and recommended a 911 call (emergency in the US). Her fear was for a post-surgery blood clot. Luckily there was an ER nearby. It took about 45 minutes before my daughter started to come back to her normal self and the doctors ran many tests. Happy she seemed ok we now waited in a similar 'cubicle' partitioned room for the results. Nothing is fast when it comes to medical things so we had plenty of time to stare at the walls. There was a television in the corner but that just led to a lot of channel flipping looking for something kid appropriate. Even though the tests were inconclusive our daughter recovered fully and hasn't had any follow up episodes. I began to reflect on this experience in relationship to my project and the planned output of donating the finished art pieces to the not-for-profit organizations.
Can the presence of fine art on the walls make a difference in the atmosphere and experience of anxiety-filled situations? I believe I discovered first hand that it could. Where we currently live we are lucky that our medical facilities do already value art in many areas of their buildings, including waiting rooms and hallways. But I learned those small and bare partitioned rooms are where some of the highest anxiety filled moments exist. But they are so small already I could see how issues might arise with hanging items standing out from the walls, possibly making them fill more enclosed.
In talking with a friend who has multiple chronically ill children we discussed the experience and the idea of art in the small rooms. She heartily agreed that there would be benefit there and mentioned that she had heard of MRI 'suites' being designed with large and illuminated artwork on the ceiling.
Figure 2. Barton Associates (2019)
I loved the idea but contemplated the cost of such a luxury probably far above something hospitals could spare for each small partitioned room. But I did LOVE the idea of art on the ceiling and am experimenting with 24x24 metal prints that can be exchanged out for ceiling tiles.
Figure1: ArtisticOpperations. 2018. V&A 2019 [online] Available at: www.pixabay.com
Figure 2. Barton Associates. 2019. V&A 2019 [online] Available at: https://www.ba-inc.com/
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