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Unframed paintings in various stages of completion decorate the walls of the Medicine Patient Services (MPS) Family Resource Room on 9 Northwest. There’s an audacious imitation of Vincent van Gogh’s "The Starry Night" and a reproduction of a soft, rocking sea as imagined by Claude Monet. These pieces of art, each a collaborative creation by patients, families and staff, are products of a monthly painting program at Children’s Hospital Boston called Community Painting, run by local artist and volunteer Susan Fusco-Fazio.
Fusco-Fazio’s approach is simple: She positions a blank canvas next to a print of a famous painting to use as a guide. She draws a faint outline and mixes up some colors. As people trickle in, some shy, others gung-ho, she lets them add dabs of color to the communal work, and the painting takes on an identity. Patients, parents and employees are encouraged to work together. "It’s a non-intimidating way to pull in people who might be a little art-phobic," says Fusco-Fazio. "I say to them, ‘Oh, just add a little grass, or just throw some blue up there in the sky, just stroke, stroke, stroke,’" she says, gesticulating. "Once I show people, they think, ‘Oh, I can do that.’" She purposely picks paintings that are less structured, like those done by the Impressionists.
A sign in the hall of 9 Northwest invites participants in, but it’s the energy in the family resource room that makes people stay. "Parents get so excited because it’s something that they can do with their children that’s non-medical," says Fusco-Fazio, who is an art teacher at a local elementary school. "It reminds them of something they do when they’re all healthy." Participants can work on paintings together or start individual paintings that they can hang in the child’s hospital room and then take home. Three of the finished paintings are framed outside of the resource room, and many others decorate the inside.
The Community Painting program began three years ago, but Fusco-Fazio’s connection to Children’s spans 20 years. Her daughter, Laura Marie Fazio, was born with a rare form of complex congenital heart disease called single-ventricle defect, which results from the underdevelopment of one of the heart’s pumping chambers. Laura was repeatedly hospitalized at Children’s and underwent several open-heart surgeries.
As an artist with a degree in painting from Massachusetts College of Art, Fusco-Fazio instinctively used painting and drawing to interact and connect with her daughter during her protracted illness. "My husband and I would paint with her, and when Laura was too sick to join in, she’d tell us what to paint, and we’d paint for her," she says. Fusco-Fazio always tried to make sure her daughter didn’t feel defined by her medical condition. "I wanted her to feel more like a person and less like a patient," she says.
Fusco-Fazio spent more than 1,000 nights at Children’s with Laura, and in 2001, at the age of 14, her daughter passed away from a rare side effect. Since then, Fusco-Fazio has never forgotten what it is like to spend time in the hospital, and especially how long the weekends can feel. "There was nothing going on and it could be lonely," she says.
In 2006, she decided to return to Children’s to offer weekend activities for patients and families. With the help of a grant from the Massachusetts Yoga Network, she began teaching yoga to help families unwind, and offering a chance for them to paint. "Knowing from my own experience of how art aided me, my husband and my child, I knew it would be helpful," she says. She was right: Many families enjoyed the yoga, but the big hit was the painting. After running a joint yoga and painting program for six months, she chose to focus solely on the painting part of the program.
All these years later, children still appreciate the weekend distraction. Many little artists are reticent at first, says Lisa McKenna, a patient family educator who helps with the program. "They usually say that they can’t paint and they don’t want to spoil it," she says. "We encourage them and tell them that they can’t mess it up." McKenna contends that the finished products are just as beautiful as the originals. "The whole concept of community painting is not to be artists, but to interpret what people feel on the canvas," she says. "If they feel angry, upset, happy or sad, they let that out."
Fusco-Fazio says that many patients enjoy creating something expressive, especially since it’s a chance to do something together that doesn’t have to do with illness. "When parents are hospitalized along with their children, their days are filled with lots and lots of waiting," she says. "Patients don’t talk about their illness when they’re doing this—they’re in the moment." Comments on her feedback forms concur: "When I was done painting, I felt wonderful, happy and excellent," reads one. "Painting made me feel focused," reads another.
Some employees who try their hand at painting also benefit. McKenna wouldn’t have considered herself artistic before she started assisting Fusco-Fazio each month. Now, much to her own surprise, she’s enrolled in drawing and painting classes at Bunker Hill Community College. "When I draw, it relaxes me," she says. "After working with this program, I realize the power art has as a stress reliever."
While creating art with patients allows Fusco-Fazio to help families during difficult times, she doesn’t usually share her personal story with them, preferring to focus on the art. But she believes that her background as a parent of a patient helps her connect and empathize with the families. "I get it," she says plainly. "I’ve been one of them."
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