{"id":101615,"date":"2022-02-22T13:38:14","date_gmt":"2022-02-22T18:38:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/busm\/?p=101615"},"modified":"2022-02-28T11:50:14","modified_gmt":"2022-02-28T16:50:14","slug":"art-days-2022-a-two-day-celebration-of-the-conversation-between-right-and-left-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/2022\/02\/22\/art-days-2022-a-two-day-celebration-of-the-conversation-between-right-and-left-brain\/","title":{"rendered":"Art Days 2022: A Two-Day Celebration of the Conversation Between Right and Left Brain"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Color
Kidney by Tania Lopez<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Tania Lopez was 8 years old, she spent long days in the hospital on dialysis for the year preceding the kidney transplant that saved her life. Drawing made those days bearable said Lopez, now 28, and a first-year student at Boston University\u2019s School of Public Health.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll you can do is draw, and it helped me to get through that (time),\u201d said Lopez, who was born in Mexico and moved with her family to Massachusetts 20 years ago.<\/p>\n

In the last five years, her artwork took an unusual, but understandable, turn. Lopez found herself drawing kidneys, and other human organs. She starts out with pencil, followed by bold lines from a black marker and then fills in the design with colored markers and pencils.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to have a colorful kidney for my room,\u201d she said when asked what got her started. \u201cI love putting life into the organs because that\u2019s what my kidney brought to me.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Tania
Tania Lopez with her kidney drawings<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lopez\u2019s creative organ illustrations are on display alongside the artwork of other students, faculty and staff from the Medical Campus at Art Days, a two-day celebration of the conversation between right and left brain that has been ongoing for the past 32 years. Whether it\u2019s a way to decompress, a distraction, or an appreciation of the world beyond classrooms, offices and labs that can lead to self-awareness and expression, the creative arts are integral to the life of many on the Medical Campus.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Now What?, Keith Tornheim<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"\"
Let’s Think Spring, Ann McKee<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cIt can be a stress reliever for some, or they may just have the urge to create something. Some have been doing it a long time,\u201d said Keith Tornheim, PhD, an associate professor of biochemistry who has served as Art Days faculty advisor for 19 years.<\/p>\n

Back in 1967, Tornheim was an undergraduate chemistry major, missing his girlfriend (now his wife) who was spending a study year in France. He wrote some poems and ended up one of five winners in a university poetry contest. Since then, he\u2019s published five books of poetry and one of his poem cycles was part of a collaboration with choreographer Wendy Jehlen in her creation of <\/span> \u201cLilith,\u201d a solo dance performance that played at the Boston Center for the Arts this December.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy art and poetry tend not to reflect the science but that\u2019s not true of all scientist\/artists. Some things they do in their science or medical life may give them the inspiration,\u201d said Tornheim.<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The stereotype of scientists and doctors being rigid and eschewing creativity did not ring true to second-year medical student Jie Yin. \u201cYes, scientists do have to follow protocols, but if that line of thinking does not bear fruit, they still must come up with something else,\u201d Yin argued.<\/p>\n

\"Painting
Starry Sky, Jie Yin<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Painting, she said, helps give her the open mind to approach a problem from a new direction.<\/p>\n

Born in Shanghai, China, Yin moved to Reno, Nevada, when she was 17. She grew up an occasional painter, and never took lessons. Her interest sharpened when, as a post-bachelor\u2019s degree researcher at the National Institutes of Health and National Cancer Institute, she looked for something more fulfilling to do in her down time.<\/p>\n

\u201cWatching television and reading books left me empty inside,\u201d Yin said. She found she wanted to experience the creative mind that provoked the emotions she felt in the shapes and colors in the abstract paintings she\u2019d seen at New York\u2019s Metropolitan Museum of Art.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt started out as a way to relax, but as I got better at it, I felt this excitement in my brain that kept me going,\u201d Yin said. The act of painting was an intriguing contradiction, a combination of focus and concentration in putting brush to canvas while ideas, like sparks of electricity, lights and colors, were firing in her mind, she said.<\/span><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Her interest evolved from abstract art to impressionism, and that led naturally to Van Gogh, and her painting in the Art Days exhibit \u2013 a rendering of his masterwork \u201cThe Starry Night,\u201d a fictionalized view from his asylum window in Saint Remy, France. She said she was touched by the movement, the kinetic energy of sky, clouds and trees.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s why I\u2019m interested in watercolors because water is so fluid,\u201d Yin said. With watercolors, she felt she could pursue her goal of capturing a fleeting moment in time.<\/p>\n

She sees a parallel between her art life and a future in internal medicine, possibly oncology.<\/p>\n

\u201cArt is a way you handle people\u2019s emotions. It\u2019s a fluidity in mixing colors and water,\u201d Yin said. \u201cAs a future physician, I never know who will show up in a clinic. It\u2019s difficult to control the flow of water. It\u2019s unpredictable, in the way you could encounter a patient who might have a different story.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"
Redlining and Flatlining, Rachel Allen<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Barbara Corkey, PhD, understands that feeling. She doesn\u2019t have a plan or color scheme when she sits down to paint.<\/p>\n

\u201cI couldn\u2019t verbalize where my brain is going. It\u2019s on its own track,\u201d said Corkey, professor emeritus of medicine and biochemistry. \u201cWe all need to have multiple lives we go in and out of. Stepping away from science is very important.\u201d<\/p>\n

As an undergraduate, she was torn between a chemistry and art major. After six decades as a scientist, she sees the creative thinking process and meticulous lab work as a partnership. There\u2019s no sense in being a creative thinker, she said, if you\u2019re not getting the work done.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you don\u2019t get both, you don\u2019t have anything,\u201d said Corkey.<\/p>\n

Music was the entry point into the creative mind for President Emeritus Aram Chobanian, MD. A world-renowned cardiologist known for establishing the connection between hypertension and vascular disease, he favored music over medicine growing up.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I went along in life, I liked it (music) more and more,\u201d he said. He took cello lessons, and in retirement he has been composing, aided by full orchestration software that can reproduce the various instruments playing the notes he\u2019s composed.<\/p>\n

Chobanian\u2019s experience as a faculty member and dean was that many physicians had musical backgrounds. That helped inform his decision to start Art Days 32 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u201cI always felt it (a medical education) should be broad. Physicians should not be narrow in their life goals,\u201d said Chobanian. \u201cI urged them to be involved in other things.\u201d<\/p>\n

Chobanian credited his late wife Jasmine, a portrait painter educated at Brown University and the Boston Museum School, for being one of those active in keeping the tradition going and he is very proud of his granddaughter, a fourth-year medical student who is exhibiting in this week\u2019s event.<\/p>\n

Chobanian lost his wife in 2014 and said the creative arts has meant a lot to him in retirement, as it has for many others coping with isolation and despair brought on by the pandemic.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe arts, in general, can fill a void, an emptiness and improve the quality of life in times like these,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m pretty old now, and I get a lot of pleasure when, even though I think I\u2019m going to bed, I go to the piano and entertain myself for 20 minutes.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Art Days exhibit takes place Feb. 22-23 in Hiebert Lounge. Please see the Facebook album<\/a> for photos of the exhibit.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Explore the creativity of Medical Campus colleagues, Feb. 22-23, 9 a.m.-5 p.m., Hiebert Lounge.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":903,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[124,91],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101615"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/903"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101615"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101615\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":101963,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101615\/revisions\/101963"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101615"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101615"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bumc.bu.edu\/camed\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101615"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}