St. Luke's Hospital
www.stlukes-sf.sutterhealth.org
Client since 2004
Step Up To The World Again
By Grace D'Anca, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Special report on St. Luke's Hospital Mural Project
Carlos Gonzalez used to rush home from school every day to have a drawing for when his dad came home from work. "Most kids did their homework after school, but my dad was always had a knack for drawing and rendering," Gonzalez said. "So he wanted me to make him a picture every day, he didn't care about homework."
Gonzalez shuttles up and down a wobbly ladder in a neon-lit stairwell landing at St Luke's Hospital transforming an 8' by 10' wall into a vibrant mural of an ancient Mayan temple window opening onto an ocean sunset (right). A jaguar and toucan flank the inside of the portal while a silhouette of San Francisco pulses in the background. Vivid orange and yellow zap you into the energy of the vista like magnets. Rich green foliage and deep purple accents waft waves of calm. You long to float through the window to feel the sense of freedom calling you.
A juvenile probation officer who also plays congas with Mambo Street, Gonzalez took vacation time to paint "Vista De La Selba", Overview, to inspire St. Luke's patients working with physical therapy staff to learn to climb stairs independently after illness or surgery. "The idea came up in discussions spanning 10 years with our rehab staff about ways to motivate people to walk up those stairs," said Dr. Barbara Bishop, Medical Director of St. Luke's Skilled Nursing Unit. "We can't send them home if they can't get up their own steps. Something beautiful like this really helps spurs them to keep working."
It is common to see physical therapy staff walking patients up and down the stairs adjacent to the skilled nursing unit, walkers, canes or wheelchairs abandoned in the landing. The drafty, echoing stairwell handily replicates steps homebound patients will face upon discharge.
"It's scary for a patient to struggle to get up stairs after surgery or an illness. The mural is warm and welcoming," said Aram Millstein, an inpatient rehabilitation physical therapist. "It makes the quality of treatment better, people are less physically tense and anxious since we have the mural."
Bishop shared her vision with Gyana Bays, St. Luke's Director of Social Services and Case Management. Bays believes that patients should be liberally dosed with art throughout the course of their treatment and is the kind of woman who makes things happen. She put out a call in the hospital newsletter for a volunteer muralist and found Gonzalez through his ex-wife who was affiliated with the hospital. Bays then went to St. Luke's Auxilians who were eager to fund paint supplies for such a special project.
"St. Luke's Auxiliary has raised funds for programs and equipment for the hospital for 53 years. But we have a keen interest in funding novel projects that benefit the patients in humanistic ways, and we try to pay attention to projects that might be overlooked," said Peg Purcell, Auxiliary President.
"Healing has many dimensions. Art, music, and nature are part of that healing process. In the rush of to-dos, as caregivers we need the environment to remind us to be aware and receptive, and to be nurturing to our patients," said Bays who has worked to add The C.A.R.E. Channel to the regular St. Luke's viewing menu, featuring beautiful images and soothing music. "The mural project is an important part of whole-person-caring — mind, body, spirit — for our patients, and for the staff and physicians."
A Mission District native, Gonzalez says, "My son was born at St. Luke's, I see doctors here, I figured I could take a week's vacation and get the painting done. It's taken longer, but now it's become a labor of love."
Gonzalez has been painting murals since college. He came back home to the neighborhood on breaks from Sonoma State University. He started working with a pilot program that was the first to give condoms and bleach to IV drug users, now it's the model. Gonzlez' job was to reach out to neighborhood youth, help get them into detox, and working again — painting murals.
One of St. Luke's recreation therapists brought a long-term care patient into the stairwell to watch Gonzalez work. Despite becoming gravely disabled, the patient has shown a remarkable talent for painting with a mouth-stick. The patient realized that Gonzalez was the youth worker that had intervened in his life many ago.
The patient is limited to painting on very small canvas so Gonzalez next labor of love for St. Luke's will be to render one of the patients drawings into a larger than life mural on the long-term care unit stair well to create another panorama to honor this patient's talent and to inspire others.
"San Francisco is famous for murals, and it would be great if the work at St. Luke's could be on the mural map."
The McKesson Corporation funded another mural last summer on the Women and Children's Unit featuring images that staff presented to the artists. The mural has a quilt-like feel done with lots of primary colors illustrating the diversity of St. Luke's patients and the hospital's strong presence in the Mission symbolized by Bernal Hill and Mission Dolores.
Bays says this is just the beginning of making art an everyday part of the healing environment at St. Luke's. "One down, eleven to go. We need to have a mural on each landing of our hospital tower to remind people that beauty is a really important part of the healing process."
If you would like to more information about the St. Luke's mural project or St. Luke's Auxiliary, contact Volunteer Services at 415.641.6490.
We hope it will also be an inspiration to any other artists who would like to put their heart print on the walls of the hospital.
More of Gonzalez murals can be seen at 22nd and Mission, 24th and Hampshire, 24th and York, and at some commercial locations in the Bay Area.
