The IU Health CompleteLife Program is pleased to display the artwork of patients, caregivers and staff of the Simon Cancer Center and University Hospital at the Harrison Center. We are grateful for and inspired by the energy, effort, and thoughtfulness each artist has demonstrated in their work centering around this year’s theme: ‘Hope and Healing’. Each individual art piece tells a story of the personal journey of the artist, and this show demonstrates the power of the arts for human connection. A special thank you to our sponsor, Roche Diagnostics, for their generous donation which makes it possible for CompleteLife to host the annual art show and in part supports the art therapy services within the hospital.
Autumn, Poem | by Mary Kovacik
7 x 5 inches. Poem.
Patient • Multiple Myeloma
As I traveled home from the Mayo Clinic, I was inspired by the things I saw along the way.
First Born | Paul J Hart, DVM
32.5 x 32.25 x 13 inches
Medium: Wood sculpture. Measures.
Patient • Autoimmune Pancreatitis / Cholangiopathy
My sculpture First Born has been especially important during this time of Covid-19. The physicians, technicians, and physician assistants have continued to provide my excellent care; however, during the pandemic lock-down, my children and grandchildren were also of paramount importance. We all need a healing hug and an arm around our shoulder, even when those hugs had to be virtual ones. This sculpture is my expression of the hope that others give us.
From Cancer Mandala Series 2 | by Jonathan Soard
10 x 10 inches. Digitized drawing; augmented and printed on canvas with frame
Patient • Prostate cancer
Healing Angels | by Brian J Bullerdick
40 x 30 inches. Oil on canvas.
Patient • Cancer of the Tongue
It was hard to put down on canvas my vision of the angels, that have been with me throughout my battle with cancer. It was as if they were helping to guide my brush as I worked on the painting. Just as they guide me through my recovery. I truly believe that they have helped me through the past three years. Looking at the painting gives me a calming effect, as I deal with the many life changes I have experienced. It helps me to stay positive, and deal with the daily life of being a cancer survivor.
Hope and Cheer | by Carmon Weaver Hicks
11 x 19 inches. Paper, poster board, pencils, crayons, ink, glue, and ribbon
Patient • Metastatic Breast Cancer
Cancer is a fight. Metastatic breast cancer is an ongoing war. It may be quiet for a while then - attack, for some, again and again. Others do not see it - they have no idea unless I tell them. Most days, I don't mention it. I simply live it. Sure - family, friends, co-workers, and even other survivors care and offer support but, living it is personal. It's my battle but, I've got good armor. Each day begins with the BEST ammunition. Hope and Cheer offers one morning's inspiration. My artwork is simple - to keep the focus on my words, my head, and my heart.
Hope Grows | by Ruth Gilson
30 x 24 inches. Acrylic on canvas.
IU Health Team Member
This piece represents my journey of healing. On the left of the piece are a couple of thorny branches painted in black and white. These represent doubt and pain. Moving slightly to the right is a branch that is just barely budding with the beginning of healing. Hope is growing with each new plant from left to right. The next plant is a garden pea shoot. This plant is leafier and more colorful than the budding branch, representing further healing. The bright sunflower is a ray of hope that is breaking through the darkness.
Hummingbird and Bright Flowers | by Mary McQueen
14 x 11 inches. Acrylic on canvas.
IU Health Team Member
I love painting natural things, like birds and flowers. To me, nature is very soothing and relaxing to the soul and body.
Just Breathe, Painting | by Mary Kovacik
14 x 11 inches. Acrylic on canvas; poem.
Patient • Multiple Myeloma
My flower is truly Miraculous! I am right-handed and after my transplant I was not feeling well and had very limited use of my right hand and arm. My very first painting! Given my limitations, I was amazed when I saw my flower! When I look at it now, I am reminded that beauty and new life can and will spring forth once again. Life is a beautiful Gift! I am Blessed!
Lady Gourdelia | by Mary McQueen
8 x 3 x 3 inches. Gourds, gourd scraps, acrylic paint.
IU Health Team Member
I grow gourds and like to craft them and turn them into many different things such as figures, animals, characters, and many imaginative things. I enjoy making special things for people and some things just for the fun of it.
Me | by Dave Jackson
8 x 10 inches. Acrylic on canvas.
Patient • Pancreatic Cancer
I find hope in music, both in hearing others and making my own with a violin. One of the things I am most thankful for are those people and organizations that are protecting me and keeping the quality of my life high
Shattered Beauty | by Trinity
12 x 16 inches. Mixed media on canvas.
