Students Should Study the Arts. . .
Because the Arts Deserve to Be Studied
2019 • Louis M. Profeta
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"Would you like to take part in an art therapy session?"
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The young volunteer set a large box of chalk and paper down on the table in the library of the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. I had already been camped there for six months with my child who was critically ill from leukemia. I was beaten down, cried all the time, wished I could put my hands on his body and just suck the cancer out of his pores . . . but it doesn’t work that way. I’m a doctor and I had no control over if my own son was going to live or die . . . so I figured, fuck it . . . I might as well copy a picture of a rowboat out of chalk.
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I’ve never been artistic, even though people tell me writing is kind of an art. But when I think of art, I always picture musicians and painters and poets and sculptures. I did once make a turkey out of my handprint in third grade and, like every fifth-grade boy I could mold a killer penis out of clay when the teacher wasn’t looking.
“No ma’am, I’m making a civil war cannon, I just need to flatten out these balls into wheels.”
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The point being though is I never really appreciated art for art’s sake. It was just something that was around me, that people with purple hair and nose rings enjoyed alongside men in tweed and women adorned in jade and oversized bobbles. It was their world, not mine. Even when I visited Florence and strolled the Uffizi and gazed upon David, I found myself wondering more about how they moved a huge block of marble than the time and vision that went into the piece or how they made paint and canvases, not so much the splendor of the subject matter or the motivation of the painter.
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Yet here I was . . . chalking away, and with each stroke I kind of felt like I was diving deeper into something. I still haven’t figured it out but five years later I can’t look at that boat without crying. Art though, as I am learning, has infinite depth. It brings out the emotions and the soul, and the nuances of the being that hides in each of us. I guess it kind of reflects our thoughts and feelings and dreams and nightmares when our words just won’t do.
The public high school I graduated from has a choir group called the North Central Counterpoints. If you have never seen them, you need to check them out. I might be biased having graduated there, but I am telling you, this is the best high school performing arts group in America. The fact that high schoolers have that much creativity, talent, and vision is so refreshing these days. I am also fascinated by the quality of individuals they produce. I have yet to meet a member of that group of performing artists that is not an absolute gentleman or lady. Each is clearly motivated to go onto better things, to do something greater with their lives. But not only that, the entire arts program within North Central High School from stagecraft to computer design, from sculpting to painting to photography and drama is extraordinary. It is one of the things that makes that school special.
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I reached out to their director of choirs, Michael Berg Raunick, to ask him why we should continue to support and expand the arts in our public schools . . . something I admit in years past I could have cared less about.
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“In my opinion, students should study the arts because the arts deserve to be studied!” he tells me. “Being artists is central to our humanity. People who are creative are the ones who fill our museums, perform in concert halls and movies, and create the soundtracks to our lives. Can we imagine a world where we don’t have Beethoven or da Vinci or, God forbid, Beyoncé—and not to mention the fact that the people who have learned to be creative are also the ones who plan our cities, design buildings, invent new processes to streamline healthcare, and more? If we never learn to be creative, we never move beyond what we already know. That forward motion is why the arts are essential and why it is so important to make sure that every student has the opportunity to make creativity and artistic engagement an essential part of their education.”
Yes . . . those are the words of a high school musical arts teacher in a public high school in Indianapolis. Kind of makes you wish you could go back in time and take his class, doesn’t it?
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Art has also found a special place in our hospital. Currently there are forty-two mosaics that adorn the walls throughout our hospital. Celebrated artists Joani Rothenberg and Yael Buxbaum have expanded the Cancer Art therapy in our hospital to allow patients, families, and health care providers, who work within our healthcare system, to take part in creating these incredible, deep, rich, and complex works of art.
“Sadly, many of the hands that took part in creating these pieces are no longer with us, but they remain in the mosaics they helped to create,” Joani tells me. Something for all time, I imagine.
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“It’s funny,” I told her, “but I have always thought the environment of the ER as a mosaic of the human experience, each small piece of glass and tile perhaps representing the uniqueness of the human condition.”
