The Great Healers: Gratitude and Beauty

Recently I was asked to reflect on some fascinating questions: How does the Donor Recognition work we do for healthcare institutions directly contribute to their quality of care? Do our installations affect patient outcomes, and if so, how?

These questions were on the application for the Nightingale Product Design Awards, which honor excellence and innovation in healthcare products. They are sponsored by the Center for Health Design, the Healthcare Design Conference and Contract magazine.  

I'll share my answers with you in a moment, but  first I want to announce that we WON the Nightingale Silver Award for Architectural Products! It was a unique experience for me, "pitting" our luminous carved crystal against products like privacy curtains, nurses stations and antimicrobial drawer pulls. 

One of the Nightingale judges examines our work at the Healthcare Design Conference last weekend.

I believe deeply that our Art Glass pieces are every bit as important in a hospital as these more obviously practical products. And that's what I explained to the Nightingale panel of architects, facility designers and interior designers who were the judges. 

Our Donor Recognition not only honors our clients’ most generous donors, it inspires new donations that become the capital and operating costs of the whole hospital. Heartfelt, top-quality Donor Recognition is pivotal in building and maintaining these institutions as a community asset.

Our Donor Wall at the Eccles Critical Care Pavilion in Salt Lake City reads, "We are all members of a single family, the family of humankind."

In addition, the exquisite imagery and inspiring words on our artwork promote confidence in patients and a high sense of self-worth in professional and support staff. Our luminous panels also transmit, celebrate and reaffirm a hospital’s mission and values. They help brand an institution -- a vital contribution in today’s competitive market.

Donor Wall with olive leaves at San Francisco's Jewish Family and Children's Services

Evidence-Based Design has shown that fine art -- especially when it includes beautiful images from nature, as ours does -- contributes significantly to a patient’s recovery by measurably reducing stress and pain. Dr. Upali Nanda, one of the leading researchers in Evidence-based Design, writes, “Viewing artwork with appropriate nature content has been seen to reduce stress and pain perception, as measured by physiological outcomes such as blood pressure, heart-rate, and skin conductance, in addition to self-report measures.

Jain Malkin, the renowned healthcare interior designer, says, "Real art -- as opposed to decorative art -- touches the soul and reaches the viewer emotionally. It expresses energy, life force, and has deep spiritual meaning that can help the viewer transform pain and suffering to reach a higher state of consciousness."

Each of our pieces of chisel-cut and etched Art Glass is designed as a work of fine art that transmits inspiring messages of spirituality and gratitude. Gratitude has a documented impact on physical and emotional health.

Detail of inspirational images and text on our Donor Wall at Children's Hospital Boston

The positive effect of integrating one-of-a-kind, inspirational fine artwork into hospital lobbies was testified to by keynote speaker Knut Bergsland in his keynote at the Healthcare Design Conference in 2005. In describing the impact of hospital lobbies on actual health outcomes and the development of goodwill in patients, families, visitors and staff entering a medical facility, he said, “People’s first impressions when they walk into a building have a disproportionate impact on the rest of their experience there."

Our products are also the vehicles for inspirational messages, welcoming patients and their families as they enter the hospital, and setting a positive and reassuring tone for their whole visit.

I am honored that the team of judges for the Nightingale Awards recognized the important and multifaceted role our Donor Recognition plays in the field of healthcare.

I want to close by saying that I love what I do! I love listening to clients tell me what they need, I love designing, I love honoring the generous souls who support healthcare institutions, and most of all I love that our Art Glass is helping patients heal and return home quickly to their families.

A heartfelt thank you to all our clients for giving us the opportunity to do this work,

Benefits of Becoming a Naming Donor

Tribute to Willard and Alice Marriott at the Marriott Library, University of Utah. This double-layer plaque includes formal photos of the couple, and a larger image showing the pair as young sweethearts.

I was working with the Donor Relations Officer of a new hospital the other day, helping her find the right words for a proposal she was going to make to a prospective Naming Donor. We have done a lot of Naming and Major Donor Tributes over the years, and I was happy to share with her the specific benefits such philanthropists enjoy when they are appropriately -- and generously -- honored.

Here's an easy bulleted list you can share with
your Donors or Development team. (If you'd like a nicely formatted version with photos -- suitable as a Donor handout -- email me at christina_amri@amristudio.com.)

