Issue of
November 11, 1998

Stanford's Art for Healing program: 'It made me feel less scared'

BY RUTHANN RICHTER

Carol Winograd, MD, a former Stanford associate professor of medicine, lies prone on a padded lounge chair in the backyard of her campus home, so worn down by a chronic, unnamed illness that merely sitting up is too great an effort. But when the conversation turns to art, Winograd becomes remarkably animated and her flagging energy suddenly rebounds.

For the last two years, Winograd has been engaged in the Art for Healing program at Stanford Hospital, producing drawings and paintings that express the hurt, loneliness, anger, chaos and sometimes hopefulness that have accompanied her multiple medical treatments. In her sessions with program coordinator Wendy Traber, Winograd said, she does not strive for technique or even contemplate what she might produce. The work naturally flows from a place within, based on her feelings of the moment, she said.

In the process, said Winograd, "I always, always feel better. It's an amazing experience. Sometimes I feel better in weird ways because something that is rumbling around will somehow coalesce."

The Art for Healing program was founded six years ago by Traber, an experienced peer counselor, graphic artist and art teacher, who found art to be a therapeutic outlet when she was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease in 1982. "I felt so bad, emotionally and physically," Traber said. "Out of desperation, I turned to my art materials and began to draw. I felt I was losing my mind as well as my body." She chose charcoal and newsprint to express her fear, drawing a naked self on a stool in front of a window with a tempest blowing in. Afterward, she said, "It made me feel less scared."

With the support of some key physicians at Stanford, Traber proposed the creation of a permanent art-therapy program at the hospital. Amanda Spielman, art program director in the Office of Community and Patient Relations, oversees Art for Healing, which is funded by private donations. Among the major supporters of the program are Helen Bing and her husband, Peter Bing, MD, a university trustee and longtime medical center supporter.

The program does not aim to produce art for gallery display. Rather, it encourages the use of art as a tool to help people gain a sense of control in situations where they often feel powerless, Traber said.

Traber makes her rounds twice a week at the hospital, seeking to engage patients in the process as she moves from room to room and approaches people in waiting areas with her cart of supplies.

"Art helps us embrace who we are and what we're going through ­ our humanness," she said.

Sometimes, art can also dissipate the physical pain of disease. "Patients get a lot of pain medication, but they often tell me, 'The only time I don't feel pain is when I'm engaged in the art,'" Traber said.

Winograd, a renowned geriatrics specialist now on permanent disability, said she first encountered the program when she was hospitalized in 1996. By then, she had been ill for three years with a wide range of symptoms for which she still has no definitive diagnosis. She is profoundly fatigued, has metabolic problems that have induced a 65-pound weight gain, has a gastrointestinal tract that doesn't work well, copes with autoimmune abnormalities and suffers from musculoskeletal problems that produce pain in her legs after a five-minute walk, she said.

Winograd said her regular sessions with Traber have helped her get to the core of the issues that have plagued her in her illness. "She is a particularly insightful human being," Winograd said. "She is able to know what is up with somebody."

Winograd recalled one time last fall when Traber asked her what medium she'd like to use that day. "How about plates to throw?" responded Winograd, who was full of anger at the moment.

"How about not doing that?" Traber responded. "How about drawing your anger?"

So she did. Using colored pencils, Winograd drew her right forearm vibrating with angry red and orange cells. Next to the drawing she wrote, "My cells are in overdrive, adrenalized, firing constantly, fighting, fleeing, probably frightened of my own anger. ..." Alhough the visual image is raw and unnerving, Winograd said she felt much calmer after completing it.

As a result of those sessions, she has produced dozens of works, including four 4-by-8-foot self-portraits that reflect her coming to terms with her changing body shape and size, she said. She was one of 11 artists featured in a permanent, rotating exhibit inaugurated last June by the Art for Healing program. The display is in a hallway on the first floor of the hospital, just outside the endoscopy unit.

In a brochure for the show, Winograd wrote, "As my world collapsed and my physical body became less functional, art has become a place of growth and substance. I feel alive when I am doing art." SR