July 2010
Art health
By Dawn Schuett
Brightening up a bland space has mood-boosting benefits for the patients, visitors, and staff of OMC’s clinics and hospital. At the same time, OMC’s Local Arts Initiative provides another setting for artists in Rochester and surrounding communities to have their works seen—and appreciated.
“One goal of the Local Arts Initiative at Olmsted Medical Center is making areas patients frequent more comfortable, pleasant, and supportive of health and wellness,” says Jeremy Salucka, an OMC spokesman.
“Many forms of artwork have shown they can contribute to people's emotional and physical health, whether you’re creating the art or viewing the art,” he says. “We’ve chosen artwork that’s calming, encouraging, and interesting. In doing this, we support artists who live, work, and create in the communities OMC serves.”
The medical center has purchased more than 70 pieces from art organizations in the region, including the SEMVA Art Gallery in Rochester. SEMVA (Southeastern Minnesota Visual Artists) is a small gallery that displays, sells, and supports the work of local artists.
“We’re all thrilled. It’s a wonderful thing,” says Andrea Costopoulos, board president of SEMVA. “Artists have a whole new audience to have an impact on people.”
Costopoulos helped staff members from the medical center select artwork for the facilities. The pieces are in different mediums and styles from batiks, abstract work, and landscapes to watercolors, acrylics, and oils. Seven paintings by Costopoulos, including one titled “Window of Many Colors,” are among those at OMC.
OMC’s decision to buy locally created and inspired art gave artists opportunities that didn’t exist before, says Costopoulos, who also has a master’s degree in nursing and believes in the power of art to evoke positive feelings.
The medical center had some funds budgeted for the Local Arts Initiative but also received grants from the Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council through the Minnesota Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.
OMC commissioned sculptor Richard Brubaker, a retired Mayo Clinic doctor with an art studio near Oronoco, to do a steel sculpture for display outdoors.
The sculpture, titled “Caring Embrace,” is an abstract design based on OMC’s logo. The design resembles the letter ‘O’ but actually depicts two embracing figures.
“One figure is a metaphorical representation of a health care provider who is looking at the other figure, who is a metaphorical representation of a patient,” Brubaker says. It’s an artistic depiction of the relationship between the two.
Brubaker, 73, took up the hobby of fabricating metal art four years ago, but learned the techniques by working in a machine shop to pay for medical school. Although he’s not a commercial artist, his work is attracting attention locally: Another of his sculptures, “Partners in Innovation,” is displayed at the Minnesota BioBusiness Center.
Beautifying a stark place, whether it’s an office building or a hospital, goes a long way in making people feel better, Brubaker says. “All the arts have the ability to do that.”
The artists
Artist: Karin Neuvirth
Specialty: Acrylic paintings.
How she got started: Karin Neuvirth remembers drawing constantly as a young girl, and requesting crayons, paper, and scissors as Christmas gifts. When she was 12, she received painting lessons as a present. She painted with oils until about five years ago, when she first started using acrylics.
Divergent passions: Neuvirth devotes many hours to her painting, but has a day job as a software engineer for Mayo Clinic as well. “I love that I have two separate roles and I can do well at both of them,” she says. It’s "tough to find time” for her painting sometimes, especially when she’s participating in juried shows on the outdoor art festival circuit in the summer. “I tell people that I have two full-time jobs.”
What inspires her: Born and raised in Minnesota, Neuvirth says the change of seasons is a theme in her work. “I’m very much a warm weather person. The relief that I feel in the spring is really strong, when the snow is gone and the weather gets warmer again. And in fall, there’s an urgency of only a few days left [of warm weather]. Those times are really emotional for me. Vibrant colors are also very emotional, and I really like to use those in my work,” she says, noting that her paintings are “more about expressing emotions than about the actual subject.”
A kinship with musicians: Neuvirth is always attempting to broaden her artistic horizons, and recently began working on a series of paintings of musicians (even though she’s “not musical at all”). Her favorite, “Dreams Larger Than Life,” shows a boy with a guitar. She used her teenage son as a subject. The series is “not meant to be portraits. I feel a kind of camaraderie with musicians," she says. “When musicians perform, they put themselves out there to the public, and that’s the same thing artists do when they show their work.”
Artist: Richard Brubaker
Specialty: Steel and aluminum sculptures.
How he got started: Richard Brubaker, a retired Mayo Clinic ophthalmologist, has “worked in metal for a really long time.” He learned to weld at a young age and worked as a machinist to help pay his medical school bills. About four years ago, Brubaker took up metal art as a hobby after his daughter Heather, an oil painter in San Francisco, suggested an artistic collaboration. “Then after I got my feet wet, I did some stuff on my own,” he says.
Why he loves creating art : “It’s fun when you can create an enduring piece that’s fun to look at. Like any artist, it’s fun starting with an idea and developing that into a creative piece,” Brubaker says. “I’m glad when people buy my stuff and they tell me they like it,” Brubaker says. “It gives me pleasure that it gives them pleasure. I’m not in this to make money or to gain fame. It’s just fun and I enjoy meeting the different artists and working with the Rochester Art Center on the stuff they’re doing.”
From ophthalmologist to artist: “It’s about as big a turnaround as it can be. Being an ophthalmologist, I worked with tiny little things and had to be very exacting. Being an artist, you stare at the sky and think and see stuff and go into the shop and start puttering and make something and throw it away and make something better. It’s completely different, but that’s what hobbies are.”
Artist: Andrea Costopoulos
Specialties: Paintings, jewelry, fiber scarves.
Why she loves creating art: “It’s a psychological journey for me. It’s about showing abstractly my idea of how the world works. Like, how do we perceive the world? Are we looking in a window, or out a window? In a door, or out a door? Is it a good place to go, or a bad place to go?... My paintings have a lot of action in them, but they’re all settled paintings. They all have some kind of resolution. They don’t leave people thinking, ‘Oh, that’s unsettling.’”
It’s all in the interpretation: Costopoulos hasn’t painted much since 2004, and is now returning to the medium by repainting a piece from 2002 that “looks like an island with all these different territories on it, or a very funky brain.” What’s going to emerge on canvas will be very different the second time around, says Costopoulos, who enjoys listening to other people talk about her paintings. “I don’t expect anybody to necessarily see what I’m going to see in the paintings. I don’t really like to title them because I like people to have their own experience of them.”
Impressions on the art community in Rochester: “For the size of the city, Rochester just rocks for art,” says Costopoulos, who is president of the board of Southeastern Minnesota Visual Artists, vice president of Southeastern Minnesota Arts Council, and a member of the Rochester Arts Council. “Rochester has an awful lot of public art that competes with any big city in the country.”