Readers of this blog and/or fans of graphic medicine may recall that in 2023 I had the honor of being the inaugural Kingfisher Institute Visiting Fellow at Creighton University.
Artist and educator extraordinaire Rachel Mindrup, now the Richard L. Deming, MD Endowed Chair in Medical Humanities at Creighton, said that my 2023 residency inspired her to follow up with an invitation to curate an exhibit for the gorgeous Lied Art Gallery on the Omaha campus. Inspired by both enjoying original comic art on paper and Brian Callender curating an exhibit of graphic medicine in Chicago, I was eager to do something similar.
We easily arrived at a theme via Zoom meetings, and Sal Marx contributed their amazing art for our promotional materials.
The exhibit statement, which is printed on the wall in the gallery, discusses my goal with this theme:
Physician and artist Ian Williams coined the term ‘Graphic Medicine’ in 2007 to refer to the intersection of the medium of comics and the discourse of health, illness, disability, and caregiving. He has stated that when he chose this term, it was intended to lightheartedly propose that perhaps the graphic itself could be the medicine.
Graphic medicine as an art form, a community, and an academic field has expanded exponentially since Dr. Williams coined the term. This exhibit features original comic art that reflects in its panels the giving and receiving of care. These works also demonstrate ways in which their creation itself provides care: the graphic as the medicine. Capitalizing on the affordances of the comic medium, these works aim to educate, advocate, and empower as we work toward justice.
As part of a community outreach project prior to the exhibit, I conducted two events. First was a workshop with a cohort of students in the Youth Enjoy Science (YES!) program, a research education program at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. The workshop consisted of drawing body maps and comics, as a way for students to explore and communicate concepts related to health. Special thanks to Kali Ratigan and UNMC-YES Multiple Principal Investigators Drs. Regina Idoate, Aislinn Rookwod, Maurice Godfrey, and Joyce Solheim, for not only helping to coordinate this workshop, sharing the work that UNMC-YES students created, but also for coming to the opening!
Next was a trip in August to Winnebago, NE. I was invited to facilitate a workshop with the Winnebago Public Health Department for “Mother’s Helpers” who care for women during and after pregnancy. These community care professionals are working with the WAZOKI initiative. Wazoki, a Winnebago word meaning kinship, refers to Wellness Advocacy Zones: Opportunities for Kinship Involvement (WAZOKI), a community-engaged implementation science study aimed to promote kinship support for perinatal mothers. So we focused our exercises on kinship, care, and our bodies. We also did body maps in this workshop. These women sharing their work, which they did so generously, was incredibly moving. What an honor to be invited. We are incredibly grateful to include some of their work in the exhibit. Special thanks here to Anne Steinhoff, the WAZOKI community coalition and WAZOKI Multiple Principal Investigators (Drs. Mona Zuffante and Regina Idoate) for helping coordinate this workshop and also to WAZOKI Lead Implementation Scientist, Dr. Aislinn Rookwood, for participating in my workshop and contributing her work to the exhibition.
Special thanks here to Anne Steinhoff, who helped coordinate this workshop. Anne contributed a painting to our exhibit as well. From her bio on the Willa Cather Center website,
“Anne is a member of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, as well as a lineal descendant of the Seneca and Wyandotte tribes. She enjoys working with Nebraska’s talented Native American artists through both the nonprofit and art worlds. In all pursuits, Anne is motivated by the beliefs that we are all connected, and we need to support one another on our life journeys.”
During that visit, I also met with Rachel and Jess Benjamin, the gallery director. In addition to being the Lied Art Gallery director, Jess is also a very talented ceramicist. From her artist statement,
“My artwork focuses on water usage in the Great Plains area: a regional concern that is related to the phenomenon of global drought. My imagination was trained in the irrigation ditches on the 100th Meridian. As a nation driven by the imperative of over-consumption, the United States has become dependent on commodities that require large quantities of diminishing water. Below the Midwest lies the greatest underground water reserve in the world, the Ogallala Aquifer. Since 2000, I have witnessed the drought-like conditions in the Midwest, and I have witnessed how people have responded to the drought.”
Jess, Rachel, and I began looking at the art that had come in from generous artists we contacted. We sketched out a general plan for how the work could flow through the gallery.
The ultimate decisions about how the art would be exhibited were left to Jess. She’s a master. Unfortunately, not every piece of the work sent eventually made it to the walls but all of the contributing artists are represented.
Last Sunday I was so eager to see how the exhibit came together, I drove straight from the Omaha airport to the Lied Art Gallery. I was incredibly moved and stunned. All of the original art from graphic medicine texts had been framed. Jess said that the work deserved to be treated with respect. I couldn’t agree more.
First, a video of a quick walkthrough the show, so you can feel like you were there. Below, a slideshow of closer, still images.
Links to all of the books featured in the gallery show, and a few more, can be found here.
A few photos from our five classes of teaching, with art students and medical students. Some are both! Sal Marx was generous enough to come from NYC to teach with me. We started our classes with a walk through of the gallery, with me giving a little background about graphic medicine, my career, and the works in the exhibit. The marriage of Sal’s narrative medicine methodology (close looking) and my graphic medicine drawing exercises was inspired.
We were then treated to dinner with Creighton and UNMC colleagues during a tornado warning. The conversation was so engrossing that we just rode it out. By the time dinner was over the skies had cleared.
Finally, the exhibit opening reception was an opportunity to meet more wonderful members of the Creighton community. Art from students was added to the show, and will continue to be throughout the run of the exhibition.
The UNMC-YES program is supported by the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (5R25CA221777-09) and the WAZOKI initiative is supported by the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health (6922-05-IMPROVE-S002) Implementing a Maternal health and PRegnancy Outcomes Vision for Everyone Community Implementation Program. The content in this blog is solely the responsibility of the author and collaborators and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.