As artists in residence for Baton Rouge General Medical Center, Patti Bailey and Joelle Castille try to cheer patients up, or at least distract them from their pain.
They have seen how creating art, hearing music, or just having someone to talk to can dramatically change someone’s state of mind, none more so than one patient who lost both of his legs.
They met him in his hospital room the day after his second leg was amputated, and he was “mad at the world,” Bailey says.
“He was so gruff,” Castille recalls. “‘Why are you in my room?’”
Through gentle persistence over several days, they convinced him to draw, and then paint. They learned he had been an artist years ago. Upon leaving the hospital, he decided to return to his former hobby.
“He said that was going to give him some purpose,” Bailey says.
Bailey is the full-time artist in residence for Baton Rouge General’s Arts in Medicine program, while Castille is one of two part-time contract artists. Along with several volunteers, their work is featured in “A View Into Our World–An Artist’s Way,” an exhibit on display through September in the Manship Theatre gallery on the first floor of the Shaw Center for the Arts.
It is the 14th show for the Arts in Medicine program, launched in 2012, but the first to feature the resident and volunteer artists, rather than the patients.
The work displayed by the 10 artists in the exhibit, mostly paintings along with a few mixed-media pieces, was created on their own time and doesn’t necessarily have anything to do with their work in the hospital program. Most of the works are professional quality, or at least reflect some level of formal training, although some were produced by hobbyists.
Representations of the State Capitol and a fuzzy duckling share wall space with abstract impressionism and surrealism. Some are priced as low as $10, while many are not for sale.
“I thought it would be fun to showcase their work and give them a chance to shine a little bit,” says Kim Henderson, the program’s supervisor.
The program doesn’t just bring in artists, but also includes musicians and an oral historian who works with patients who want to record personal life stories. The artists spend much of their time in the oncology ward, but they also respond to requests from patients and staffers and go room-to-room in every department.
Often the artists will draw something and the patients will add the paint. Sometimes, just watching the artists work can be soothing for the patients. Other times, the patients just want to talk.
The program is available to patients at both the Bluebonnet and Mid City campuses of the General, and at the Radiation Oncology Center at Lane Regional Medical Center.
Edgardo Tenreiro, the General’s CEO, says the program helps create a holistic healing experience that involves “treating the whole person,” not just their physical ailments.
“I can’t give you the ROI [return on investment] on this,” Tenreiro says, “but we believe in it, and that’s why we put the money into it.”
Dr. William Russell, radiation oncology medical director at the General’s Pennington Cancer Center, says the program “has a long track record of doing so much good in our institution.”
“It provides patients, families and staff with those brief moments of tranquility that are so important,” Russell says.
And in return, the artists are inspired by the patients’ perseverance. Bailey gets choked up as she recalls one man who watched her work with several patients in the outpatient infusion lab.
“He said, ‘Take it from me, someone who probably won’t be here much longer, you’re doing what you’re supposed to be doing on this Earth,’” she says.
About Arts in Medicine
The Baton Rouge General program accepts volunteers, and interested artists and musicians can email [email protected]. Visit brgeneral.org/patients-visitors/arts-in-medicine/ for more information.
This article was originally published in the July 2018 issue of 225 Magazine.
