Giving the Gift of Art to Help Heal Cancer Patients

Is every development in our nation’s free-market health care system a boon for profiteers and a bust for patient care? Not necessarily.

Sometimes generous art therapy donations yield patients significant pain relief and improved medical prognoses. 

On Friday, May 30, The Falls Church Independent attended a heart-warming donation ceremony at the Schar Cancer Institute (SCI) of the Inova Fairfax Hospital at SCI’s Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery in the institute’s “state of the art, multi-disciplinary cancer center,” at 8095 Innovation Park Drive in Fairfax. 

Inspired by her friend’s recent organ donation ordeal, Arlington resident and Filipino-American digital artist Regina Chua – whom we wrote about earlier as an art Incubator for the Arlington County Public Library – was the guest of honor as she was donating her digital graphic work, “Organ Donors,” to CSI. On hand to receive Chua’s original artwork conveying a blue-lighted female figure in a hospital gown, finding a “new lease on life” after receiving a heart donation (i.e., a “gift from the heart”), were Inova’s Senior Program Manager for Arts & Healing, Monica Delaney, and InovAsians Team Member Resource Group (TMRG) Chair, Joan Smith. 

Chua decided to give “Organ Donors” as a gift “in the spirit of AAPI Heritage Month in May. The “limited-print digital painting” had been “locally exhibited at the PARC at Tysons Art Gallery before being jury-selected into the prestigious Society of Illustrators' 67th Annual Exhibition in New York City.”

Chua said she was “honored” that “Organ Donors” might “contribute to Inova’s mission by offering patients and their families a moment of solace, a reflection of resilience, and a reminder that their journey – no matter how difficult – is seen.” 

Walking past the cancer institute’s healing waterfalls at SCI’s entrance and entering the gleaming lobby, one immediately notices the prominent colorful artworks on display in the hospital lobby’s wide-open interior spaces flooded with natural light. A generous gift of $50 million from real estate moguls Dwight and Martha Schar in 2019, established SCI in the spaces of ExxonMobil’s former headquarters. 

Inova Hospital is a nonprofit organization.

According to CSI, “The new cancer institute, which provides both inpatient and outpatient services, is the flagship location of a cancer care network that covers all of Northern Virginia and serves the broader Washington, D.C. metro area.” Created to “accommodate 6,000 new patients a year with a plethora of clinical and support services, the $400 million Inova Schar Cancer Institute…. occupies 438,000 square-feet of space.”  

The Arts & Healing Program

Remarkably, CSI was designed with art therapy in mind. 

With its Arts and Healing Program, its services would “[promote] the healing power of the environment on those affected by cancer, both through art installations and clinical applications,” Inova SCI said. 

“Thoughtfully selected original art can be much more than a simple distraction; it’s a source of healing inspiration and hope to those facing life-changing illness,” CSI continues. “The goal of the Arts and Healing program is to minimize suffering and restore well-being by providing an environment that promotes healing and wellness. Art in its many forms supports those in treatment and recovery, as well as their loved ones.”

Art Therapy for Patients and Their Families, and Hospital Staff as Well

Consistent with Inova’s stated goal of providing “patient-centered care,” the program includes “a robust permanent art collection and ongoing exhibitions, performing arts events, and other workshops,” not only for patients and their families but for Inova staff as well.

“Dedicated to exhibiting fine art that explores the innate connection between healing and creativity,” the arts therapy program provides “a rotating exhibition schedule,” with a gallery that “features contemporary artists,” and addresses, “a diversity of significant themes, including spirituality, social change, multiculturalism, health, environmentalism, and community.”

Critical to CSI's Health & Wellness's Program, is Inova's Artist-in-Resident (AIR) Program, "reflecting the belief that the creative spirit can be found in all of us and can be especially helpful when the human spirit is in need."

The AIR Program "trains and supervises local visual, literary and performing artists who work directly with patients, caregivers and clinicians to create opportunities for stress reduction, self-awareness and self-expression in Inova Schar’s outpatient infusion, radiation and waiting areas," CSI says. "Patients and caregivers who participate often express great relief from pain and anxiety associated with their illnesses and are grateful for an opportunity to discover and explore what they can do."

