Healing Art

Enriches Sutter Auburn Faith Hospital’s Hospice Healing Garden

How do you take cool, stiff steel and slick, fragile glass and transform them into sculpture that warms, welcomes and engages the viewer on a spiritual level? Two Northern California artists, sculptor Deanna Marsh and abstract expressionist painter Sondra Hersh, understand this challenge well after collaborating to create three works of art for Sutter Auburn Faith Hospital’s new Hospice Healing Garden.

Previously an interior cement courtyard, the garden space has been transformed into a beautifully landscaped retreat of ornamental grasses, brick walkways and a flowing fountain by landscape architect Robert Littlepage in memory of his mother, Dorothy Littlepage, and in gratitude for her experience with Hospice. The refreshing colors and gentle sounds combine to soothe the eyes and warm the heart, providing a quiet sanctuary for those receiving, or providing, services at the hospital. The garden setting invites visitors to linger for contemplation and conversation…and perhaps for the first time, experience healing art.

"This artwork shares the Sutter Auburn Faith Hospice vision of creating a place for patients and families to go during difficult times-- a place of serenity, calming waters, and a private space for quiet reflection,” said Therese Crutcher-Marin, Hospice Community Outreach Supervisor. “We now feel the garden is complete with this last installation of artwork.”

Since kiln-formed glass and steel have the inherent ability to reflect an intensely grounded strength and spiritual light, Deanna and Sondra felt these materials were a perfect fit with the garden’s purpose. Their sculptural triptych would need to represent a dynamic synthesis of each artist’s unique spiritual history and shared hope for healing. As a first collaboration, the creative process for the artists included months of sketching together while discussing life’s deeper spiritual issues: where and how does healing happen, what inspires true hope for a patient or supportive bystander, what role can art play in stimulating a health-affirming process, how do you move a viewer outside of the immediate context of their challenges into a broader view of possibilities? Through prayer and dialog, patient reflection and questioning, Deanna and Sondra discovered a deep spiritual connection which began to infuse their sketches with vitality and translate ideas into forms and layers of meaning. This creative process evolved three distinct sculptural forms.

Sondra’s sculpture “Surrender—Finding the Jewels in the Void” is designed as a welcoming into the void—that place of unknown possibility, the place of surrender. When taking the plunge and trusting in divine purpose, we learn we can survive and find the strength we need in each moment.

In contrast, the wall sculpture by Deanna, “Peace Within/Without” has soothing edges, embracing forms and sparkling blue glass to invite viewers to affirm the joy and peaceful flow which pours into us individually and radiates out from us in the aftermath of healing, where struggle has dissolved in freedom.

The large, free-standing central sculpture in the garden entitled “Pregnant With Light, Wisdom and Hope” stands as a visual prayer for healing to all who enter the garden seeking refuge, inspiration and peace. The sculpture is intended to spark an inner seeking for healing, fill the viewer with serenity, and inspire spiritual thinking and growth.

Deanna’s and Sondra’s sculptures reconnect the viewer with that which is so removed now from daily experience—a relationship with the natural world which uplifts thought and inspires the spirit. Their interpretation of the Healing Garden’s high aim has brought forth shapes that grow gracefully upward with rich natural surface patinas created through hours of heating, cooling and working the surface of the steel, and colorful layers of kiln-formed glass that shimmer with both reflected light and translucency.

“Sondra and I discovered the creation of these sculptures was similar to the healing process each of us has experienced at critical times in our lives,” said Deanna, “when you search for how to move forward, remain hopeful and work hard to come out on the other side of problem feeling healed and whole. We hope contemplating and interpreting this process of healing through our art gives hospital staff and visitors to the garden a new view of the possibilities for healing and encourages the best care for our community.”

“As artists, we feel honored to be a part of the uplifting purpose of the Hospice garden. Deanna and I are following our vision of healing art on a new spiritual collaboration called Circles of Responsibility,” said Sondra recently. “It’s a privilege to create together again, challenging ourselves to put color, shape and form to our ideas.”

Reprinted from Perspectives Magazine.