PROVIDING CREATIVE SERVICES TAILORED TO INDIVIDUAL AND COMMUNITY NEEDS
VISITING ARTISTS’ holistic, whole-person approach, is grounded on a wide spectrum of time-honored creative practices, honed in the field by means of research-backed social-emotional practices. VISITING ARTISTS’ unique, proprietary program, addresses the needs of individuals and communities, feeding the heart, mind, body and soul by cultivating a creative spirit throughout its curriculum, fostering a, dynamic, and vibrant community, united in drawing, fragrance, food, gardening, poetry, movement, music, photography, song, theatre, writing, and all things created and imagined: what is awe, beauty, hope, joy, and wonder, all shown to promote healing, relaxation, wellness, and well-being.
COMMUNITY CORK BOARDS
“Frida Kahlo’s life and artwork can serve as a resource for physicians who want to better comprehend the experience and dehumanizing consequences of pain. Her paintings are a medium to visualize pain and the effect of pain on the human condition. We witness the suffering, grief, and doubt in Kahlo’s paintings; through them, we can contemplate the experience of pain from the perspective of the patient.” — Antelo, Fernando, MD, “Pain and the Paintbrush: The Life and Art of Frida Kahlo,” AMA Journal of Ethics
Community cork boards provide a perfect opportunity for message-making: a creative canvas, to be seen and shared by all. Traditionally approached as a tool to disseminate information to a captive audience, VISITING ARTISTS prefers to shift the language and perspective, seeing viewers, instead, as a captivated audience: beyond informational, cork boards are inspirational, igniting conversation, booting moods, and moving viewers to look more, learn more, feel more.
Sonia, at 88 years, was experiencing “the blues” during Covid-19 lockdowns, due to the isolation and lingering effects of the illness on her memory, smell, and taste buds. She had reached a break point of hopelessness and inertia, when she was invited to participate in a VISITING ARTIST workshop, HOW ART WORKS, which brings residents on virtual museum tours. Lorraine responded by saying she didn’t “know anything” about art, to which a VISITING ARTIST responded by asking her a question: Do you have a favorite painting? Lorraine answered immediately, saying she has only ever loved one painting, which she has a poster of on her wall, a self portrait by Frida Kahlo.
Sonia was invited to participate in the creation of a VISITING ARTISTS cork board which was to be posted in her residence, which would feature Frida Kahlo. Janine was motivated to learn about Frida Kahlo’s life, and was moved by Kahlo’s words and works. The resulting cork board was a collaborative endeavor. This experience inspired Janine to attend weekly VISITING MUSEUM classes, and begin a practice of drawing flowers which she cut out, and decorated her walls with.
INSPIRING COMMUNITY
INSPIRING COLLABORATION
MURALS
As patients, and during the recovery and rehabilitation process, we’re accustomed to being brought and given things, whether it be medicine or flowers. In institutional settings, seldom is the human urge to express and create addressed. Working one-on-one and in group and in community settings,
VISITING ARTISTS formalizes the human need to make meaning by means of the creative process, working with participants on purpose-driven, expressive arts projects. Our program is designed to broaden aesthetic appreciation of daily experience, and improve observation, empathy, and quality of life of participants.
VISITING ARTISTS facilitates the creation of expressive art works, containers of feelings, thoughts, and memories, each as unique as the fingerprint of the maker, speaking to the singularity, urgency, and, ultimately, beauty of human experience.
Morpho menelaus, acrylic and pencil on canvas, by Vanessa Daou.
Morpho menelaus wall art, acrylic and pencil on wall, by VISITING ARTISTS.
When asked what makes her smile, Suzanne responded without hesitation, “Butterflies, and the Cheshire cat!”
VISITNG ARTISTS worked with Suzanne, from her first day in hospice, to provide her with as much joy within the narrow radius of her room as possible. The result was a flitting blue butterfly, suspended in a perpetual dance above the leaves of her plant, and a scene from Alice in Wonderland, of the Cheshire cat, perched in the brancehs of a tree, looking down at Alice, and, at the same time, at Suzanne!
IMAGINE THAT ™ CORK BOARDS
Inspired by Mathew’s love of the Beatles music and each of the band’s four members, this board is the product of ongoing conversations about the famed band’s legacy, a collaboration between Matthew and VISITING ARTIST Vanessa Daou.
The idea was sparked by Matthew’s request for a poster to be created for his door which read “All you need is love (below).” Preferring to play more of a director’s role than creator’s, Matthew worked with Vanessa to create the images and word puzzles. When asked how he envisioned the letters and words, Matthew replied, definitively, nothing straight, everything at an angle. He explained, “The Beatles never did anything you expected. Just when you thought they’d go one way, they’d take you down another road completely.”
That sense of quizzical playfulness imbues this board, where the words and letters merge with images to create a picture which is also a puzzle, a thing which is also something else entirely, the letter O which is also the head of an Octopus, echoing the underlying philosophy of The Beatles approach to their music.