Patient • Osteosarcoma
I called this piece Shattered Beauty because I feel that it really speaks to how one can be completely shattered, broken, and beaten down but they are still able to thrive and grow into something that is beautiful and free. The theme ‘Hope and Healing’ I believe really shows in the piece that I've created because you have someone who is visibly hurt; someone who is clearly in pain for whatever may be their reason... but they are able to blossom into someone not rooted to the ground, but something that is able to take flight. She is able to overcome her travesties and is willing to hold onto that hope in order to heal... and that's why I feel that my piece resonates with ‘Hope and Healing’ and what it truly means to me.
Solid Hope | by Alesha Arnold
8 x 11 inches. Wood, flowers.
Patient • Lung Cancer
I have been interested in art and artists my entire life. As a young child I was always "creating"--dolls, paintings, games, books-- the list was endless. However, as I grew older and more committed to other things in life, my creations became few and far in between. In my adult years, one of my closest childhood friends always reminded me of my artistic mind from our youth. She lost her battle to breast cancer in 2012 and seven years later, I became a lung cancer survivor. I have come back to the love of my youth (art) and created this decorative plaque. The wood represents the solid foundation of family and friends. The floral white ribbon represents my personal journey with lung cancer. Lastly, the word ‘HOPE’ was chosen to encourage others who battle cancer to anticipate something good will come in the future. Everyone has a story that could help inspire, teach, and/or comfort others.
The Bandage | by Teresa Altemeyer
18 x 14 inches. Watercolor.
Patient • Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia
In our youth, our first encounter with “healthcare” is often a “boo boo” that requires a bandage. Our mothers and fathers dry our tears and with the aid of a color bandage we are given assurance that loving care is present and that there is hope that our ailments will be resolved.
However, as we age, our “bandage needs” will evolve to be become far more sophisticated and far more complex than at age four. But at the same time the necessary “bandages of treatment” have and will evolve and also become more sophisticated. We live in an era where the new treatments achieved through science, research and the decoding of the human genome have altered many of the approaches to treating innumerable disease and many cancers. The promise is great. There are many bandages still needed, but there are many, many reasons to be hopeful.
Perhaps the loving care of those in the field of healthcare has never been witnessed as clearly in our lives as in the COVID-19 pandemic. First hand, we have witnessed the personal self-sacrifice, devotion to serving other and loving care of the men and women who chose to dedicate their lives to providing bandages to those in the greatest need. We owe these people our deepest debt of gratitude.
Zest Foot Forward | by Maureen Bard
6 x 6 inches. Cardstock, rubber stamps and ink, embossing powder.
Caregiver
This is a companion piece to Squeeze the Day. My goal was to embrace both the themes of hope and healing in two submissions. Zest Foot Forward represents hope. To convey hope in art, for me, translates into strong, bold, energetic colors like these greens and yellows. The message is to remind the viewer to give each day your Zest!
Brave New World | by Rev. Donald Stikeleather
36 x 48 inches. Mixed media and oil on stretched canvas.
IU Health Team Member
The patient hopes to heal, and often the healing occurs somewhere in the middle of testing, treatment, diagnosis and worrying. Healing is furtive and comes quietly and without fanfare of its own. Brave New World is my expression of the chaos of healing and the healthcare life of our patients.
Carolyn | by Brian J Bullerdick
20 x 16 inches. Oil on canvas.
Patient • Cancer of the Tongue
This is a very special nurse to me. Meet Carolyn, she is a nurse in the Post Op. ICU at University Hospital. She is one of the many that took care of me after both of my surgeries. My first surgery was over 2 ½ years ago, and Carolyn was in her first month of being in the ICU. She was the one I woke up to for that surgery and also the surgery I had this past May. The thing that meant the most was she remembered me after so much time. I will never forget her passion not just for me, but all the patients, and how she kept me positive through a very difficult time in my life. I hope Carolyn and all the care givers know how much I appreciate them. They are true heroes to me, and I will always have a special place in my heart for them.
From Cancer Madala Series 1 | by Jonathan Soard
10 x 10 inches. Digitized drawing; augmented and printed on canvas with frame
Patient • Prostate cancer
I have been an artist for many years, and I am now getting a counseling degree in art therapy at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods. I know that not everything can be expressed with words, and anxiety and hope are my strongest feelings. They occur at the same time, pulling in opposite directions and the stress is palpable. These three canvases are small studies of what I hope will be commissioned as much larger pieces.
From Cancer Mandala Series 3 | by Jonathan Soard
10 x 10 inches. Digitized drawing; augmented and printed on canvas with frame.
Patient • Prostate cancer
Healing Hands to Hold Up Your Hope | Emily
20 x 16 inches. Acrylic on canvas.