Going back to Michael’s words, “Being an artist is central to our humanity.”
A while back, our group,St. Vincent Emergency Physicians Inc., decided to fund one such mosaic project for our own ER waiting room. It’s interesting, but when the vote came up in our group on whether or not to fund this sizable expenditure, not a single partner batted an eye. They saw the value of art, the need for an expression outside of the norms, a way for our doctors and nurses and patients to say something without really speaking. Each tile meticulously placed by more than forty members of our ER staff and Cancer Art volunteers over a seven-month period. Each wanting their voices heard in some other medium. Perhaps wanting to find something deeper in themselves or to just be remembered, like a towering marble sculpture of the boy king.
“Reflections” now hangs in our ER, bringing beauty, form, and tranquility to one of the most volatile environments in the city.
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A beautiful representation of the human experience. Something perhaps that simple words can’t express, something we must continue to fund for generations to come. We need to continue to support the arts, to allow it to be a launching point of creativity that will translate itself in future generations, not only in the arts themselves but into medicine and law and urban planning and conservation and thousands of other areas in need of a creative mind.
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We may also come to learn that a chalk drawing of an empty boat, floating still on a pond . . . sometimes is something more.
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This Mosaic Is United Jews
and Arabs Across Israel
August 8th, 2016 • Barbara Levy Bamberger
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The many issues that divide people in Israeli society tend to drag me down, so I try to focus on projects that build community to hearten and inspire me. Since December, I’ve been involved in one such endeavor that’s connecting people regardless of religion, background or age.
As a liaison in Galilee Medical Center’s International Affairs Department, I’m shepherding Heart and Soul, a public art project for our new cardiology department (currently under construction), around the Western Galilee with Israeli artist Yael Buxbaum. Yael and her cousin, artist Joani Rothenberg from Indianapolis, give renewed meaning to the symbol of the heart with their design of a bright colorful four-panel mosaic being tiled by people of different cultures and faiths.
At least once a week Yael comes to the medical center and anyone who wants to share in creating Heart and Soul can work on the mosaic. The artwork offers patients, visitors and staff members an opportunity to unwind from the pressures of their lives. Since community involvement is a key factor in the project, we also bring it to places throughout the Western Galilee so that people from different walks of life can have a hand in its creation. The project is in collaboration with St. Vincent Indianapolis Hospital, where Joani is overseeing work on four similar panels. When the mosaics are completed, each hospital will gift two of its panels to the other for display.
GMC, the largest institution in the Western Galilee, serving approximately 600,000 residents who live in the cities, towns and villages along Israel’s northern border, is a window into the multi-layered society of northern Israel. The staff, volunteers and patients reflect the variety of ethnic groups and religions, including Jews, Muslims, Christians, Druze, Circassian and large immigrant communities from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia, all of whom populate the region. Heart and Soul is accessible to all, and the mosaic, formed by putting together small colored pieces of glass called smalti, is an apt metaphor for the medical center and the area.
So far we’ve brought the project to Druze and Arab villages, kibbutzim, Nahariya’s library, a community center for the visually impaired, a home for teenage girls at risk, senior citizen centers, schools and Nes Ammim, a European Christian village, to name just some of the places.
Recently we visited IBDAA (Association for Developing the Arts in Arab Society) Gallery in Kfar Yasif village, where an Arab and Jewish women’s dialogue group called NAIMA chatted over refreshments and worked on Heart and Soul. NAIMA, a Hebrew acronym for the words “Arab and Jewish Women Fostering Equality,” fittingly means “pleasant.”
The group has been meeting biweekly for over a year to widen and deepen the women’s knowledge of each other’s way of life, social norms, religious customs and folklore through sharing their own personal experiences. They believe that their connections are influencing not only themselves but also their family circles, social circles and wider communities. NAIMA’s work on the mosaic, like others who have contributed, goes hand in hand with the vision behind Heart and Soul.