• Positions the Donor as a host and sponsor of the institution, welcoming patients or students, visitors, families, and staff when they walk in the door
• Presents the Donor as a benefactor and humanitarian who truly cares about the well-being of the people who use the institution
• Enables the Donor to share their wisdom and inspiration with the many thousands of visitors who will pause to enjoy the artwork and read the Donor’s words
• Humanizes the philanthropist and sends a message that not only honors the Donor’s gift, it forges a long-term relationship from which Donor and institution will benefit
• The Naming Donor Tribute we create will reflect the shared values of the institution and the Donor: It will be both visionary and enduring, a work of art created with exquisite attention to detail and hand-crafted from the highest quality materials. It will embody excellence, integrity, team-work, caring and respect.

 Here are several more examples of custom Naming Donor Tributes we have created to give you (and your Donors) an idea of what's possible.

Tribute to a beloved doctor at Nebraska Medical Center, given by his wife. The decorative element on the right side is a detail from the wallpaper in Dr. Burney's bedroom when he was a child.

This double-layer Tribute honors George Batchelor, Naming Donor for the Batchelor Children's Research Institute in Miami. The top layer of the Tribute, at left, shows the philanthropist today, at age 80.
The second layer, shown at right using different lighting, is a portrait of the aeronautical industry leader in his 20s as a young pilot.

Tribute to George and Dolores Eccles at the Eccles Critical Care Pavilion, University of Utah. Again, the double layer strategy allows us to show
the donor couple in formal portraits and in a fun-loving moment
from their early years together. This kind of Tribute is especially
appreciated in a hospital setting, where patients and families are
delightfully diverted by the sight of a joyful image.

Donor Awards in a building block motif with gold-filled Donor names and initials

If you would like us to send you a digital portfolio of our Donor Tributes, contact me at info@amristudio.com. We also have a pdf showing our Donor Awards if you're looking for something simpler.

Places the Donor’s name in one of the most prominent locations in the building

Positions the Donor as a host and sponsor of the institution, welcoming patients/students, visitors, families, and staff when they walk in the door

Presents the Donor as a benefactor and humanitarian who truly cares about the well-being of the people who use the institution

Enables the Donor to share their wisdom and inspiration with the many thousands of visitors who will pause to enjoy the artwork and read the Donor’s words

Humanizes the philanthropist and sends a message that not only honors the Donor’s gift, it forges a long-term relationship from which Donor and institution will benefit

The Naming Donor Tribute we create will reflect the shared values of the institution and the Donor: It will be both visionary and enduring, a work of art created with exquisite attention to detail and hand-crafted from the highest quality materials. It will embody excellence, integrity, team-work, caring and respect.

The Delight of Designing for Museums

I am in Houston this week at the amazing annual expo of the American Association of Museums. Among the wealth of technical exhibits -- such as lighting, display hardware and catalog printing -- there are fascinating booths sponsored by companies that create replicas of our primitive ancestors, life-sized dinosaur skeletons and exotic mammals. What an eyeful!

We have done quite a bit of Art Glass and Donor Recognition for museums in our 35-plus years in the "gratitude business," as I call it. These projects have been some of my favorites, and I thought you'd enjoy seeing just a few. (The links will take you to our website, where you'll find more photos and detailed descriptions of each project.)

A striking carved and etched dancer (from an original image by famed photographer Lois Greenfield) glows in changing day-to-night LED colors at the Clay Center for the Arts and Sciences in Charleston, WV. We created a combination Donor Recognition-Art Glass mural in the theater lobby. The design also features a "diamond necklace" of fractals trailing across the crystal panels -- a visual reference to the children’s discovery museum attached to the theater. I'm proud to say that this installation was the winner of a Creativity 35 Award of Distinction!

We also used dramatic photography in this National Baseball Hall of Fame Tribute to the great Buck O’Neil, a player, scout and coach who paved the way for African-Americans in major league baseball. O’Neil was known as a consummate gentleman both on and off the field. It was a special treat to select vintage photos of him -- and of the ballpark he called home -- and render them in etched crystal. We use a proprietary technique to develop and convert photographs into a fine DPI (dot per inch) etchable matrix that we then use to create permanent monument-style, highly readable and realistic 3-D images and portraits.

