Art is good medicine at NIH's Clinical Center

by Karen Schafer
Staff Writer

Mar. 26, 2002

Laurie DeWitt/The Gazette "Suspension," an oil painting by Jessica Damen of Gaithersburg.

Sure, it feels odd visiting a hospital just to look at artwork. But with The National Institutes of Health's Clinical Center in Bethesda boasting six contemporary art galleries, such feelings should be put aside. Throughout the lobby level, along most public corridors, visitors are encouraged to stop and contemplate a diverse collection of artwork created by mostly East Coast artists.

Through May 3, the Sculpture Gallery is exhibiting "A Symphony of Stone," six alabaster sculptures created by Daniel Botkiss. Paintings and prints by Jessica Damen are hanging in the Lipsett Gallery.

This abundance of artwork was a happy accident. In 1984, the center purchased art for its newly constructed outpatient clinics. When some pieces arrived before the clinics were completed, the art was exhibited in the public areas on the first floor. Once the clinics were finished and the artwork was removed, the staff and patients missed it. The center decided to hire Lillian Fitzgerald as its curator, and the Clinical Center Art Program was born.

While Fitzgerald's mandate is to select the best contemporary art, she never forgets that this is still a hospital. Some spaces demand soothing realism to help divert a patient's attention from stressful procedures. Other galleries are whimsical. Since the Lipsett Gallery is an area mostly used by researchers and visitors attending lectures, it offers more challenging and edgier art.

For Jessica Damen, a former pediatric nurse, exhibiting at NIH seems only natural. Daniel Botkiss got hooked on the place after taking a mini-medical school course offered at the center. The following are their stories.

Old photographs

Jessica Damen likes looking at snapshots. Some she finds at second hand shops; others she takes herself. From these photos she creates "portraits and painterly interpretations."

The 50-year-old Gaithersburg resident is so committed to making art she recently earned a master's degree in fine arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art and has opened her own art studio in Fell's Point.

This passion for pictures started when going through her parent's attic and finding family snapshots taken just after World War ll.

She believes "they were meant to convey for posterity their hope, optimism and achievement." But there were snapshots of Damen's sister, who died before the artist was born, images her parents stashed away burying "the tragedy associated with them," she notes.

For Damen, these long-forgotten photos became her artistic inspiration. "It's the process that goes afterwards. ... I look at people and get a sense. It's not just a likeness, but more," she points out.

Like many midlife artists, she returned to the career she was "always meant to have" after years of nursing, working in the family company and taking business courses.

Once she started taking art courses at the Corcoran College of Art and Design in the 1980s, everything clicked.

Now "I devote all my energy to it," she says.

Rocks that talk

Daniel A. Botkiss, 77, is enjoying his retirement the way it is suppose to be enjoyed. Along with golf, tennis and travel, the Kensington resident has taken art classes at Montgomery College for 12 years. He dabbled in watercolor, drawing and clay, but it wasn't until he touched his first block of stone that a medium "spoke" to him. Using muscles he didn't know he had, Botkiss hammers and chisels the stone into shape, then sands it by hand. A purist, he refuses to use a power sander or any other electrical device when sculpting.

And in the process of touching and observing every detail of the stone, "I hear a symphony," he says simply.

The National Institutes of Health, Clinical Center, 9000 Wisconsin Ave., Bethesda, is open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Visitors must enter the NIH campus through Center Drive and pass through two security checkpoints beforeentering the Clinical Center building (Building 10) via the P3 underground parking garage, a pay parking facility. All artwork (located on the first floor) is for sale with 20 percent of the proceeds slated for the Patient Emergency Fund. Call 301-402-0115.

Exhibits

The following exhibits are on view at the Clinical Center through May 3.

Lipsett Gallery: Jessica Damen, paintings and prints

Sculpture Gallery: Daniel Botkiss: "A Symphony of Sounds," alabaster sculptures

Gallery One: "The Beautiful Square," a group show using the square format. Exhibit includes paintings, prints, fabric, assemblage, color, black and white and hand-colored photography

Gallery Two: Yolanda Frederikse, mono-prints and watercolors

Gallery Three: Ron Blunt and Billy Newman, photography

Gallery Five: Mongol Yurt Association Paintings by Monkhor Erdenebayar, Enkhbat Lantuu, Tsegmed Tserennadmid, Yadamsurengiin Oyunchimeg, Dolgorjav Bold