CANCER NEVER HAD ME

Kory Kolis ’15, The Woman with the Golden Blood: A Portrait of My Mother, 2020, watercolor, tissue paper, and beeswax on plywood, 20x24 inches.

CANCER NEVER HAD THEM

This year’s Nobel Conference, “Cancer in the Age of Biotechnology,” provided opportunity to explore the experience of cancer through artwork. The juried Hillstrom Museum of Art exhibit “Cancer Never Had Me: Views by Artists” featured works from 33 artists showing how cancer has affected them. Seven of the artists are alumni and four are current students. Director Don Myers ’83 felt the Nobel Conference was an opportunity to express the connection between science and art. “Probably each person you meet has had cancer or a very close friend or family member who has,” he says. Our varied experiences with cancer are reflected in the works. “We kept the criteria pretty open, so we received work that is realistic and concrete along with abstract works.”

Class of 2015 grad Kory Kolis’s piece, The Woman with the Gold Blood: A Portrait of My Mother, depicts his cancer story. During his second year at Gustavus, his mother was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia. The drug that could save her life came with a $70,000 price tag. For more than a week, while the insurance company processed the claim, his mother considered forgoing the drug in order to not bankrupt her family.

“I cannot imagine the misery my mother endured contemplating that choice,” Kolis says. In the end, the drug was covered. His layered work is his interpetation of what the family endured.

Each work contains such a story, as well as an artist who crafted it into art. Paired with a complementary exhibit of works in the Hillstrom and ShogrenMeyer collections by artists who had cancer, in-person and virtual visitors gained new understandings of the ways cancer affects us all.

Visit the exhibit virtually at gustavus. edu/finearts/hillstrom/exhibitions.

Heritage

EARLY IMAGES of Nobel Hall circa 1963, including from the dedication, one of the largest gatherings of Nobel Laureates ever assembled.

“Professor John Lammert is one of the best teachers I will ever have in my life. He cared so much about what he did and about his students.”

—Megan

Raiber ’14

“Great memories of imprinting on baby ducks and watching Perry bloom!”

—Caitlin

Fitzchowan ’14

REFLECTIONS ON NOBEL HALL

We asked alumni on Facebook (/gustavusalumni) for their favorite memories. Here are some of the best.

Lilly Benson Budd ’11 | One of my all-time favorite classes and labs was in that building, Microbes and Human Health. Tammy Marie Olson Flolid ’81 | The winter of 1977–78 was brutal. Going to the upstairs greenhouse for class was like visiting a springtime oasis. Kerstin Peterson Halverson ’90 | Working on the electron microscope with Professor Heidcamp. And that crazy night during senior week when we TP’d everyone’s offices. Beth Robelia Napton ’93 | My sister Kristine Robelia-Oppegard ’93 and I thought our brother Paul Robelia ’91 would get lost in the basement of Nobel. We wouldn’t see him for days! Megan Raiber ’14 | Mixing concoctions, capturing fruit flies, swabbing yourself for Petri dishes, and working with bunnies. Gigi Olson Dobosenski ’98 | Many hours in labs. Trekking across the snow to do a J-Term research class with Professor Jacks ’79. Learning electron microscopy with Professor Heidcamp. Finding and picking catnip under the trees to send to the cats of Gina Larson LaCombe ’98. Tara Harding Robson ’98 | Great memories of dancing with Stan the Skeleton in the human physiology lab. Sarah Jorgenson Magnuson ’04 | Late nights studying drosophila fruit fly reproduction while listening to Tom Petty (the only CD in the lab) with Professor Bloch-Qazi. Amanda Olson ’12 | Many late night hours in the entomology lab pinning our insect collections and listening to the Backstreet Boys!