Caregiver
Hope and Healing - Twists and Turns | by Deborah Hunt
10 x 5 x 5 inches. Pottery.
Patient • Breast Cancer
Having a cancer diagnosis means a lot of twists and turns in your life.
This is an example of coil pottery. Coil Pottery goes way back. Even the Chinese Terra cotta warriors are made of coil pottery. They have stood the test of time as do cancer patients. So be a warrior in the many twists and turns cancer gives you in your journey to hope and healing. I wasn't very good at pottery class. Everything fell apart and I had just about given up. I thought I would try coil pottery because even I could roll out little snakes and worms. I could even make little "buttons" of clay. I kept rolling them out and putting them together, until I made this little piece of pottery, that thankfully didn't bust open in the kiln.
So, there you have it; sometimes in life you can make something out of a lot of twists and turns.
I Am Here | by Gretchen Rachell
8.5 x 11 inches. Colored pencil.
IU Health Team Member
God is always with us in every circumstance.
In Contemplation of Transcience and Stability | by Heidi Moffatt
20 x 16 inches. Inkjet prints on canvas.
IU Health Team Member
Until recently, the idea of transience, or impermanence and continuous change, seemed to me to be in sharp contrast to stability. In reality, transience and stability can dance alongside each other. And often when these two meet, fertile ground for growth may be established.
Benefits for me during this creative process included contemplating: the meaning and purpose behind both stability and change, when letting go and accepting impermanence is in my best interest, and coming to understand my authentic manner of gracefully letting go while staying grounded, centered, and firmly rooted in myself.
Photographic processes have potential for recording a brief, passing moment in time and producing a lasting image which, to me, mimics transience and stability. In this creative endeavor, I selected natural objects for meditating on these concepts and organized them in a collage of 4. The number 4 has been seen by some as a symbol of pragmatism, groundedness, stability, and steadiness.
I have enjoyed the practice of remaining present in the now-moment and finding beauty and wonder in nature. Changing cloud formations, the awe of a strong tree, the soft, rounded edges of worn river rock, and refracting light on raindrops from the rising sun. Each of these perspectives, elements, and moments in time are fleeting, and the ephemeral quality makes them more interesting and beautiful to me. The arts and this practice help me find balance, hope, and healing in an ever-changing world.
Just Breathe | by Mary Kovacik
7 x 5 inches. Poem.
Patient • Multiple Myeloma
Light into Darkness | by Lauren Powell
24 x 30 inches. Wrapped canvas.
IU Health Team Member
I was going through a rough time when I painted this piece. A very good friend reminded me there is always hope in the darkness of places. The black of this piece is the darkness, the never-ending struggle. While the bright colors are the hope that we all need, and that we strive to have. At times, the darkness is overwhelming, and it’s hard to simply live. But there are also those times, when the brightness and the Hope cover everything. That’s what I’m trying to convey here. Never let the darkness overwhelm the light. Never lose Hope.
Respect and Protect | by Marti Plager
20 x 20 inches. Cotton fabrics, machine pieced, machine quilted.
Caregiver
The memories of 2020 and the Covid-19 pandemic will not be soon forgotten. As of June, I've made more than 150 masks using up some of the commercial cottons in my stash. All the proceeds from my endeavors were donated to charity. I made this piece using the leftover scraps from mask making. We wear our masks as a sign of respect for others and protection for ourselves. Hopefully they will keep us safe especially those with compromised immune systems.
Signs | by E’lisa Kelley
10 x 8 inches. Acrylic and thread.
IU Health Team Member
I’ve always been fascinated by the night sky. Amid chaos you can escape into a vast unknown, where past and present co-exist, just by looking up. One of the first constellations I learned as a child were the big and little dipper. I knew if I could find one, the other would be close by. I think this provides a beautiful metaphor for the relationship between hope and healing: when you can find one, the other is close by. It may not come instantly; it may not even be visible at first – but in time or from a different perspective - you’ll find it.
Squeeze the Day | by Maureen Bard
6 x 6 inches. Card stock, rubber stamps, ink, and embossing powder.
Caregiver
As a patient's caregiver, hope and healing is my greatest wish for my husband as well as the goal we strive for after every cycle of treatment. I created two pieces of work for this year. This piece, Squeeze the Day, is meant to be lively and evoke a smile with its message. To remind the viewer that humor can lift the spirits and be a step toward healing.
The Best of July | by Mary McQueen
10 x 8 inches. Acrylic on canvas.
IU Health Team Member
Everything seen in this painting, I grew. I think the sunflowers, and flowers, and the tomatoes are what was best in July. Nature is soothing and is good for soul and body by enjoying it twice. Once in person and the second time when captured in artwork.