The AIR Program works in concert with the Smith Center – a leading nonprofit provider of arts and health services – to create and maintain a "patient-first experience;" provide a "beautiful and therapeutic environment;" integrate "the arts throughout the patient experience;" enrich the "conditions of healing;" and, "energize, inspire, and enliven patients, visitors, staff, and community."

“I’m so excited about today’s event,” Joan Smith, InovAsians TMRG Chair told us as we met in the lobby. “You know we have our Asian, Pacific Islander Heritage event every year and this year our focus was Asian artists in the DMV. So Regina [Chua] was one of the artists who exhibited at our event and she chose to donate this original artwork to our Healing Arts program which I thought was beautiful…. I’m just really excited that Regina chose to donate this piece. That was so very kind of her.” 

Inova’s celebration of AAPI heritage and art included “eight artists exhibiting, with some of them doing hands-on, like Ichibana, and we had Batik, which is an Indonesian linen art, and one was doing a live painting. We had calligraphy. We had a Korean autistic artist who kind of speaks to the world through his painting, and then we had Regina who is a graphic novelist. And those are all the rage these days, so I was most excited to have her work at the event,” Smith said.

Commenting on how enthralling Chua’s “Organ Donors” is, Smith said, “It really is, very beautiful. And I’m very thankful. I’m hoping our patients find comfort in viewing the art – you know, with everything you go through when you’re here.” 

Smith has no doubt about art’s healing powers. When patients have a chance to look at the art on display, they feel “that someone understands what they're going through and sometimes the art you’re looking at is beautiful and it gives you a moment of peace. And so, art definitely has had therapeutic value throughout history.”

Smith believes Inova's cohort programs make every staff member “feel a sense of belonging.” Inova supports 11 different such groups representing many identity categories, including “Inova Asians,” Smith said. “We have  Somos Inova, which is our Hispanic/Latino TMRG. We have Hype which is young professionals, and Sage which is our senior professionals. We have Black. We have Pride. We have Inova Ability which is people with different abilities,” and several more, she said.

Smith describes why Inova is so dedicated to such DEI programs. Turns out, they not only demonstrate respect and appreciation for all of Inova's employees, but they help with Inova's central mission – to deliver strong patient-care results.

“Here at Inova, what we really want is for our team members to feel a good sense of belonging, because when you feel like you belong in a place, then you’re really engaged, and you want your health care workers to be engaged, right? And so it’s very important because we do such critical work for our patients,” Smith said. 

A 92 Percent Employee Satisfaction Rating

“So, it’s very important that our team members are happy, they like being at Inova, they like that they really feel good about belonging here. And our president who was also at Inova Fair Oaks [Raj Chand, MD] was the executive sponsor for Inova Asians when he opened our AAPI event, and he said that in our team member experience survey, we had a 92 percent satisfaction rate with being part of Inova and having pride about being here. And that’s significant, 92 percent!”

After taking the escalator up to the Joan Hisaoka Healing Arts Gallery – now displaying artworks from a group of Alexandria painters who created plein air paintings during the pandemic on themes of "healing" – we convened in the gallery for Chua’s official gift ceremony. 

Art Therapist and Senior Program Manager for Arts and Healing, Monica Delaney, described how this moment came to be. “Inova is very intentional with its space and what it feels like for family members and patients when they come in,” she said. “We have art all throughout the building and many of our other buildings and in this gallery as well.”

But, without the generosity of major donors, such healing and wellness galleries could never exist. “Our Arts and Healing Program is funded completely by philanthropy,” Delaney said. “So we rely on the generosity of donors for many, many things. And so this, for me, is so emblematic of the generosity of the community.”

Turning to Chua and discussing her painting's theme of "donation," Delaney continued: “You talked about this intentional choice of this person giving a piece of themselves away to someone else and I think about philanthropy in many ways in the same sense.”

