Salinas Valley Health officials rethink hospital hallways as a museum space.

Sara Rubin here, considering the places I might go to look for original artwork. It’s a pretty obvious list: Museums, galleries, occasionally cafes. I don’t usually think of medical settings when I think of artwork, but they have a lot of wall space, and most doctor’s offices you visit probably have at least some show of decorative effort, some with more discerning taste than others. 

Among local hospitals, Natividad and Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula have established art programs, noting that beautifying otherwise sterile spaces can be comforting and uplifting—and hence, potentially healing—for patients. 

Salinas Valley Health is now joining the ranks of health care facilities as art galleries, with a new display of varied and compelling artwork, all made by local students. SVH CEO Allen Radner, a physician and also an appreciator of art, decided to do something with the hospital’s mostly blank wall space. The board agreed to donate $10,000 (plus another $5,000 came from the SVH Foundation), giving $5,000 each to three local education institutions—Hartnell College, CSU Monterey Bay and Rancho Cielo—and each worked with local art students to produce original work. 

Each student exhibited gets a commission, framed art on public display as part of a permanent collection, something they can list on their résumé, and perhaps most importantly, a large audience for their art, says CSUMB associate professor Dionicio Mendoza. 

Mendoza was among the proud faculty beaming at a March 19 opening, which was also attended by many of the student artists. Their work is themed around healing, but their interpretations of how to show that vary as wildly as their stylistic preferences. 

In the acrylic-on-canvas “Metamorphosis of the Heart,” Ximena Lucio Vargas of Rancho Cielo depicts colorful flowers blooming out of what might be a vessel, but is in fact a human heart. “These blooms symbolize the ability to heal and flourish even after hardship,” she wrote in the artist’s notes. “A butterfly, poised on one of the petals, serves as a powerful metaphor for transformation. Just as butterflies endure metamorphosis before taking flight, people too must often pass through periods of difficulty to become stronger, more empathetic, and more understanding.”

Most works hang on the first floor, near the emergency department. One acrylic painting, “A Floral Embrace” by Odette Quiroz Valtierra, is fittingly displayed at the entrance to the labor and delivery unit. It shows a woman holding a baby-like shape that is made of flowers, with children beaming up and waving from below. 

Quiroz is a history major at Hartnell (who plans to transfer next year to CSUMB and then to pursue law school) and says the chance to submit for this project helped her find her way back to her love of art. “It revived that part of me,” she says. “When I think of healing, I think of an embrace, love pouring out.” 

And expect the art to keep pouring out too. “It is just phenomenal art,” Radner said. “We’re just barely scratching the number of walls we need to fill artwork with.”