Back in December, I worked on an interesting art project:

In an effort to build stronger health and well being, Sound Family Medicine underwrote an artist-in-residence program at Emerald Ridge High School in Puyallup, WA, commissioning me to work with students over the course of four weeks. I collaborated with Candice Loring’s Advanced Placement Art Class on an installation called “Breakdancing Babies.”

The students created playful sculptures by wrapping baby dolls with colored plastic wrap and tape, carefully cutting the wrapping off with bandage scissors, stuffing the form with bubble wrap, and then retaping. The ultimate intent was to evoke the joy of birth and the movement of life.

HOWEVER, some of the patients at the clinic had a very strong, very negative reaction to the babies. They felt the sculptures looked like babies being suffocated and strangled with plastic wrap, or dying babies. The sculptures brought back strong emotions related to their miscarriages, still births, SIDS, etc, and they felt so strongly that they could not tolerate being in the same space with these sculptures.

So the clinic was obliged to remove this installation. Art is designed to create feelings in people, and sometimes negative feelings are okay. But a doctors’ office needs to be a place of safety and comfort. I’m sorry that this project didn’t work out the way it was planned.