“People are choosing to give whatever amount is meaningful to them to support this program, our amazing artists-in-residence who facilitate creative experiences for patients and families, our performing musicians – where you walk into a lobby and someone’s playing the harp – and what that feels like, as opposed to walking into a cold medical center setting. And our Music Therapy Program. You know, there are so many things we are able to do and we get to hear directly from patients every day how meaningful those experiences are for them. Every day. You know, we hear, ‘This has saved my life!’”

“We keep this guestbook in the gallery and I love to just come in here every so often and take a look at what people are saying because it makes me feel so connected to what’s happening in this room when I’m not here and how people see and feel when they look at this art,” Delaney continued. “And I feel like they’re transported in many ways. And in this gallery we feature artwork that speaks to healing in some capacity.” 

“There are so many different ways we’re privileged to bring the art to patients and family members here at Inova,” Delaney acknowledged. “So, we are so grateful for this donation and we are thrilled to find a new home for it here where many, many people will enjoy it." 

Asked where Chua’s artwork might be displayed, Delaney thought for a second then said, “We’re pulling art to put in our stem cell and transplant” spaces “right now, so, I’m looking at this and I’m hearing [Regina’s] story and thinking, ‘Hmm, I think we’re going to be able to find a meaningful place for this.’” Perhaps a plaque with Chua’s description of her inspiration for the piece would be included as well because it was so fitting for patients and visitors to those floors.

The Artist on Her Work

We asked Chua how she was originally inspired to create “Organ Donors.” “I actually have a close friend who needed to undergo an organ donation quite recently,” she responded. “So, they’ve had to undergo a lot of transfusions, because there are issues about compatibility, and also the fact that in organ donations, there’s a very long wait to even get out of the queue and then finally go through the transplant procedures. So, there’s a lot of uncertainty in it, and I remember when my friend finally had the procedure done, they told me it was like a renewal, it’s like having a ‘second lease on life…’ So, I wanted to capture that feeling of being renewed when you have the gift of somebody giving a part of themselves to another person.”

Describing how she conveyed such themes in the graphic painting, Chua said, “Blue is often associated with something sad, or as some would say in the medical setting, ‘If you’re blue then you’re coding, and you’re not able to breath.’ But, I used blue as a way to juxtapose where it’s not sad and it’s not a sign of death, but it’s a sign of new life, and a sign of having that gratitude and that happiness of having another chance at life.”

“The other color choices I used here in my subject, is I had the glowing organ – in this case the heart, because I believe that organ donation, and choosing to do that, really has to 'come from the heart.' Not necessarily the organ. [Laughs]. But, metaphorically, 'the heart.' And just the subject herself here is inspired by my friend.”

As for artistic license in the work, Chua said, “ I did take some licensing to change her expression a bit, and the way she poses here, but it’s always to represent her like she’s taking a breath. And that you can kind of feel the heart pulse as she’s taking a breath with her new chance at life.”

Describing the precise medium of the work and her artistic approach, Chua said, “I’m primarily a digital artist – although I did start traditionally – but, the digital space allows me to have greater command about how the canvas is oriented, and the layers I work with. It also allows me to disseminate my art more widely because the struggle with doing traditional, is that materials can be very costly and usually there’s only one original copy available. So, I wanted to make this a lot more publicly accessible. Or, at least, that’s my ethos with my art – I want to be able to share it as widely as possible.”

“In terms of software, this is done through Clip Studio Paint,” Chua added. 

And Chua couldn’t help but conclude with kind remarks for Delaney and Smith’s work at Inova and the institution’s Arts and Healing Programs. 

“I love that the ethos of this program is really to bring art especially to patients who really need to feel that inspiration and to feel that their healing process will come to pass, right?,” Chua said. “And art in itself is a process that really helps you take the time to take in your surroundings, take in the moment, and to capture that, in just this one piece.”

“And, I love that this program is not just sharing this with patients, but also the fact that you’re including your team members as well. It really speaks to bringing ‘Art for All, and All for Art!” And I love that.”

To contribute to Inova Schar Cancer Institute, go to: https://join.inova.org/cancerservices.

By Christopher Jones