At St. Joseph Medical Center in Baltimore, we created a Heritage Wall that uses images and artifacts from the hospital's long history to create a permanent lobby exhibit of seven niches of carved and etched crystal. The panels not only celebrate the founding and growth of the hospital, they thank the institution's donors while serving as powerful branding and identity statements in the competitive Baltimore healthcare market.

At the Museum of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, FL, we were asked to create a Donor Recognition wall to serve as an eye-catching piece of art in their lobby. Because the museum is known for its dramatic collection of Steuben glass, we aimed to create an Art Glass piece that showed off the elegance and timelessness of deep V-cut carving in crystal.

The crystal panels are edge-lit by strips of LEDs hidden in custom brackets at top and bottom. Crystal acts like a fiber optic, so when light is directed at the edge of a panel, it travels through the glass, highlighting the carving and making its message visible from quite a distance.

Designing for museums is a fascinating process. It gives us the chance to show our unique ability to create stunningly beautiful Art Glass that also serves practical purposes by providing information, identity statements and Donor Recognition.

If you happen to be in the Houston area, MuseumExpo 2011 runs through the 25th. I hope you'll stop by booth 1604 and say hi! 

Honoring the Architect's Intent

One of our important goals when we create a work of Donor Art is to ensure that it echoes and enhances the architecture of the building in which it will be displayed. I thought you'd enjoy seeing some examples of installations where the gesture of the carefully crafted exteriors and interiors of the building are reflected in our design for the Donor Art.

This state-of-the-art hospital was designed by architectural partners VOA and OWP/P to be a "family-oriented, feminine building.” To blend seamlessly with the architects' design intent, we used delicately curving, gold-filled ginkgo leaves to adorn a carved-crystal Tribute to the Naming Donor, Abra Rockefeller Prentice Wilkin. The lobby, where the Tribute is installed, feels more like it belongs to a beautiful hotel than a healthcare facility! 

To honor Naming Donor Alan Ginsburg and the Ginsburg Family Foundation, we were asked to create a Tribute to Ginsburg's late wife, Harriet, and their son, Jeffrey, for the new Ginsburg Tower at Florida Hospital Cardiovascular Institute. Our freestanding Art Glass Donor Tribute in the lobby of the building echoes HuntonBrady’s award-winning design with its breathtaking circular tower. Our Art Glass Tribute -- a spiral "grove" that visitors can actually walk into -- was awarded first place in the Unique Signs category at the 2009 International Sign Contest, sponsored by Signs of the Times magazine.

Lastly, I want to show you a wonderful opportunity we had to create a Donor Recognition solution for a hospital that was designed by one of the most famous names in modern architecture. In 1962, Edward Durell Stone was commissioned to design a hospital on Monterey Peninsula, one of the world's most beautiful places. He used an iconic pattern of concentric squares throughout the building, both inside and outside. Today, the hospital uses that icon for its logo.

In designing the Donor Recogntion, we wanted to feature imagery that would reflect the community’s love for its natural surroundings and mesh with the iconic design. Along the bottom of the crystal panels, we used floating bars of DNA sequences that mirrored the shape of Stone's decorative squares. In keeping with the Monterey Bay nature theme, we then had those bars morph into patterns of light dappling on sunlit waters where an egret is poised for flight.

As an artist, I find it a real privilege to create designs that enhance the work of truly talented architects.

More Than Just a Wall

Question }  When is a donor wall . . . not just a wall?

Answer }  When its innovative spiral design breaks free from the limits of two dimensions and becomes a breathtaking piece of free-standing Art Glass Sculpture, dedicated to the memory of the beloved wife and son of a medical center's Major Donor.

  

Institution: Florida Hospital Cardiovascular Institute in Orlando, part of the Adventist Health System

Donor: The Alan Ginsburg Family Foundation

Source of inspiration: A Biblical quotation provided by the donors:

Faith, it is a tree of life to those that grasp it.

PROVERBS 3:18

Highlights: 13 crystal panels deep-carved and etched with “Faith” text in eight languages which overlap the vivid images of leafy trees, making the sculpture a memorial grove for the honorees. Panels are mounted in a custom hardwood base and illuminated by soft amber and pink LED's. 

The Meaning Behind the Form: The gently undulating clusters of text visually echo the rhythm of the human heart beat – an apt effect for a cardiovascular facility.

First Place Winner, Unique Signs Category

2009 International Sign Contest sponsored by Signs of the Times magazine