These outings broaden my horizons and understanding of art as a universal language that all can relate to and enjoy. Similar to putting the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together, working on the mosaic offers the challenge of finding the right shade and fit for each tile. Many find plugging away on Heart and Soul to be therapeutic and meditative. While people glue their glass pieces into place, they often share their stories, which seem to become embedded into the work along with the smalti. As progress on Heart and Soul continues, I’ve come to appreciate it as an instrument that fosters sharing and caring and reflects the beauty of the colorful palette of people and places that contribute to its creation.
The heart, a symbol of love, also suggests life, the future, energy and good health. Everyone who adds a tile to the mosaic knows that it will help form a welcoming environment for the medical center’s long-awaited new cardiology department. The artwork will create a healing setting that will favorably affect patients’ inner world as well as that of their family, friends and staff. I am continually moved to see that all who lend a hand to Heart and Soul feel inspired by the joint effort that promotes a sense of community.
'Heart and Soul' mosaic dedication at
St. Vincent Heart Center
February 14th, 2017 • Michael Pemberton
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Cousins Joani Rothenberg, left, an artist and art therapist at St. Vincent Heart Center, and artist Yael Buxbaum joined forces to create “Heart and Soul,” a mosaic created with the help of public in the the U.S. and Israel. Four of the panels hang in the St. Vincent Heart Center, while four more will be on display at the Galilee Medical Center in Israel.
A Jew, Christian, and Muslim
walk into an art studio ...
May 1, 2015 • Shari Rudavsky
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Piece by piece, the mosaic came together — for peace. During the past year and a half, about 4,000 people in Indiana and in a country half a world away painstakingly cut glass, matched colors and carefully affixed tiny tiles to the appropriate spots.
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Next week, two out of the three panels of the Tree of Life mosaic will travel to Israel where they will join the third panel. Together they will hang in a new maternity wing of the Galilee Medical Center in northern Israel.
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The hospital prides itself on serving a mix of Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Druze patients in a country where people of different faiths do not often come together.
And the mosaic represents a shared endeavor that transcends religion, politics or differences of any sort. On one day, 30 girls from an Arab School visited the hospital in Nahariya to help tile; the next day, 30 girls from a local Orthodox Jewish school took their place.
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It all began in Indianapolis two years ago when artist Joani Rothenberg started an art therapy program for cancer patients, survivors and their family and friends at St. Vincent Hospital. There, Rothenberg and others noticed a strange phenomenon: The people who participated found common ground no matter what their backgrounds.
"It's great to see we can bring people together from all faiths, all backgrounds, all religions," said Fuad Hammoudeh, executive director of St. Vincent Cancer Care, who was born a Muslim and is now Christian. "Unfortunately, cancer does that."
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When the head of the Galilee Medical Center visited St. Vincent about a year ago, he admired the first mosaic the art therapy program produced and asked for one for his own hospital. Rothenberg, who lived in Israel for a decade, agreed. A grant from the Glick Fund of the Jewish Federation of Greater Indianapolis helped get the project started.
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From the start Rothenberg thought a community mosaic would be a perfect fit for the hospital.
"It's a place in Israel where you see diversity, acceptance and multiculturalism, and I feel that peace is possible," she said.
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In the St. Vincent art studio, Jews, Christians and Muslims worked alongside one another to complete one of the panels. Rothenberg shepherded the second panel to Jewish communities across the Midwest as part of Partnership2Gether, which pairs American communities with Israeli ones. People of all ages, including about 500 Indianapolis preschoolers from the Jewish Community Center's Early Childhood Education program, took part.
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But the work held special meaning for those cancer patients for whom the art studio became a place where they could shed the mantle of being a person with a serious disease. Many had had no previous art experience and did not think of themselves as having an artistic side. One tile later, and they were hooked. "I dropped in and never left," said Judith James, a Northside resident who had breast cancer. "It was a support group without being a support group."
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The mosaic work inspired one participant, Fatema Amro, to create her own design, a portrait of her parents, who died three years ago within weeks of one another in Lebanon. At the time, Amro was undergoing treatment for breast cancer in Indianapolis.
