Two Sunflowers and a Rainbow, Watching TV Together Outside

Auckland Art Gallery staff member and artist Vivien Masters discusses her latest project, making art with critically ill children in a New York Hospital

It’s 38 degrees outside, the sun is beating down, and I’m covered in paint. I write to you from New York, where I’m collaborating with a Hospital in Brooklyn for a special art project. Earlier this year I founded the Dreamscape Project, a non-profit collaborative art project that engages critically ill and disabled young people in art. The project has brought me to NY for June and July of 2012, to create art with paediatric patients at Brookdale Hospital.

Together with Brookdale’s Child Life Department I’m creating three large-scale artworks with the children, all of which will be donated to Brookdale Hospital upon completion. Two of the works will be auctioned off, with 100% of the proceeds going towards the Child Life Dpt. of the Hospital, who survive on grants.

One of the Brookdale artworks, before the children started painting! Waterproof ink on canvas.

Detail of the squirrel Doctors and patients in the 'Tree Hospital'

To create the three artworks I took a collaborative approach. Earlier in the year I asked Child Life Specialist Janis Atty to start gathering ideas from her patients. What would they like to see in the artworks? Suggestions flooded in, some sweet, some funny, some bizarre. ‘Balloons’, ‘a princess’, ‘a tiger that thinks it’s a dog and barks at cats’, ‘no clowns’, ‘a dragon’ and my favourite: ‘two sunflowers and a rainbow watching TV together outside’. I collected their ideas and transformed them into three large-scale ink drawings on canvas. I’m now working with the children to paint the works.

The children involved in this project are receiving long-term treatment for life-threatening illnesses. In the context of a Hospital, art-making takes on a new importance. Opportunities for young patients to experiment, play with and manipulate materials are crucial. Art becomes an outlet of expression that aids coping and healing. It can open a unique channel of non-verbal communication in younger patients, who may struggle to verbalise their thoughts and feelings. It lowers stress and anxiety, and can distract from pain. Positive arts experiences have the power to transform the hospital experience for a child, which can be confusing, frightening and lonely.

To raise the funds needed to make this project a success, I turned to crowd-funding website Indiegogo. I would like to thank all of the Gallery staff members who contributed to the project and helped it to not only reach but surpass its funding goal.

In September I’ll return to NZ (and the Gallery!) to continue work on the project with CanTeen and Ronald McDonald House Trust, Auckland. For my collaboration with Ronald McDonald House I’ll be teaming up with the fantabulous Auckland Art Gallery art tutor Andrea Gaskin! Andrea works as an art tutor for the children and their families who stay at Ronald McDonald House, as well as delivering the Gallery’s fabulous art programmes for children.

You can follow my progress on www.thedreamscapeproject.org, or check out the Dreamscape Project on Facebook.

The CEO of the Hospital suggested that we move from the playroom, to the lobby of the Hospital. Right by the public front entrance. With children. And paint. I think I got my first grey hair.

The fine art of mixing colours!

12News came in and interviewed us on one of the days we were painting in the lobby! That's me with the amazing Janis Atty, Child Life Specialist at Brookdale :)

Me with the three artworks I made for Brookdale, using ideas from patients!

A visit to Documenta13

Our Assistant Registrar Fiona Moorhead has joined the ranks of Gallery bloggers to share some snapshots of her recent travels...

Documenta is a contemporary art event held in Kassel, Germany once every five years. During the 100 days of Documenta, the population of Kassel swells as hundreds of thousands of art fans make the pilgrimage to this small town in the middle of Germany.  You have to wonder how the town's citizens deal with this onslaught, and what they think of the strange and wonderful artworks left behind.  This year, for Documenta13, I made the journey, and here are a few thoughts and images I've taken away from this visit.

A notable feature of Documenta is the variety of venues: in addition to the main venues of traditional museum and gallery spaces, the event spreads across the city, invading city gardens, a planetarium, natural history museum, an abandoned hotel, shops, cinemas, the train station and a children's library, just to name a few.  Many artists present works that are incidental to the location in which they are presented, but some artists create works that respond to their environment. 

One artwork that had a strong connection to its location was Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller's work 'Alter Bahnhof Video Walk' which was based in the Kassel Hauptbahnhof (main train station). 

Visitors were invited to borrow an iPod loaded with a video and sound piece, which instructed you to follow the video maker's movements through the station.  The narrator mused on the physical location (taking you to the platform where trains departed to concentration camps during World War II), as well as more internal wanderings, through ideas of memory, place and relationships to loved ones.  The result was an intriguing form of augmented reality, where the events taking place in the video seemed to segue into reality.  The 'guided tour' feeling of the work offered another perspective to our experience of Documenta, where, armed with maps, we navigated through Kassel, trying to find Documenta venues, and sometimes encountering unexpected things along the way. 

With hundreds of artists' projects, lectures, congresses, film screenings, performances and other events, no one can possibly see the full gamut that Documenta has to offer. Instead, we all see just a small slice, and like our experience being guided around the train station by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller, we are at times engaged with the physical experiences, and other times wrapped up in our own imaginations.