Bodies Of Work: Art & Healing Art

KETCHUM— Sun Valley Museum of Art (SVMoA) is pleased to announce Bodies of Work: Art & Healing, a group exhibition that features artwork by six contemporary artists who have used their artistic practice as a way of exploring and processing their own experience of medical illness and the experiences of others that will open to the public on Jan. 12, 2023, and will remain on view through March 23, 2024. Admission is free, and open to the public.

The arts have long served as powerful medicine for both mind and body. At the beginning of the 20th century, tuberculosis patients at sanatoria often participated in structured arts and crafts programs. Wounded soldiers recuperating during World War II were taught “lap crafts,” such as beading and embroidery, as part of their medical therapy. And many artists have made their practices an essential part of their personal healing.

“As we were planning for this exhibition, the Covid-19 pandemic was dominating headlines around the globe. I began asking how the arts can help us navigate the complex experience of what it is to be a medical patient facing serious illness in the 21st century – and how art can help us heal from other kinds of social and emotional trauma,” said Courtney Gilbert, Sun Valley Museum of Art Curator. “I found that this was a question lots of artists were wrestling with in their work and identified artists for the exhibition who offer multiple ways of thinking about the topic.”

Bodies of Work: Art and Healing features the artwork of six contemporary artists who have used their practices as a way of exploring and processing their own experience of medical illness, as well as the experiences of others. Working in a range of media and from widely varying points of view and experiences, these artists have made art as part of their own healing and to enable the healing of others.

Artists Katherine Shaughnessy and Heather Watkins have each made new work for the exhibition reflecting on their personal medical experiences.

The exhibition includes Boise-based artist Katherine Shaughnessy’s Radiant Interlude, 20 works on wood panel made over 20 days of radiation treatment in 2021. Shaughnessy describes the work “as a way to meditate and work my way through the pain and uncertainty that is breast cancer.” In ew paintings and sculptures commissioned by SVMoA, Shaughnessy reflects on the recent cancer diagnoses of close friends and family members.

Portland-based Heather Watkins’s Recordings are embroidered textile works the artist made while in waiting rooms of one kind or another and were inspired by her own experience of illness and treatment. Watkins writes, “This work records the labor of being (a) patient.” Made during the Covid-19 pandemic, her meditative Soundings works expand on the Recordings. In newly commissioned photographic prints, Watkins takes images of the versos of the Recordings and enlarges them to the size of medical x-rays. Knots and stray threads dot the surfaces of images resembling diagnostic scans and MRIs of the brain.

Based in Los Angeles, Dylan Mortimer was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at the age of 3 months. As an adult, Mortimer received two lung transplants and has spent much of his career making paintings and works on paper that depict lungs, bronchial branches, DNA, scars and botanical imagery. He covers his works with glitter, “a stark contrast to a really ugly, nasty disease,” an act of hope in the face of illness.

Estelle L. Roberge is a New Mexico artist who works with paint and collage. Regular walks and hikes in the landscapes near her home are central to her practice. At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, she began making small collages daily as a way to process our collective trauma with the virus and her personal experience of lockdown and isolation. The exhibition includes a selection from Roberge’s The Book of Covid: Unbound.

Bay Area painter Katherine Sherwood experienced a cerebral hemorrhage at the age of 44 that left her paralyzed on her right side. She retrained herself to paint with her left hand, adopting a looser and more fluid style. An activist for disability rights, Sherwood incorporates images of her own fMRI brain scans and imagery in works that also investigate the history of art.

Renée Stout, based in Washington, D.C., works in painting, sculpture and assemblage to explore social and political ideas, spirituality, traditional rituals of the African Diaspora and their continuing practice in modern America. The exhibition includes work Stout has made about healing traditions with African roots, full of references to herbs, roots and seeds used to treat all kinds of maladies for centuries.

FILM: “Angel Applicant”

Thursday, Jan. 25, 4:30 and 7 p.m. $10 member/$12 nonmember / Magic Lantern Cinemas, Ketchum Paul Klee, a Swiss-German painter, fled Germany in 1933 when he and other modern artists were vilified by the rising Nazi Party. While Klee was isolated in Switzerland, a mysterious disease began wreaking havoc on his body and profoundly changing his artwork. ator/director Ken August Meyer explores Klee’s expressive last works after being diagnosed with the same life-threatening disease, systemic scleroderma. Using colorful and whimsical visuals, “Angel Applicant” echoes Klee’s mystique and ironic wit, demonstrating how creativity can inspire us to overcome personal suffering and make the most of life.