After Amro discovered the mosaic project about a year and a half ago, she embarked on her own memorial to her deceased parents, Abed and Souad.
"Every time I work on it, I feel memories come back to me," she said, "and I feel they're really proud of me."
Amro hopes to take the mosaic with her on her next trip to Lebanon and hang it in a mosque that her father helped to build.
While she has never been to Israel, Amro did not let Middle East politics dissuade her from participating in the Israel mosaic project.
"I work on it because of the group, because I really like my friends here," she said. Mosaics work as an easy metaphor for people going through a trauma, tragedy or illness, said Risé Friedman, who started in the art therapy studio after going through treatment for breast cancer.
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"What are mosaics? Broken pieces of glass," the Northeastside resident said. "What happens to your life when you are given a diagnosis of cancer? It's just like a mosaic — joining all of those broken fragments to make something beautiful."
2018 Health Care Heroes: Joani Rothenberg
February 28, 2018 • Tom Harton
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Joani Rothenberg saw the future of art therapy in the United States 30 years ago when she was doing art therapy in Israel.
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Decades later, after living and studying in Boston and using art to help troubled children in Indianapolis, Rothenberg uses the lessons she picked up along the way to make art therapy an integral part of the healing process at St. Vincent Hospital in Indianapolis.
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Rothenberg, 53, a Michigan native who studied at Indiana University, is married to a doctor. When the couple settled in Indianapolis, they bought a little house in Broad Ripple from a doctor and his wife, who was also an art therapist. “When I saw art therapy books on the shelves, I knew I was in the right place,” Rothenberg said.
The St. Vincent patients past and present who frequent the hospital’s art therapy studio are glad Rothenberg is here.
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“Art therapy has given me friendship, creativity, and community,” said one of the many patients who’ve enjoyed the transformative effect art can have on someone coping with a serious illness. Most of those under Rothenberg’s care are being treated for cancer.
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In 2017, they made more than 2,000 visits to St. Vincent’s in-hospital studio, creating intricate jewelry, colorful paintings, and special tiles that help them forget their illnesses and discover talents they didn’t know they had.
“The healing power of art is to be seen as a person, not a patient. It brings back a new self they can identify with,” said Rothenberg, who’s been at St. Vincent five years.
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Of course, most of the people Rothenberg works with aren’t artists—or didn’t know they were. Her first project at St. Vincent was a mosaic mural in a lobby for outpatient cancer patients. She’d invite a patient in the waiting room to place a tile on the mosaic, and nature would take its course.
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“Sometimes it led from one tile to more tiles, and an hour of talking. People just want to talk,” she said. “Cancer might be mentioned at first, but then the conversation evolves into family, jobs and other things.”
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Rothenberg’s own work includes illustrations, Jewish ceremonial art, murals and landscape paintings. Among the places her work can be found locally is the lobby of the Jewish Community Center, for which she created a 50th-anniversary mosaic, and at the Hasten Hebrew Academy.
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At St. Vincent, there are 20 mosaics created by participants in Rothenberg’s program. Some participants have gone on to enroll in art classes and exhibit and sell their work. They’re also among the donors, along with St. Vincent Foundation, who support the art therapy program so it can be offered for free.
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Although survivors are a big part of the program’s success story, art is also a comfort for those facing death. “You can truly celebrate the person before they pass away,” Rothenberg said.
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She’s hoping to spread the gift of art therapy to healers as well. She and her cousin, an artist in Israel, created a three-panel mosaic of cherry blossoms in Washington, D.C., for the American College of OB-GYNs. The panels have been a hit at national conferences, where professionals involved in women’s health have, piece by piece, added colored tiles to the mosaics.
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Rothenberg thinks providers will enjoy art therapy, too, and become believers in offering it to patients.
"Heart and Soul" Reflects the Galilee Medical Center's Diverse Community
2018
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Patients, staff and visitors (both individuals and groups) continue to work on "Heart and Soul" the community art project that will hang in the entrance of the new Cardiology Center (currently under construction).
Even members of the Galilee Medical Center's Management, led by General Director, Dr. Masad Barhoum, added glass tiles to the creative endeavor under artist Yael Buxbaum's supervision. From the administration, Ms. Ruthi Yifrah, Administrative Director; Dr. Shaul Attar, Director of the Cardiology Department; Drs. Dov Baker and Jack Stolero, Deputies Director General and Ronit Kalman, Director of Nursing, accompanied Dr. Barhoum and added tiles to the piece.
"Heart and Soul" is a mosaic made of up four panels of colorful hearts designed by artists Joani Rothenberg from Indianapolis, Indiana and Yael Buxbaum from Israel. The Medical Center is collaborating with Indianapolis' St. Vincent Hospital and Health Center on this project. Joani Rothenberg is leading the work on St. Vincent's four panels which are mirror images of the panels in progress at our Medical Center. When all the panels are completed, each hospital will gift two of its panels to the other for display in the others' institution.
Patients, staff and visitors are invited to take part in the "Heart and Soul" community project. Yael comes to the Galilee Medical Center at least once a week and anyone who wants to share in this creative endeavor can work with her. Moreover, in coordination with the Department of International Affairs, Yael is bringing the work to different communities so that people all over the Western Galilee, and from different walks of life, can have the opportunity to share in creating this public art piece. "Heart and Soul" will reflect the microcosm of the Western Galilee and the diverse community that the Galilee Medical Center serves and will be a fitting piece for the entrance to the new fortified Cardiology Department.
St Vincent art therapist a healthcare hero
March 21, 2018
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Visitors to the cafeteria at St. Vincent Indianapolis, part of the Ascension Indiana Ministry Market, have a new work of art whose composition turns heads and whose vibrant colors lift the spirits of anyone who sees it.
"The 'Tree of Life' mosaic is truly a community creation assembled by oncology patients, caregivers, family members, and anyone who might have stopped by to watch us assemble it," said local artist Joani Rothenberg, who developed the mosaic as a companion piece to one she had created earlier in Israel. "It allows everybody to find their own part of the puzzle."
Both the Indianapolis and Israeli mosaics share the Tree of Life title, the latter residing in an Israeli women's hospital. Thousands of blue, green, yellow, red and orange pieces of glass were fitted into place by hundreds of people at the art therapy studio in the St. Vincent Breast Center and St. Vincent Cancer Care. Some were merely stopping by to watch; others spent hundreds of hours on the mosaic. Joani and Yael Buxbaum, an Israeli artist, painted both trees along with all the mosaics in the Indianapolis hospital.
The yearlong labor of love enabled the artists' collective to find a connection with something larger than themselves. "We chose an Indiana landscape for the St. Vincent version," Joani said. "It is a magnolia tree with Indiana wildflowers in the foreground, and a barn and silo in the background."
As the mosaic was being assembled, it was taken out of its studio on the second floor of the St. Vincent Breast Center and placed in a waiting room so people awaiting treatment or visiting the doctor could view the work in progress and add a piece of their own to the artwork.
Everyone who worked on the mosaic was surprised and pleased to see the finished product. The patients felt good about being able to give something back to the hospital and expressed many thoughts about their artistic experience:
"It took my mind off what was going on. Kept my hands busy and redirected my thoughts as to why I was here."
"It's nice to be a part of something that lasts."
"Great way of giving and loving nature."
"So hard waiting and the news hasn't been good. It helps to do this and passes the time in a nice way."
"I meant to do only one tile, but it was so addictive I did a lot."
"What a pleasure and a privilege to be a part of an actively energetic piece!"
The new mosaic is the fifth display at St. Vincent. Others can be found on the patient care units and in St. Vincent Cancer Care.
"St. Vincent leadership is as excited about the mosaic as the ones who put it together," Joani said. "In fact, they're working with interior designers to use mosaics to add to the hospital's visual ambiance."